Anglican Evangelicalism (original) (raw)

Anglican Evangelicals have always been captivated by their early history. In few places is this more obvious than at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, founded in 1879 to produce educated ordinands and missionaries to combat what its founders considered to be evils that were peculiar to its age: rationalism, 'Romanism', and theological liberalism. 1 It was the product of a movement whose identity was fostered in print and in bricks and mortar through a range of educational and philanthropic institutions, and which raised hundreds of thousands of pounds a year through well-managed societies. Yet although-and perhaps because-the scale and sophistication of the movement would have been unimaginable a hundred years earlier, Evangelicals remained enthralled by an earlier, more rough and ready age. In few places was this more deeply felt than in Cambridge, where Charles Simeon, curate of Holy Trinity from 1782 and vicar there from 1783 until his death in 1836, was still venerated, his sway over generations of undergraduates, according to the historian Macaulay, being 'far greater than that of any Primate'.