The collapse of the British Student Christian Movement in the long 1960s is conventionally ascribed to its mimicking of student radicalism at a time of increasing secularisation. Yet analysis of the SCM's rhetoric demonstrates that in the early 1960s the movement imagined a religious crisis when student Christianity was still strong. By embracing a theological vision of ‘secularisation’, which demanded the deliberate transposition of Christian eschatologies into secular form, the SCM embarked on an early, original and influential journey into political radicalism. In this way, the SCM made a significant contribution to British student radicalism in the late 1960s.

This paper investigates the origins of Anglican Anglo-Catholic missions, through the missionary theology and practice of the founder of the Society of St John the Evangelist, Fr Richard Benson, and an exploration of its initial missionary endeavours: the Twelve-Day Mission to London in 1869, and two missions in India from 1874. The Indian missions comprised an institutional mission at Bombay and Pune, and a unique ascetic enculturated mission at Indore by Fr Samuel Wilberforce O'Neill ssje. It is argued that Benson was a major figure in the inauguration of Anglo-Catholic missions; that his ritualist moderation was instrumental in the initial public success of Anglo-Catholic domestic mission; and that in overseas missions he had a clear theological preference for disconnecting evangelism from Europeanising. Benson's approach, more radical than was normal in the second half of the nineteenth century, was a consequence of envisaging mission's being undertaken by a religious order, an entirely new phenomenon for Anglican missions.

In 1894 the prominent English journalist and religious visionary, W. T. Stead, published If Christ came to Chicago!, a work of investigative journalism focusing on the problems of the modern city. The book constituted a manifesto for Stead's notion of the ‘Civic Church’, a religious movement through which he hoped to revive a sense of national religion, and unite churches and philanthropic associations around a shared commitment to follow Christ's example of social service. This article explores the development of Stead's ‘Civic Church’ ideal and his campaign to achieve this in Britain's urban-industrial society between 1886 and 1895.

This article deals with the evolving attitude of Mauro Cappellari (later Pope Gregory XVI) towards the extraordinary case of a capricious priest, Calogerá Biondi, caught up in an illicit marital affair in Constantinople. Given the fragile state of the Armenian Catholic Church in the Ottoman Empire in the 1820s, and the potential firestorm that could be set off if the couple's story came to light, Cappellari lobbied the Curia to release Biondi from his spiritual obligations and countenance the marriage. Once elected pope in 1831, he would overrule his predecessor's decision that denied them this union. Cappellari's pragmatic approach to this case stands in stark contrast to the overwhelming perception of him within the historiography as sternly doctrinaire.

It has frequently been assumed that church building ceased after the National Socialists came to power in Germany in 1933. This article shows that it continued, and considers the reasons why this was the case. Focussing on churches built in the Church of Braunschweig between 1933 and 1936, it explores the interactions between emergent priorities for church architecture and the rhetoric of National Socialist ideology, and traces their influence on the building of new Protestant churches in Braunschweig. It examines the way in which Braunschweig Cathedral was reordered in accordance with National Socialist interests, and the ambiguity which such a reordering implied for the on-going Christian life of the congregation. It concludes that church building was widely understood to be a part of the National Socialist programme for creating employment, but was also used to emphasise the continuing role of the Church in building community. However, there is still much work to be done to investigate the ways in which churches and congregations interacted with National Socialism in their day-to-day existence.

In writing this review I am in no small danger of running short of superlatives. To put it simply, this is a sublime scholarly achievement. Knowing the intense labour and demanding exactitude of a project like this, I am very impressed. It is difficult to conceive how Chad van Dixhoorn could have done a better job of putting these minutes and papers at the service of the scholarly community. He had help along the way, to be sure, and the skilful guidance of David F. Wright and John Morrill, but one quickly gets the sense that this is the fruit of his singular vision. If we count his years as a Cambridge PhD student, van Dixhoorn has worked full-time on the Westminster Assembly for longer than it existed in the first place. I recall being told that he had calculated (I think with tape measure in hand) that, yes, all the members of the assembly could squeeze into the smallish Jerusalem Chamber in which they met; he had even taken a shrewd guess, based on the voting records, as to which groups of divines sat next to whom, and where. He once had a dream, he tells us, in which one of the Scottish commissioners to the assembly, Samuel Rutherford, offered to help interpret the nearly impenetrable handwriting of the assembly's main scribe, Adoniram Byfield. It is as good an indication as any of the all-consuming nature of van Dixhoorn's task. Perhaps we should add here a note of thanks not just to him (and his assistants) but to his wife and children as well. For this set represents a generous gift to scholars of the seventeenth century and to all those interested in the development of Reformed Protestantism in the English–speaking world and beyond.

In 1846 a new, greatly expanded, edition of Sir Henry Spelman's History and fate of Sacrilege (1643, published in 1698) appeared, edited anonymously by ‘two priests of the Church of England’. These priests were John Mason Neale and his friend and apparent assistant Joesph Haskoll. The monograph-length introductory essay and other editorial contributions show, as well as vast learning, an aspect of Neale's multi-faceted achievement hitherto unnoticed, that of a stringent critic of great families and other lay people who possessed former church property (Spelman's definition of ‘Sacrilege’) and, more widely, of political and economic conditions in mid nineteenth-century England.

This article examines British reactions to Stalin's deportation of over one million peasants and religious believers to the Soviet gulag. It follows events in Britain as the evidence mounted and public protests grew, first over the persecution of religious believers and then over the British government's refusal to halt imports of timber cut by camp inmates. It highlights the role played by Prebendary Alfred Gough's Christian Protest Movement and the worldwide protests against Soviet persecution which Gough's campaign inspired. It reveals how Labour ministers and other leading British Socialists obstructed the protest campaign and publicly denied accounts of crimes against humanity which they either privately admitted or, because of their enthusiasm for Soviet Communism, dismissed as right-wing fabrications.

During the last century there have been many discoveries that have reshaped our understanding of early monastic texts and their authorship. The writer of these two substantial volumes proposes new ones. In The real Cassian revisited he argues that the Latin monastic works traditionally ascribed to an early fifth-century monk named John Cassian, later resident in Gaul, are actually a medieval ‘augmented interpolated product originating in a far shorter Greek original by Cassian the Sabaite’, whom he identifies as an early sixth-century monk of Mar Saba in Palestine (The real Cassian revisited, 152; cf. A newly discovered Greek Father, p. xii). This Greek text, edited with substantial commentary in A newly discovered Greek Father, has historically been considered a condensed translation of selections from the Latin works. In reversing this view, Tzamalikos announces the ‘rediscovery’ of a forgotten Greek genius.

The role of Scottish Churches in the decision not to include Scotland in the 1967 Sexual Offences Act requires scrutiny. This article examines the role of the Church of Scotland, and other Churches, in debates regarding homosexuality in the years following publication of the Wolfenden Report. It argues that although Scotland's Churches appeared steadfast in their determination to prevent homosexual law reform during the 1950s and 1960s, there was much ambivalence, contradiction and debate and that, in fact, Scotland's two main Churches played a significant role in the development of Scotland's foremost homosexual rights organisation, the Scottish Minorities Group.