ABSTRACT
The historiography assumes a close connection between Enlightenment and modernity, without making sufficient allowance for differences of context and temporality. In many cases religious orientations were a major source of modernity, including Jansenism in France, Evangelical Christianity in America and Methodism in England. Most of the older historiography that deals with 'English deism', 'British deism' and 'the English deists' deploys a hermeneutic framework. Critics sometimes argued that deists were atheists and that deism was atheism. The writers known as the English deists had Enlightenment concerns and these concerns drove them to promote reforms of conception and practice which contributed significantly to the emergence of modernity, initially in England and Europe. Reform in the eighteenth century was different in each country and polity. This introductory chapter presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book.
