The five-volume Oxford History of Dissenting Protestant Traditions series is governed by a motif of migration ('out-of-England'). It first traces organized church traditions that arose in England as Dissenters distanced themselves from a state church defined by diocesan episcopacy, the Book of Common Prayer, the Thirty-Nine Articles, and royal supremacy, but then follows those traditions as they spread beyond England -and also traces newer traditions that emerged downstream in other parts of the world from earlier forms of Dissent. Secondly, it does the same for the doctrines, church practices, stances toward state and society, attitudes toward Scripture, and characteristic patterns of organization that also originated in earlier English Dissent, but that have often defined a trajectory of influence independent ecclesiastical organizations.

The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, Volume III considers the Dissenting traditions of the United Kingdom, the British Empire, and the United States in the nineteenth century. It provides an overview of the historiography on Dissent while making the case for seeing Dissenters in different Anglophone connections as interconnected and conscious of their genealogical connections. The nineteenth century saw the creation of a vast Anglo-world which also brought Anglophone Dissent to its apogee. Featuring contributions from a team of leading scholars, the volume illustrates that in most parts of the world the later nineteenth century was marked by a growing enthusiasm for the moral and educational activism of the state which plays against the idea of Dissent as a static, purely negative identity. This collection shows that Dissent was a political and constitutional identity, which was often only strong where a dominant Church of England existed to dissent against.

About the Author:
Timothy Larsen is McManis Professor of Christian Thought, Wheaton College (Illinois), and an Honorary Research Professor at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. His books include Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England (OUP, 2006), A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians (OUP, 2011), and The Slain God: Anthropologists and the Christian Faith (OUP, 2014). He is currently working on John Stuart Mill: A Secular Life, to be published in Oxford University Press's Spiritual Lives series.

Michael Ledger-Lomas is Lecturer in the History of Christianity at King's College, London. He is the co-editor of Dissent and the Bible in Britain, c.1650-1950 (OUP, 2013) and Cities of God: the Bible and Archaeology in Nineteenth-century Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2013).