Friends, Neighbours, Sinners: Religious Difference and English Society, 1689–1750

by Carys Brown

Friends, Neighbours, Sinners demonstrates the fundamental ways in which religious difference shaped English society in the first half of the eighteenth century. By examining the social subtleties of interactions between people of differing beliefs, and how they were mediated through languages and behaviours common to the long eighteenth century, Carys Brown examines the graduated layers of religious exclusivity that influenced everyday existence. By doing so, the book points towards a new approach to the social and cultural history of the eighteenth century, one that acknowledges the integral role of the dynamics of religious difference in key aspects of eighteenth-century life. This book therefore proposes not just to add to current understanding of religious coexistence in this period, but to shift our ways of thinking about the construction of social discourses, parish politics, and cultural spaces in eighteenth-century England.

330 pages, Hardcover

Published August 4, 2022

Reviews

[Jeremy Canipe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr. Brown's excellent book is an updated version of her doctoral dissertation at St. John's College, Cambridge University.

She argues that the past half century of social historians of early modem England have failed to recognize the role of religion in shaping English society in the sixty years after the 1689 adoption of the Toleration Act. In large degree, the book supports this argument.

One crucial insight grew from applying concepts from historians of other topics to go beyond the paradigm of neighborligness developed by Dr. Keith Wrightson in the early 1980s. By studying the private papers of members and pastors of several Dissenting churches, Dr. Brown uncovered other ways of their categorizing social relationships, namely "being in company" and "friends."

Dissenters assumed a neighborliness towards people who resided near by, without regard to religious difference. They might be in company with like minded believers and those of other denominations in social settings such as local ale houses and coffee shops. Yet their closest relationship were almost always with believers of the same Dissenting church, and might even extend to those of the same belief who they did not know personally.

Tensions between members of the Established church and Dissenters are argued to have cooled yet not ended by the 1820s. Yet the fears of social disruption and the return of Catholicism and a resumption of the violence and bloodshed of the 1600s due to religious difference remained in place. Thus the use of similar vitriol against the rising Methodists in the 1640s serves as a poignant coda to the book.

Dr. Brown's town is tentative and suggestive which is a helpful model of academic discourse. I was fairly well conceived. What I would like to see are studies of the Established church's members and pastors, as well as studies more tightly focused on the specific Dissenting churches and members and clergy of each to test and perhaps improve on this excellent book.

[Brendan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic intervention into the role of sociability in influencing the wider societal experiences of nonconformists post the 1688 Toleration Act. Brown builds upon and successfully tests the existing historiographical focus on politeness in the early 18th century, importantly stressing how the discourse of politeness could be used as a tool of exclusion.

This is an important addition to the historiography of both early eighteenth British religious history as well as for those interested in the broader cultural and societal dynamics of the period.