John Coffey | University of Leicester (original) (raw)

Books by John Coffey

In one of his first publications, a 1988 essay on community organizing, Barack Obama praised the ... more In one of his first publications, a 1988 essay on community organizing, Barack Obama praised the black church for maintaining “biblical traditions that call for liberation.” This book aims to locate black Exodus politics within the broader history of Protestant “deliverance politics.” Although Christians have read Exodus politically since Eusebius, Reformed Protestants proved especially keen on the Israelite paradigm. This chapter introduces the key biblical texts (including those related to the Year of Jubilee), and engages with two distinct bodies of scholarship inspired by Michael Walzer’s Exodus and Revolution (1985) and the work of liberation theologians. It previews the book’s major themes, including providentialism, and highlights a number of major transitions in the Protestant reception of the Bible’s liberationist texts.

John Goodwin (1594-1665) was one of the most prolific and controversial writers of the English Re... more John Goodwin (1594-1665) was one of the most prolific and controversial writers of the English Revolution; his career illustrates some of the most important intellectual developments of the seventeenth century. Educated at Queens' College, Cambridge, he became vicar of a flagship Puritan parish in the City of London. During the 1640s, he wrote in defence of the civil war, the army revolt, Pride's Purge, and the regicide, only to turn against Cromwell in 1657. Finally, repudiating religious uniformity, he became one of England's leading tolerationists. This richly contextualised study, the first modern intellectual biography of Goodwin, explores the whole range of writings produced by him and his critics. Amongst much else, it shows that far from being a maverick individualist, Goodwin enjoyed a wide readership, pastored one of London's largest Independent congregations and was well connected to various networks. Hated and admired by Anglicans, Presbyterians and Levellers, he provides us with a new perspective on contemporaries like Richard Baxter and John Milton. It will be of special interest to students of Puritanism, the English Revolution, and early modern intellectual history.

This is the first modern intellectual biography of the Scottish Covenanters' great theorist Samue... more This is the first modern intellectual biography of the Scottish Covenanters' great theorist Samuel Rutherford (c. 1600–61). The central focus is on Rutherford's political thought and his major treatise, Lex, Rex, written in 1644 as a justification of the Covenanters' resistance to King Charles I. The book demonstrates that while Lex, Rex provided a careful synthesis of natural-law theory and biblical politics, Rutherford's Old Testament vision of a purged and covenanted nation ultimately subverted his commitment to the politics of natural reason. The book also discusses a wide range of other topics, including scholasticism and humanism, Calvinist theology, Presbyterian ecclesiology, Rutherford's close relationships with women and his fervent spirituality. It will therefore be of considerable interest to a range of scholars and students working on Scottish and English history, Calvinism and Puritanism, and early modern political thought.

Journal Articles by John Coffey

Slavery and Abolition, 2023

This article investigates a forgotten moment in the pre-history of British abolitionism: the publ... more This article investigates a forgotten moment in the pre-history of British abolitionism: the publication of an anonymous ‘Relation’ written by a penitent Liverpool slave trader and printed in Anthony Benezet’s A Short Account (1762). The article suggests that the Philadelphia Quaker acquired the Liverpool ‘Relation’ via the London Dissenting publishers of Two Dialogues on the Man-Trade (1760). Identifying close parallels between events described in the ‘Relation’ and the voyage of the Brownlow in 1748-49, it builds a cumulative case argument that identifies the author as the Brownlow’s first mate, John Newton, subsequently famous as an Anglican divine, abolitionist, and author of ‘Amazing Grace’. The conclusion considers potential implications for our understanding of Newton’s career and the origins of British abolitionism.

How should we understand the relationship between Milton’s revolutionary prose and his Restoratio... more How should we understand the relationship between Milton’s revolutionary prose and his Restoration verse? For many scholars since the eighteenth century, the political tracts bear little relevance to Paradise Lost. Milton’s transcendent epic exists on a literary or spiritual plane far above the murky world of politics. Others have engaged the prose more directly, but detected a sharp disjuncture between the regicidal pamphleteer and the author of Paradise Regained; after the Restoration, they claim, the poet withdrew from politics to faith, or from Cromwellian militarism to Christian pacifism. Against this view, a growing chorus of Miltonists has insisted that he remained true to ‘the good old cause’, that the long poems published in 1667 and 1671 are the work of a defiant Puritan revolutionary.

This essay goes further. It suggests that Milton’s republican works identified a problem that became the political leitmotif of his Restoration poems: the problem of Gentilism. The term was a standard English synonym for “Paganism” or “Heathenism”. From 1649, however, Milton applied it to heathenish kings. His inspiration was an incident recorded in all three synoptic Gospels when Christ warned his disciples against imitating “the kings of the Gentiles”. By 1660, Milton was insisting that Christ had placed “the brand of Gentilism upon kingship”, and in his major poems he would pit the politics of Jesus against the politics of Satan. Paradise Lost revealed the demonic source of pagan monarchism; in Paradise Regained, the Son proved impervious to Satan’s offer of the kingdoms of the world; in Samson Agonistes, heathenish rule was exposed and toppled.

The bridge between the anti-Gentilism of the prose tracts and the sustained assault of his Restoration works was Augustine’s City of God, a work which Milton reconsidered in the late 1650s. Recent scholarship on his republicanism has focussed on his classical sources and “neo-Roman” credentials (Armitage, Norbrook, Skinner, Rahe). Yet Milton’s admiration for the Roman republic needs to be set alongside his Augustinian critique of Roman imperialism. The City of God maintained that pagan politics was driven by the lust for domination and glory, and traced this pathology to demonic origins. It also used the classical republican critique of imperial Rome to sharpen its dichotomy between humility and pride, service and dominion, the City of God and the City of Man. It was this theopolitical vision that was to shape the content and even the structure of Milton’s later poetic works. His great poems dramatized a concern that first appeared in his regicidal and republican prose – a preoccupation with the fatal lure of heathen political culture.

Evangelical Christians were prominent in the campaign to bring about the end of the British slave... more Evangelical Christians were prominent in the campaign to bring about the end of the British slave trade in 1807. However, John Coffey here shows how, in the mid-eighteenth century, evangelical Christians on both sides of the Atlantic acquiesced in the slave trade and slavery. By the 1770s to 1780s their ideas underwent a dramatic change and it was evangelicals, mainly Quakers and a few Anglicans, who established the Committee to Effect the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787. Coffey shows how, over the next 20 years, with various set-backs, they took a dominant role in the first mass extra-parliamentary campaign in British history that successfully restricted the British slave trade and then brought in the Act to abolish it.

Book Chapters by John Coffey

Gareth Atkins, Shinjini Das, Brian Murray, eds, Chosen Peoples: The Bible, Race and Empire in the Long Nineteenth Century (Manchester: MUP) , 2020

The Demerara Revolt of 1823 was one of the largest and most consequential in the British Caribbea... more The Demerara Revolt of 1823 was one of the largest and most consequential in the British Caribbean. It was also the first to be planned by insurgents from a missionary chapel. This chapter reconstructs the biblical identity politics of the rising. The first section examines how the missionary John Smith employed the Bible to forge a new identity for his congregation. Section two turns to the more difficult task of piecing together fragmentary evidence of an interpretive community among the enslaved, a community which under the leadership of Quamina and other deacons and catechists would rise up in revolt. The final section analyses the ensuing battle for the Bible between colonial planters and British abolitionists.

Marietta van der Tol, Carys Brown, John Adenitire and Emily Kempson, eds, From Toleration to Religious Freedom: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives (Peter Lang) , 2020

This chapter examines the emergence of the idea of religious liberty as a natural right, asking h... more This chapter examines the emergence of the idea of religious liberty as a natural right, asking how it first crystallised in Anglophone political discourse. The key moment of crystallisation, it argues, was during the English Revolution, when the claims of Levellers and tolerationists were encapsulated in the statement that ‘Liberty of conscience is a natural right’, a formulation first appearing in Oliver Cromwell’s speech to the first Protectorate Parliament. The chapter traces how the concept of natural religious rights was gradually taken up by a wide variety of writers in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, before reaching its apogee in the era of the American Revolution, when ‘the rights of conscience’ became a rallying cry against state churches. The conclusion considers how this revised genealogy compares to that constructed by contemporary academic critics of religious freedom as a concept and a cause.

‘Early Modern Protestants and the Problem of Catholic Overseas Missions’, in Simone Maghenzani and Stefano Villani, eds, British Protestant Missions and the Conversion of Europe (1600-1900) (Routledge, 2020)., 2020

Throughout the early modern era, Protestants were preoccupied by the challenge of Catholic missio... more Throughout the early modern era, Protestants were preoccupied by the challenge of Catholic missions to ‘the heathen’. The challenge was both polemical and practical. Confronted with Bellarmine’s amplitude apologetic, Protestants had to explain how the global diffusion of Catholicism was less impressive than it first appeared. They argued that Catholic mission was restricted, coercive, superficial, syncretistic, and counterfeit. Some Protestants, however, were not satisfied with a purely polemical response. For them, it was imperative that Protestants launched their own missionary initiatives. Catholic mission thus acted as a provocation and incentive for the evangelical projects of New England Puritans, high church Anglicans, German Pietists, and English Evangelicals. At times, these figures were even willing to admit that there were lessons to learn from the achievements of Catholic missionaries.

Jonathan Yeager, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Early Evangelicalism (Oxford: OUP, 2022), ch. 2. , 2022

In surveying the intellectual context of early evangelicalism, this chapter plots a path between ... more In surveying the intellectual context of early evangelicalism, this chapter plots a path between polarized accounts: a conflict thesis that views evangelicalism as anti-intellectual or counter-Enlightenment, and a compatibility thesis that overplays the affinity between evangelicals and the Enlightenment. It argues that evangelicals read the modern literati with a sense of alarm but also (at times) with a sense of appreciation.

Justin Champion, John Coffey, Tim Harris and John Marshall, eds., Politics, Religion and Ideas in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Britain (Boydell) , 2019

If citing, please refer to the published version. The assassination of James Sharp, archbishop of... more If citing, please refer to the published version. The assassination of James Sharp, archbishop of St Andrews, took place in 1679, towards the tail end (or perhaps the climax) of the religious violence which followed in the wake of the Reformation-it is to godly assassinations what Salem is to witch-hunts.2 Reformation Europe had witnessed a series of such killings. In Scotland, Protestant militants slew Cardinal Beaton in the castle of St Andrews in 1546. But it was the late sixteenth century that truly

This chapter introduces the post-Reformation turn to inward ‘heart religion’ by discussing the re... more This chapter introduces the post-Reformation turn to inward ‘heart religion’ by discussing the relationship between Puritanism, Pietism, and evangelicalism. It emphasizes the deep sources of Protestant affective piety, taking note of Robert Wilken’s assertion that ‘nothing is more characteristic of the Christian intellectual tradition than its fondness for the language of the heart’. Building on the findings of the contributors and other historians, it shows how eighteenth-century evangelicals drew on a variety of sources: the Book of Common Prayer and Anglican devotional literature (Reformed, high church, and latitudinarian); Puritan practical divinity; Reformed and Lutheran Pietism; as well as Catholic mystical writers. The mingling of these different sources was a significant factor behind England’s Evangelical Revival. However, ‘heart religion’ was also refracted through the lenses of denomination, doctrinal tradition, region, gender, and social status. This resulted in a diverse set of trajectories among eighteenth- and nineteenth-century evangelicals.

In contrast to Lutherans, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Calvinists were generally reluctant ... more In contrast to Lutherans, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Calvinists were generally reluctant to compose new hymns, preferring exclusive biblical psalmody. Yet as this chapter shows, English Dissenters produced a series of new hymn books in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, culminating in the compositions of Isaac Watts. By analysing the Communion hymns of Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists, this chapter reassesses the nature of Dissenting piety in the era between Puritanism and evangelicalism. On the one hand, it maintains that the new hymns were the carriers of traditional Reformed piety, with its focus on the Trinity, the substitutionary atonement, the spiritual presence of the Bridegroom at the Lord’s Supper, and personal union and communion with Christ. On the other hand, Dissenting hymnody poured old wine into new wineskins, creating a cultural form that would prove indispensable to evangelical movements from the 1730s onwards.

This chapter approaches the English Revolution as a theological crisis, a struggle over the ident... more This chapter approaches the English Revolution as a theological crisis, a struggle over the identity of British Protestantism. During the mid-1640s, the Westminster Assembly laboured to reform the church and establish confessional orthodoxy, but despite producing a series of major documents, its Presbyterian majority faced serious challenges from Erastians, Independents, and the growth of ‘sects and heresies’. While clergy like Richard Baxter, John Owen, Jeremy Taylor and Richard Allestree produced works that soon acquired classic status, the Revolution also witnessed a spectacular proliferation of lay theology, ranging from high Reformed orthodoxy to the heterodox doctrinal systems of John Milton, Sir Henry Vane and Thomas Hobbes. England became a marketplace of competing religious ideas, and religion exercised a powerful influence over political and scientific discourse. Although England’s ‘Puritan Revolution’ ended in failure, the religious thought of this period was to prove seminal for later Calvinists, Anglicans and Quakers.

Slavery and Abolition, 2023

Gareth Atkins, Shinjini Das, Brian Murray, eds, Chosen Peoples: The Bible, Race and Empire in the Long Nineteenth Century (Manchester: MUP) , 2020

Marietta van der Tol, Carys Brown, John Adenitire and Emily Kempson, eds, From Toleration to Religious Freedom: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives (Peter Lang) , 2020

Jonathan Yeager, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Early Evangelicalism (Oxford: OUP, 2022), ch. 2. , 2022

Justin Champion, John Coffey, Tim Harris and John Marshall, eds., Politics, Religion and Ideas in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Britain (Boydell) , 2019

‘The Language of Liberty in Calvinist Political Thought’, in M. van Gelderen and Q. Skinner, eds,... more ‘The Language of Liberty in Calvinist Political Thought’, in M. van Gelderen and Q. Skinner, eds, Freedom and the Construction of Europe, 2 vols (CUP), vol. I: Religious Freedom and Civil Liberty

In this chapter, I want to offer an account of Church and State between 1550 and 1750 that does n... more In this chapter, I want to offer an account of Church and State between 1550 and 1750 that does not point inexorably towards the separation of Church and Dissent. Instead, I want to stress that the story of Dissent can only be told in conjunction with the story of the Church of England. Until late in the seventeenth century, most Dissenters remained thoroughly invested in the state Church, and deeply committed to the ideals of the magisterial Reformation. While the sects did sever links with the Established Church, the parting of the ways between the Church and a broader Dissent was a slow and painful business, one that was contingent rather than inevitable. What we call Puritanism was imbricated with Anglicanism. To set these abstractions at war with each other is to distort the story of post-Reformation England. Much of early Protestant Dissent was not dissent from the Church of England, but dissent within it and on its behalf. The religious settlement continued to be hotly debated long after 1559, and there were numerous attempts to remake the English Church – by Puritans and Laudians, Presbyterians and Independents, Latitudinarians and High Churchmen. Only after much struggle and various contingencies did Church and Dissent become rival ecclesiastical blocs

‘Between Reformation and Enlightenment: Presbyterian Clergy, Religious Liberty and Intellectual C... more ‘Between Reformation and Enlightenment: Presbyterian Clergy, Religious Liberty and Intellectual Change, 1647 to 1788’, in R. Armstrong and T. O’Hannrachain, eds, Insular Christianity: Alternative Models of the Church in Britain and Ireland, c.1550-c.1750 (Manchester University Press), 252-71

In a series of recent publications, Quentin Skinner has argued that 'from the parliamentary persp... more In a series of recent publications, Quentin Skinner has argued that 'from the parliamentary perspective, the civil war began as a war of national liberation from servitude'. 1 Skinner suggests that early Stuart Englishmen deployed a concept of liberty that had its roots in ancient Rome. For the Romans, slaves were persons subject to the arbitrary will of another; a free citizen and a free state, by contrast, were not under the dominion of others, but capable of acting in their own right. On this view, people could be deprived of their freedom not merely by direct interference or violation of personal liberties and property rights, but also by any prerogative or discretionary powers which made the freedom of subjects dependent on the good will of the king. In 1642, the Parliamentarians argued that if the crown could veto legislation, this would reduce Parliament and the freeborn people it represented to a state of complete dependence on the will of the king. As Skinner puts it: 'If there was any one slogan under which the two Houses finally took up arms, it was that the people of England never, never, never shall be slaves'. 2

Old-fashioned histories of toleration typically assumed that 'ideas rule the world'. As a result,... more Old-fashioned histories of toleration typically assumed that 'ideas rule the world'. As a result, they gave pride of place to a heroic line of progressive thinkers from Castellio to Voltaire who condemned persecution and argued for intellectual and religious freedom. In recent years, however, historians of toleration have started to 'play down the power of ideas'. Intellectual history, which was once central to accounts of 'the rise of toleration', is now being displaced by the political and (especially) social history of religious coexistence. This historiographical shift is an important corrective to the overly idealist (and idealised) scholarship of earlier generations, for it gives us a sophisticated insight into the actual practice of tolerance and intolerance in states and communities across Europe. However, it raises questions. How do the old and the new history of toleration relate to each other, if at all. Is intellectual history now passé? Or should we be exploring the interface between early modern practice and early modern theory? Judith Pollman has suggested that this is the way forward. She wonders if the practice of coexistence was 'the catalyst for new ideas on religious uniformity', and whether 'the everyday experience of living with pluralism' caused 'an intellectual orientation away from the Augustinian imperative compelle intrare'. In this essay, I want to address such questions and bridge the gap between theory and practice by considering what participants in the English toleration controversy had to say about the multiconfessional polities of continental Europe.

Published in Church History and Religious Culture, 97:3-4 (2017), 526-28