English Dissenters
English Dissenters or English Separatists were Protestants who separated from the Church of England between the 16th and 19th centuries. English Dissenters opposed state interference in religious matters and founded their own churches, educational institutions and communities. They tended to see the established church as too Catholic, but did not agree on what should be done about it.
Some Dissenters emigrated to the New World, especially to the Thirteen Colonies and Canada. Brownists founded the Plymouth Colony. The English Dissenters played a pivotal role in the religious development of the United States and greatly diversified the religious landscape. Some originally agitated for a wide-reaching Protestant Reformation of the established Church of England, and they flourished during the Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell.
King James I had said "no bishop, no king", emphasising the role of the clergy in justifying royal legitimacy. Cromwell capitalised on that phrase, abolishing both upon founding the Commonwealth of England. 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 English Dissenters gained prominence throughout the world. The Baptists, the Congregationalists, and the Quakers of the 17th century, and the Methodists of the 18th century, remain major Christian denominations.
Organised dissenting groups (17th century)
In existence during the English Interregnum :Anabaptists
Anabaptist was a term given to those Reformation Christians who rejected the notion of infant baptism in favour of believer's baptism. Though there is little evidence for Anabaptism in Britain later than the Elizabethan era, following their severe persecution by Henry VIII and Mary, Anabaptists in Holland and England influenced the development of Baptism. Scholars differ on the degree of this influence. In 1640, a proto-Baptist congregation in London began practicing a form of immersion Baptism which they had learned from an Arminian sect in Holland. This ritual of Anabaptist origin would later become standard across all Baptist churches. Despite this, evidence suggests that the early relations between Baptists and Anabaptists were strained. In 1624, the five Baptist churches of London issued an anathema against the Anabaptists. Even today there is still very little dialogue between Anabaptist organisations and the Baptists.Baptists
Baptist historian Bruce Gourley outlines four main views of Baptist origins:- The modern scholarly consensus that the movement traces its origin to the 17th century via the English Separatists.
- The view that it was an outgrowth of the Anabaptist movement of believer's baptism begun in 1525 on the European continent.
- The perpetuity view, which assumes that the Baptist faith and practice has existed since the time of Christ.
- The successionist view, or "Baptist successionism", which argues that Baptist churches actually existed in an unbroken chain since the time of Christ.
Barrowists
Behmenists
The Behmenists religious movement began on continental Europe and took its ideas from the writings of Jakob Böhme, a German mystic and theosopher who claimed divine revelation. In the 1640s his works appeared in England, and English Behmenists developed. Eventually, some of these merged with the Quakers of the time.Böhme's writings primarily concerned the nature of sin, evil and redemption. Consistent with Lutheran theology, Böhme believed that humanity had fallen from a state of divine grace into a state of sin and suffering, that the forces of evil included fallen angels who had rebelled against God, and subsequently that God's goal was to restore the world to a state of grace. However, in some ways, Behmenist belief deviated significantly from traditional Lutheran belief. For example, Böhme rejected the concepts of sola fide and sola gratia.
Brownists
By 1580, Robert Browne had become a leader in the movement for a congregational form of organisation for the Church of England and attempted to set up a separate Congregational Church in Norwich, Norfolk, England. He was arrested but released on the advice of William Cecil, his kinsman. Browne and his companions moved to Middelburg in the Netherlands in 1581. He returned to England in 1585 and to the Church of England, being employed as a schoolmaster and parish priest.Diggers
The Diggers were an English group of Protestant agrarian communists, begun by Gerrard Winstanley as True Levellers in 1649, who became known as Diggers due to their activities. Their original name came from their belief in economic equality based upon a specific passage in the Book of Acts. The Diggers tried to reform the existing social order with an agrarian lifestyle based on their ideas for the creation of small egalitarian rural communities. They were one of several nonconformist dissenting groups that emerged around this time.Enthusiasts
Several Protestant sects of the 16th and 17th centuries were called Enthusiastic. 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. Such "enthusiasm" was seen as the cause of the English Civil War and its attendant atrocities, and thus it was a social sin to remind others of the war by engaging in enthusiasm. During the 18th century, popular Methodists such as John Wesley and George Whitefield were accused of blind enthusiasm, a charge against which they defended themselves by distinguishing fanaticism from "religion of the heart".Familists
The Familia Caritatis were a religious sect that began in continental Europe in the 16th century. Members of this religious group were devout followers of Dutch mystic Hendrik Niclaes. 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.The Familists were secretive and wary of outsiders. For example, they wished death upon those outside of the Family of Love, and re-marriage after the death of a spouse could only take place between men and women of the same Familist congregation. Additionally, they would not discuss their ideas and opinions with outsiders and sought to remain undetected by ordinary members of society: they tended to be members of an established church so as not to attract suspicion and showed respect for authority.
The group was considered heretical in 16th-century England. 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. The Familists continued to exist until the middle of the 17th century, when they were absorbed into the Quaker movement.
Fifth Monarchists
The Fifth Monarchists or Fifth Monarchy Men were Nonconformists who were active from 1649 to 1661 during the Interregnum. They took their name from a prophecy in the Book of Daniel that four ancient monarchies 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.Grindletonians
Grindletonians were people accused of extreme antimonianism. In a sermon preached at St Paul's Cross on 11 February 1627, and published under the title "The White Wolfe" in 1627, Stephen Denison, minister of St Katharine Cree in London, charged the 'Gringltonian familists' with holding nine points of an antinomian tendency. These nine points are repeated from Denison by Ephraim Pagit in 1645 and Alexander Ross in 1655. In 1635 John Webster, curate at Kildwick in North Yorkshire, was charged before a church court with being a Grindletonian, and simultaneously in New England John Winthrop thought that Anne Hutchinson was one. The last known Grindletonian died in the 1680s.Levellers
The Levellers was a political movement during the English Civil War that emphasised popular sovereignty, extended suffrage, equality before the law and religious tolerance. Levellers tended to hold a notion of "natural rights" that had been violated by the king's side in the civil wars. At the Putney Debates in 1647, Colonel Thomas Rainsborough defended natural rights as coming from the law of God expressed in the Bible.Muggletonians
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. The group grew out of the Ranters and in opposition to the Quakers. Muggletonian beliefs include a hostility to philosophical reason, a scriptural understanding of how the universe works, and a belief that God appeared directly on Earth as Christ Jesus. 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.Muggletonians avoided all forms of worship or preaching and, in the past, met only for discussion and socialising amongst members. The movement was egalitarian, apolitical, and pacifist, and resolutely avoided evangelism. Members attained a degree of public notoriety by cursing those who reviled their faith.