The Religious History of Wales

978 1 86057 079 7
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  • Description

An essential reference guide, this volume draws together an impressive collection of academics and religious practitioners to map out for the first time the religious multiplicity and diversity of Wales.

CONTENTS 
1. The Church in Wales - John Morgun-Guy 
2. Independents (Congregationalists) - Guto ap Gwynfor 
3. Baptists - D Hugh Matthews 
4. The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) - Richard C Allen 
5. Roman Catholicism - Trystan O Hughes 
6. Calvinistic Methodism - Eryn M White 
7. Wesleyan Methodism - David Ceri Jones 
8. The Moravian Church - John Morgan-Guy 
9. Unitarianism - Euros Lloyd 
10. Salvation Army - Jenty Fairbank 
11. Pentecostalism - David Ceri Jones 
12. United Reform Church - Robert Pope 
13. Seventh-Day Adventism - Brian Phillips 
14. The Church of the Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) - Ronald D. Dennis 
15. Jehovah's Witnesses - Russell Grigg 
16. Evangelicalism - David Ceri Jones 
17. Judaism - Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok 
18. Islam - Muzafar Jilani 
19. Sikhism - Shinder Thandi 
20. Baha'i Faith - Vivian Bartlett 
21. The Ecumenical Dimension - Noel A. Davies

For the first fifteen hundred years or so of its existence, the Christian Church in Wales was a unified entity. The Welsh Church, initially Celtic, but then Roman Catholic, held a virtual monopoly over religious life and belief in the country. The sixteenth century Reformation ended the notion of a monolithic Christendom; the proliferation of Protestant sects guaranteed that competition and variety would be the norm.

By charting the gradual proliferation of religious communities in Wales from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries, this volume seeks to dispel many of the myths of a monochrome Christian, Protestant or even Nonconformist Wales. Each chapter also uniquely examines the persistence of faith, often in surprising places, in post-Christian Wales.

Dr. Richard C. Allen is a Reader in Early Modern Cultural History and Deputy Director of South Wales Centre for Historical and Interdisciplinary Research (SWCHIR). He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Dr David Ceri Jones  is a historian of religion in the early  modern British Atlantic World at Aberystwyth University and an Associate Curate in the Church in Wales.