Abstract
Religion was, for many centuries, a central part of British identity. Reformed Christianity, through its establishment and its dissenters, influenced and developed Britain’s society, economy and politics in profound ways that are perhaps difficult for a largely non-religious twenty-first century audience to comprehend. Even more difficult to appreciate are the less tangible elements of religious belief — that is, the ‘religious mind’. The blurred boundaries between the temporal and spiritual realms produced a particularly deterministic outlook on how the universe functioned. For many, daily events, from the rise of a mighty empire to the failure of a farmer’s crops, was part of an intricate and often unfathomable divine plan for the world. It would be problematic to argue for a homogenous mentalité common to all eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British Christians, yet for many there was a fundamental understanding that God was not simply a celestial observer but a constantly active force in every aspect of life on Earth. The writings produced by theologians, preachers, pamphleteers, self-proclaimed prophets and missionaries all sought, via interpretation of revealed scripture, to understand, examine and explain the various elements of these divine workings and thus discover the fate of humanity.
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Notes
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© 2013 Michael Talbot
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Talbot, M. (2013). Divine Imperialism: The British in Palestine, 1753–1842. In: Farr, M., Guégan, X. (eds) The British Abroad Since the Eighteenth Century, Volume 2. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304186_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304186_3
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