Crawford Gribben is a cultural and literary historian whose work delves into the development and dissemination of religious ideas. As a professor of history, he meticulously examines how these concepts have evolved and spread throughout different eras. His research offers profound insights into the intricate connections between history, culture, and religious thought. Gribben's approach illuminates the enduring impact of spiritual and intellectual currents on society.
The Irish experience of Christianity has never been simple or uncomplicated. Here, Crawford Gribben describes the ancient emergence, long dominance, sudden division, and recent decline of Ireland's most important religion, as a way of telling the history of the island and its peoples, from earliest times to the present day.
Focusing on key historical events, this book explores the evolution of religious life in Ireland from medieval times through the Puritan era, highlighting the influential role of Archbishop James Ussher. It delves into the complexities of faith and governance during a transformative period, providing insight into how these elements shaped the spiritual landscape of the nation.
Eschatology is a central theme in Puritanism, influencing its writers who approached the subject with varying intentions and contexts. This book offers an interdisciplinary analysis of Puritan beliefs regarding the end times, focusing on texts by notable figures such as John Foxe, James Usser, and John Milton. Through these readings, it examines how their reformist agendas shaped their eschatological hopes and perspectives, highlighting the complexity and diversity within Puritan thought on last things.
The essays explore the enforcement of the Protestant Reformation in Ireland and Scotland, examining the motives and methods of political authorities in both regions. By comparing their varying degrees of success, the volume provides a deeper understanding of the complexities of confessionalization in Europe. The international perspective enriches the discussion, highlighting the broader implications of these historical events on the religious landscape of the time.
For many English puritans, the new world represented new opportunities for the reification of reformation, if not a site within which they might begin to experience the conditions of the millennium itself. For many Irish Catholics, by contrast, the new world became associated with the experience of defeat, forced transportation, indentured service, cultural and religious loss. And yet, as the chapters in this volume demonstrate, the Atlantic experience of puritans and Catholics could be much less bifurcated than some of the established scholarly narratives have suggested: puritans and Catholics could co-exist within the same trans-Atlantic families; Catholics could prosper, just as puritans could experience financial decline; and Catholics and puritans could adopt, and exchange, similar kinds of belief structures and practical arrangements, even to the extent of being mistaken for each other. This volume investigates the history of Puritans and Catholics in the Atlantic world, 1600-1800.
John Nelson Darby is best known as the architect of the most influential system of end-times thinking among the world's half-a-billion evangelicals. This book re-examines Darby's thought and argues that claims that Darby is the father of dispensationalism may need to be revised.