This volume looks at how mid-seventeenth-century debates on the government and order of the Church related to the political crisis of the time. It explores debates concerning the relationship between church, state and people, the nature of the various post-Reformation settlements in the British Atlantic and how they impacted on each other, as well as central and local responses to ecclesiastical upheaval. This is one of the first scholarly collections to focus on the topic of church polity and its relation to politics during a critical period of transatlantic history. It will be of interest to scholars and students of the British revolutions as well as those working on the history of the Church and early dissenting tradition.

1 Introduction: church polity and politics in the British Atlantic world, c. 1635-66 - Elliot Vernon
2 'From the Apostles' time': the polity of the British episcopal churches, 1603-62 - Benjamin M. Guyer
3 Peers, pastors, and the particular church: the failure of congregational ideas in the Mersey Basin region, 1636-41 - James Mawdesley
4 'One of the least things in religion': the Welsh experience of church polity, 1640-60 - Stephen K. Roberts
5 Polity, discipline and theology: the importance of the covenant in Scottish presbyterianism, 1560-c. 1700 - R. Scott Spurlock
6 Presbyterian ecclesiologies at the Westminster assembly - Chad Van Dixhoorn
7 'They agree not in opinion among themselves': two-kingdoms theory, 'Erastianism' and the Westminster assembly debate on church and state, c. 1641-48 - Elliot Vernon
8 The New England way reconsidered: an exploration of church polity and the governance of the region's churches - Francis J. Bremer
9 The association movement and the politics of church settlement during the interregnum - Joel Halcomb
10 Polity and peacemaking: to what extent was Richard Baxter a congregationalist? - Tim Cooper
11 'Promote, protect, prosecute': the congregationalist divines and the establishment of church and magistrate in Cromwellian England - Hunter Powell
12 The Restoration episcopacy and the interregnum: autobiography, suffering and professions of faith - Sarah Ward Clavier
Index

Editors

Elliot Vernon is a barrister and has published a number of articles on topics relating to mid-seventeenth-century history

Hunter Powell is Research Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas, Austin and has also worked as lecturer in history at the University of Texas