The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England

✍ Scribed by D. Bruce Hindmarsh

• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 399
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, thousands of ordinary women and men experienced evangelical conversion and turned to a certain form of spiritual autobiography to make sense of their lives. This book traces the rise and progress of conversion narrative as a unique form of spiritual autobiography in early modern England. After outlining the emergence of the genre in the seventeenth century and the revival of the form in the journals of the leaders of the Evangelical Revival, the central chapters of the book examine extensive archival sources to show the subtly different forms of narrative identity that appeared among Wesleyan Methodists, Moravians, Anglicans, Baptists, and others. Attentive to the unique voices of pastors and laypeople, women and men, Western and non-Western peoples, the book establishes the cultural conditions under which the genre proliferated.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 12
Abbreviations......Page 13
Introduction......Page 16
1. Early Modern Origins: The Rise of Popular Conversion Narrative......Page 48
2. The Revival of Conversion Narrative: Evangelical Awakening in the Eighteenth Century......Page 76
3. The Early Methodist Journalists: George Whitefield and John Wesley......Page 103
4. White-Hot Piety: The Early Methodist Laypeople......Page 145
5. ‘Poor Sinnership’: Moravian Narrative Culture......Page 177
6. ‘The Word Came in With Power’: Conversions at Cambuslang......Page 208
7. ‘A Nail Fixed in a Sure Place’: The Lives of the Early Methodist Preachers......Page 241
8. The Olney Autobiographers: Conversion Narrative and Personality......Page 276
9. The Seventeenth Century Reprised: Conversion Narrative and the Gathered Church......Page 302
10. After Christendom: Evangelical Conversion Narrative and its Alternatives......Page 336
Bibliography......Page 365
B......Page 388
C......Page 389
F......Page 391
H......Page 392
L......Page 393
M......Page 394
P......Page 395
R......Page 396
T......Page 397
W......Page 398
Z......Page 399