Restless Souls Global Footprints

Description

The two counties of Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire provide the setting for this absorbing narrative, showing how men and women from this region used their faith to shape society.

From the places that brought Thomas Cranmer, the ‘Mayflower Pilgrims’, the first English Baptists and George Fox of the Quakers, there followed more extraordinary generations, including the world-famous religious leaders John Wesley and ‘General’ William Booth. Alongside them came several generations of young men and women who took the Word to the ends of the earth so that in the pages of Adrian Gray’s epic story, you come across stories of humble missionaries faced with human sacrifice in India or cannibalism in Papua New Guinea. Local men like John Hunt are still celebrated in far-off places like Fiji, whilst the Grubb brothers spent years in Amazonia or central Africa.

This is not a rose-tinted view, however, for we also read of how the Churches were weakened by place-serving parsons of little faith, and by new ‘rationalist’ ideas that permeated some congregations. There are a fair few villains – Bishop Pretyman-Tomline of Lincoln and his family of self-enriching diocesan officers being especially notable. The final chapter covers the challenges of Church decline in the Twentieth Century, but also the revival through Pentecostalism, with an early centre in Louth, the charismatic movement, and a cluster of new and lively churches.

Hardback, 390 pages