Previous American Society of Church History (ASCH) presidents have used their presidential addresses for a variety of purposes, from contributing to the cutting edge of their own specialties to scanning the previous highlights of personalities or developments in their field.

The so-called Notícias Recônditas, an anonymous account written in the context of the negotiations that led to the suspension of Inquisition-related actions in Portugal between 1674 and 1681, has been approached by historiography principally from the points of view of its controversial authorship, its compositional framework, and even the accuracy of its contents. This article proposes a different perspective, focusing on its circulation and reception in the eighteenth-century England. Comparing different handwritten and printed versions of this text reveals numerous additions, transformations, and adaptations of its contents and structure, from its moment of composition until its publication and even afterwards. Eighteenth-century London, where anti-Catholic polemical literature was flourishing, is the place of publication of the first editions. There, Notícias was also appropriated by Anglican polemists with one main purpose in mind: attacking the Catholic Church. This, however, did not suit the text's original goals of making contributions to reforms to the Inquisition in Portugal and raising awareness for the New Christian cause. Therefore, identifying and analyzing the discrepancies among the different versions of the text give way to new questions concerning the intervention of copyists, translators, compilers, and publishers in order to achieve specific objectives and to reach target audiences.

Gerasim Petrovich Pavskii (1787–1863) was arguably the brightest pupil of Russia's most-noted nineteenth-century prelate, Metropolitan of Moscow Filaret Drozdov. Pavskii's work under the tutelage of Filaret dated from the future Moscow metropolitan's rectorate at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, 1812–1817. Yet in the subsequent twenty-five years following Filaret's appointment to the episcopate in 1817, the young theologian and philologist Pavskii would break decisively with his former rector. That break culminated in the celebrated Pavskii Affair of 1841–1844—the so-called Delo Pavskogo—a far-reaching synodal investigation that dramatized the deep divisions in the Orthodox church of Nicolaevan Russia. On one level, these divisions involved issues of modern biblical textology. It is the thesis of this work, however, that alongside the textological issues were deep-seated differences over Orthodox piety and church polity that conditioned the responses of the esteemed metropolitan and the erudite theologian. This fundamental divide within Russian Orthodoxy was never reconciled and, indeed, has continued to the present in modified form within religious circles of the Russian emigration.

The success of early Methodism in the textile-manufacturing region of Yorkshire and Lancashire is an important part of the overall story of the success of the Methodists. That Wesley's teachings and societies should have thrived in this rough area is almost as surprising as the success of the Wesleyans in Cornwall. Any attempt to explain this growth must include an investigation into the question: what kind of people chose to join the Methodists? Earlier historians of Methodism, including John Wesley Bready, Leslie F. Church, Maldwyn Edwards, W. J. Warner, and Robert F. Wearmouth, have offered largely impressionistic overviews of the social structure of early Methodism. The best way to obtain a more precise picture is to look at those records of individual circuits, such as the Keighley Methodist circuit, which provide occupational data.

In the early years of the eighteenth century the fear of French power fused into alliance nations and individuals who under other circumstances would have stood suspiciously apart. During the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1713) the Protestant Circle of Princes fought for and with a Roman Catholic emperor; England recognized a would-be king of Spain, Charles III, and repudiated the would-be king of England, James III; Dutchmen and Englishmen accepted one another's aid, gracelessly, but to some purpose. Monarchs at the time, and historians later on, insisted that the war was not one of religion; nevertheless, a vast number of men then living viewed it as such.

Undoubtedly, there are many centers to American religion—many topoi around which the wide-ranging multitude of historical developments associated with American religion might be seen to coalesce. Among the several that spring to mind—commitment to family, gender negotiation, concern for religious experience, freedom, conscience, millennial eschatology, respect for the Bible, social reform, desire for salvation (and there must be numerous others beyond my ken)—I see the myth of the Puritans as a good candidate for premier topos. In recommending it as a central category for organizing multiple forms and dimensions of American religion, I do not mean to draw attention to the Puritans in the exactitude of their historical existence, but rather to the myth of the Puritans as religious founders.

In 1932, Shirley Jackson Case, a recent president of the American Society of Church History, summarized the activities of the “The Church History Deputation to the Orient” by rehearsing some of the questions that the visiting scholars asked of their colleagues in Asia. Among those queries were these: “What service is the study of Church History as a whole rendering to Christianity today in your country? Could this service be improved, and, if so, in what practical way?” For Case and others, the study of church history was directly related to the practice of Christianity. To research, publish, and teach church history was to serve Christianity.

Much of John Goodwin's theological output can be viewed as a backlash against the “orthodox” doctrine of God. That God, as Goodwin conceived him, was too eager to command the “impossible” and too inclined to “delight” in the punishment of the noncompliant. During the early 1650s, Goodwin turned to the pagans in order to articulate the gracious countenance of a wise and equitable deity. In the process, he went close to canceling the operational distinction between grace and nature. For nature, according to Goodwin, preached unlettered sermons about “atonement.” And because, as Paul declared in Romans, the blessings of creation render the sins of creatures inexcusable, it is only because they willfully repudiate the deity's gracious overtures that pagans deprive themselves of excuse. The doctrine, as Goodwin presented it, horrified his many opponents. It seemed to them that Goodwin had lodged in the “free will” of rational creatures the power to attain salvation. He put himself on a collision course with the magisterial masters—Bucer, Vermigli, Calvin, Pareus, and others—whose lead he professed, in many respects, to follow. There is reason to suspect that Goodwin had been particularly indebted to Arminius, Episcopius, and Corvinus.

The jurisdiction of the Roman see is, and always has been, a point of controversy, not merely between the adherents of that see and all other Christians, but even among those who look with reverence akin to devotion to the successor of St. Peter. It is not merely a legal question, it is essentially a theological question, and as a doctrine it must be dejure divino. Accordingly, it has been discussed with that acrimony which as from a psychological necessity is characteristic of so many theological disputes. But discussion of the development of the doctrine and practice does not necessarily involve polemics. For a doctrine may be true or false, and to show this is a matter of exegesis and systematic theology, but to show that as finally stated it was the result of a long development is not to touch upon the question of its truth at all. Thus one may ask as to a doctrine closely connected with that we are to discuss, does the teaching of the Church as stated in the Bull, Unam Sanctam, appear in the second or third century as an article of belief required to be held by all Christians as a condition for receiving the sacraments? To show that it does not so appear, is merely to show what nearly every one acknowledges as to almost any doctrine not involved in modern polemics, that in the earliest ages they were not formulated with any great precision, in fact were expressed in forms sometimes afterward regarded as even heretical. Such a doctrine as the appellate jurisdiction may be studied in the same historical and non-polemical spirit as the doctrines of the atonement, incarnation, grace, or the sacraments.

This article explores the newly catalogued manuscripts of the English Poor Clares preserved in Palace Green Library, Durham. It argues that the collection advances our understanding of the spirituality of the Poor Clares, a group who have received substantially less attention than their Benedictine and Carmelite counterparts. Focusing on manuscript evidence relating to mysticism at the convents of Aire and Rouen, it suggests three areas of interest to scholars of English women religious and recusant Catholic spirituality. First, it explores how a dual understanding of unio mystica in the convents converted wider concepts of anonymity and self-effacement into a radical form of authorial poverty. Through this, the nuns sought not only to unite with God but also achieve a symbolic union with each other. Secondly, it explores how the physical objects of the crucifix and Eucharist served to inspire a deeper mystical pattern of growth within the souls of the nuns. It suggests that feast days and specific times of the year, especially building up to Easter, had a profound effect on spiritual outpourings. Finally, the article explores the importance of the concept of the “heavenly Jerusalem” to the Poor Clares, revealing its centrality to their understanding of their life as a pilgrimage and their own lived experience as exiles.

The breakup of Western Christendom in the sixteenth century gained momentum when an academic theologian called into question the theology of the church in his day. Martin Luther wanted to discuss theology when he posted his Ninety-five Theses in 1517. In the ensuing years, Luther and the “Lutherans” were forced to forge their theology in the heat of an intensely polemical and conflict-ridden environment. They responded to the theological issues raised by their opponents, as well as to the real pastoral concerns of the emerging evangelical church in Protestant lands.