Friends, Neighbours, Sinners demonstrates the fundamental ways in which religious difference shaped English society in the first half of the eighteenth century. By examining the social subtleties of interactions between people of differing beliefs, and how they were mediated through languages and behaviours common to the long eighteenth century, Carys Brown examines the graduated layers of religious exclusivity that influenced everyday existence. By doing so, the book points towards a new approach to the social and cultural history of the eighteenth century, one that acknowledges the integral role of the dynamics of religious difference in key aspects of eighteenth-century life. This book therefore proposes not just to add to current understanding of religious coexistence in this period, but to shift our ways of thinking about the construction of social discourses, parish politics, and cultural spaces in eighteenth-century England.

'This book is … not only valuable for historians of religion seeking to understand the social, local and personal effects of 1689, but it is also a helpful reminder for social and cultural historians of the centrality of religion to the way that eighteenth-century individuals perceived one another.'

Daniel Rignall Source: The Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society

‘The book provides not only a useful argument for a more complex understanding of the role of religion in eighteenth-century England, but also a model for how to think about it in the wider English world.’

Evan Haefeli Source: Journal of British Studies

‘Brown’s study offers compelling evidence of the tensions prompted in individuals and groups by the act’s dissonant promise of security for and acceptance but not outright approval of sectarian dissent.’

Daniel Lochman Source: H-Net Reviews