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The Age of Atonement Boyd Hilton (Fellow and Lecturer in History, Fellow and Lecturer in History, Trinity College, Cambridge)

The Age of Atonement By Boyd Hilton (Fellow and Lecturer in History, Fellow and Lecturer in History, Trinity College, Cambridge)

Summary

An examination of the mentality of the first half of the 19th century, when catastrophes and personal misfortune were seen as dispensations of divine providence. In the 1850s and 1860s, however, a different attitude developed. at the centre of which was a new way of understanding the Atonement.

The Age of Atonement Summary

The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought 1795-1865 by Boyd Hilton (Fellow and Lecturer in History, Fellow and Lecturer in History, Trinity College, Cambridge)

This book examines the mentality of the upper and middle classes during the first half of the nineteenth century. It was an age obsessed by the idea of catastrophes; by wars, famines, pestilences, revolutions, floods, volcanoes, and - especially - the great commercial upheavals which periodically threatened to topple the world's first capitalist system. Thanks to the dominant evangelical ethos of the day, such sufferings seemed to be part of God's plan, and governments took a harsh attitude toward social underdogs, whether bankrupts or paupers, in order not to interfere with the dispensations of providence. Free Trade was adopted, not as the agent of growth it was later seen to be, but in order to restrain an economy which seemed to be racing out of control. In the 1850s and 1860s, however, a different attitude to social problems developed along with evolutionary approaches to the physical and animal worlds and a new understanding of God, who came to be regarded less as an Arnoldian headmaster and more like Santa Claus. At the centre of this ideology, and throwing light upon it, was a new way of understanding the Atonement.

The Age of Atonement Reviews

A stimulating and wide-ranging study ... It is a rich book ... a book which every serious student of nineteenth-century Britain should read. * J. W. Burrow, Times Literary Supplement *
Hilton has written a pioneering work ... He has laid bare the extent to which Christianity moulded the assumptions behind public affairs. * D. W. Bebbington, Historical Journal *

Table of Contents

Part One: Religious and Economic Thought; Part Two: The Content of Evangelical Social Thought; Part Three: After the Age of Atonement

Additional information

GOR004501302
9780198202950
0198202954
The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought 1795-1865 by Boyd Hilton (Fellow and Lecturer in History, Fellow and Lecturer in History, Trinity College, Cambridge)
Used - Very Good
Paperback
Oxford University Press
19911212
428
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
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