Interpreting Seventeenth-Century English Religion as Movements

Abstract

A number of historians have indicated, perhaps unconsciously, that the concept of religious movement would be useful in reference to seventeenth-century English religious history. But while some have used the term “movement” in describing some religious initiatives, no one has explored the implications of that concept for understanding either religious life or the England of that day. Rather, we continue to force things into the terms of “church” and “sect,” with apologies for a loose fit. And yet a disestablished Catholicism, as well as Puritanism, Quakerism, and an emerging ideological “Anglicanism,” are transformed when understood as movements.

New Religious Movements before Modernity?

“…By understanding religious innovations and transformations as movements, Sommerville expressly hoped to break the mould of older doctrinal history and focus instead on ''hopes, goals, programs, and leadership.'' 38 Drawing on the parallel to social movements, he viewed the movement phase as ending when the group stops its efforts to change society and either retreats into an inward-looking, sect-like existence, or turns into a denomination.…”