English Dissenters
English dissenters played a pivotal role in the spiritual development of the United States and greatly diversified the religious landscape.
They originally agitated for a wide-reaching Protestant Reformation of the established Church of England, and they flourished briefly during the Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell.
After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the episcopacy was reinstalled, and the rights of the Dissenters were limited: the Act of Uniformity 1662 required Anglican ordination for all clergy, and many instead withdrew from the state church.
These ministers and their followers came to be known as Nonconformists, though originally this term referred to refusal to use certain vestments and ceremonies of the Church of England, rather than separation from it.
Certain denominations of Dissenter Christians gained prominence throughout the world, including the Anabaptists, Baptists, Methodists, Plymouth Brethren, Puritans (Congregationalists) and Quakers.
He regarded the whole established church order as polluted by the relics of Roman Catholicism and insisted on separation as essential to pure worship and discipline.
The Behmenists religious movement began on continental Europe and took its ideas from the writings of Jakob Böhme (Behmen being one of the adaptations of his name used in England), a German mystic and theosopher who claimed divine revelation.
[11] The Diggers tried (by "levelling" real property) to reform the existing social order with an agrarian lifestyle based on their ideas for the creation of small egalitarian rural communities.
During the years that immediately followed the Glorious Revolution, "enthusiasm" was a British pejorative term for advocacy of any political or religious cause in public.
The Familists believed that Niclaes was the only person who truly knew how to achieve a state of perfection, and his texts attracted followers in Germany, France, and England.
[16] Among their beliefs were that there existed a time before Adam and Eve; Heaven and Hell were both present on Earth; and that all things were ruled by nature and not directed by God.
[17] They took their name from a prophecy in the Book of Daniel that four ancient monarchies (Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman) would precede Christ's return.
They also referred to the year 1666 and its relationship to the biblical Number of the Beast indicating the end of earthly rule by carnal human beings.
[21] The Levellers was a political movement during the English Civil War that emphasised popular sovereignty, extended suffrage, equality before the law and religious tolerance.
Methodism arose as a movement started by Anglican priest John Wesley, who taught two works of grace— (1) the New Birth and (2) entire sanctification.
In the second work of grace, which Wesley taught could be bestowed instantaneously, the believer is made perfect in love, original sin is uprooted, and he/she is empowered to serve God with an undivided heart.
[23] The early Methodists were known by careful lifestyle, including wearing of plain dress, fasting on Fridays, devout observance of the Lord's Day, and abstinence from alcohol.
[25] The Muggletonians, named after Lodowicke Muggleton, were a small Protestant Christian movement which began in 1651 when two London tailors announced they were the last prophets foretold in the biblical Book of Revelation.
A consequential belief is that God takes no notice of everyday events on Earth and will not generally intervene until it is to bring the world to an end.
Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Queen Elizabeth I in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England.
They were organised around John Pordage, an Anglican priest from Bradfield, Berkshire, who had been ejected from his parish in 1655 because of differing views, but was then reinstated in 1660 during the English Restoration.
Their central idea was pantheistic, that God is essentially in every creature; this led them to deny the authority of the church, of scripture, of the current ministry and of services, instead calling on men to hearken to Jesus within them.
[32] Further drawing from the Brethren of the Free Spirit, the Ranters embraced antinomianism and believed that Christians are freed by grace from the necessity of obeying Mosaic Law.
Because they believed that God is present in all living creatures, the Ranters' adherence to antinomianism allowed them to reject the very notion of obedience, thus making them a great threat to the stability of the government.
Like moderate Anglicans, they desired an educated ministry and an orderly church, but they based their opinions on the Bible and on reason rather than on appeals to tradition and authority.
Swedenborg's primary critiques of orthodox theology centred on the tri-personal constructions of the Trinity, the idea of salvation by faith alone, and the vicarious atonement.
