Introduction

The theology of the overwhelming majority of nineteenth-century Nonconformists was Evangelical. It emerges equally in the simple scripturalism of the General Baptist New Connexion catechism and in the doctrinal affirmations of the more elaborate Congregational Union declaration. The doctrinal issues that arose were therefore primarily related to the impact and erosion of Evangelical ways of thinking. The Evangelical theological currents are discussed in D. W. Bebbington, <italics>Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s</italics>, London, 1989, and an excellent case study is W. B. Glover, <italics>Evangelical Nonconformists and Higher Criticism in the Nineteenth Century</italics>, London, 1954. Mark Hopkins illuminates the growing divergence of liberals from conservative Evangelicals among Congregationalists and Baptists in <italics>Nonconformity's Romantic Generation: Evangelical and Liberal Theologies in Victorian England</italics>, Carlisle, 2004. D. A. Johnson, <italics>The Changing Shape of English Nonconformity, 1825-1925</italics>, New York, 1999, argues for a successful adaptation of theology to modernity.