- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Preface
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- Introductory Note
- 1 ‘The God of the hills’
- 2 ‘Destructive of the authority of divine revelation’
- 3 ‘The ground on which Rational Christianity may firmly take its stand’
- 4 ‘An inspired communication from the Deity … Or … Nothing’
- 5 ‘The seal and servant of Christianity’
- 6 ‘An easy good-natured God’
- 7 ‘The hateful mystery’
- 8 ‘The sceptical tendencies of modern times’
- 9 ‘The heresies of the Baptist Union’
- 10 A ‘conspiracy to undermine our holy faith’
- 1 Church Membership and Chapel Attendance
- 2 ‘Conversion is not necessary to regeneration’
- 3 Nonconformity’s Shrinking Consituency
- 4 ‘Influential families … lost to nonconformity’
- 5 The Failure of Success
- 6 The ‘most spiritually destitute and degraded’
- 7 ‘Diversity of opinion … no bar to Christian communion’
- 8 ‘We must not leave Satan … to provide the recreations of life’
- 9 The ‘social and intellectual well-being of our members’
- 10 ‘A liberal education’
- 11 ‘Winning souls’ or ‘unlimited speculation’?
- 12 Frugality and Overwork
- 13 ‘The future rests with the Free Churches’
- 1 ‘The largest and widest Church ever established’
- 2 ‘Once bit, twice shy’
- 3 ‘A torrent of gin and beer’
- 4 ‘The right of the people to judge for themselves’
- 5 ‘A mutual benefit association’
- 6 Making ‘men moral by act of parliament’
- 7 ‘To reconstruct the existing organization of society’
- 8 ‘A most astonishing opening, furnished by the providence of God’
- 9 ‘The thunder of British guns’
- 10 ‘The descendants of men like Oliver Cromwell’
- Appendix
- Index
‘The seal and servant of Christianity’
‘The seal and servant of Christianity’
The Spiritualist Alternative
- Chapter:
- (p.36) 5 ‘The seal and servant of Christianity’
- Source:
- The Dissenters Volume III
- Author(s):
Michael R. Watts
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
This chapter considers the emergence of the Spiritualist movement as an alternative defence of Christianity. The movement began in the United States and reached England in 1852. In its first two decades in England, Spiritualism won a number of distinguished converts including Robert Owen, the Socialist pioneer; Robert Chambers, the author of the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation; and Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection. Spiritualism struck a particularly resonant chord with people familiar with the writings of the eighteenth-century Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. Several Dissenters acknowledged that the writings of Swedenborg facilitated their acceptance of Spiritualism.
Keywords: religious dissent, Christianity, supernatural, Spiritualist movement, Dissenters, Emanuel Swedenborg, Robert Owen, Robert Chambers, Alfred Russel Wallace
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Preface
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- Introductory Note
- 1 ‘The God of the hills’
- 2 ‘Destructive of the authority of divine revelation’
- 3 ‘The ground on which Rational Christianity may firmly take its stand’
- 4 ‘An inspired communication from the Deity … Or … Nothing’
- 5 ‘The seal and servant of Christianity’
- 6 ‘An easy good-natured God’
- 7 ‘The hateful mystery’
- 8 ‘The sceptical tendencies of modern times’
- 9 ‘The heresies of the Baptist Union’
- 10 A ‘conspiracy to undermine our holy faith’
- 1 Church Membership and Chapel Attendance
- 2 ‘Conversion is not necessary to regeneration’
- 3 Nonconformity’s Shrinking Consituency
- 4 ‘Influential families … lost to nonconformity’
- 5 The Failure of Success
- 6 The ‘most spiritually destitute and degraded’
- 7 ‘Diversity of opinion … no bar to Christian communion’
- 8 ‘We must not leave Satan … to provide the recreations of life’
- 9 The ‘social and intellectual well-being of our members’
- 10 ‘A liberal education’
- 11 ‘Winning souls’ or ‘unlimited speculation’?
- 12 Frugality and Overwork
- 13 ‘The future rests with the Free Churches’
- 1 ‘The largest and widest Church ever established’
- 2 ‘Once bit, twice shy’
- 3 ‘A torrent of gin and beer’
- 4 ‘The right of the people to judge for themselves’
- 5 ‘A mutual benefit association’
- 6 Making ‘men moral by act of parliament’
- 7 ‘To reconstruct the existing organization of society’
- 8 ‘A most astonishing opening, furnished by the providence of God’
- 9 ‘The thunder of British guns’
- 10 ‘The descendants of men like Oliver Cromwell’
- Appendix
- Index
