The British Zion
Congregationalism, Politics, and Empire, 1790-1850
By Michael A. Rutz
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Subjects: All History, All Religious Studies |
Drawing upon extensive archival research and a wide range of secondary sources, The British Zion traces congregationalist missionaries’ involvement in domestic and colonial politics in early nineteenth-century Britain. As Michael A. Rutz ably demonstrates, evangelical nonconformists actively campaigned from both the Empire’s metropolitan centers and its periphery to extend religious liberty and civil equality in Britain, open colonial territories to evangelization, abolish slavery, and secure civil rights for indigenous peoples. Moving beyond the dichotomizing pictures of evangelical missionaries as either the advance forces of colonial domination or innocuous humanitarians and educators, Rutz carefully examines the humanitarian and theological impulses of the missionary movement while critically examining its political, social, and cultural impact within the larger development of the British Empire.
"The British Congregationalists in South Africa in the first half of the nineteenth century provide a shining example of missionary beneficence. They not only preached brotherhood, they practiced it: that they fought and won the franchise for black Africans is proof enough."
—Richard Davis, Professor of History, Washington University in St. Louis
"While it has long been a commonplace to emphasize how missionaries were agents of imperial exploitation, The British Zion compelling reveals the remarkable extent to which Congregationalists championed the rights of Africans and Jamaicans in direct defiance of the interests of British colonists. Michael A. Rutz has brilliantly teased out the connections between the theological and political concerns of evangelical Dissenters in Britain and their missionary efforts abroad."
—Timothy Larsen, McManis Professor of Christian Thought, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois
"This splendid work, linking together religious, political, and imperial topics, shows how evangelical Dissenters, and especially the London Missionary Society, influenced not only Great Britain but also the wider British Empire."
—James J. Sack, University of Illinois at Chicago
Michael A. Rutz is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. He lives in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
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