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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
As the reformation took effect, claims of miraculous healing were discountenanced. So argues Keith Thomas in his fascinating book on the decline of magic in modern Europe. He argues that protestants turned to natural methods and empirical science for answers to their medical and practical needs. If he is right there may seem to be little to say about the relationship between the churches and healing in the history of the church in modern western society. Yet, as Thomas himself admits, the link had not been completely destroyed. Traditional culture proved resistant to this aspect of the reformation. It seems to me that this traditional culture was revitalised and redirected in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by revivalist and heterodox protestantism and not just by secular developments. The case of the Bible Christians or Cowherdites of Salford in Lancashire may illustrate my point.
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