In Anglican church history, Nonconformists were Protestant Christians who did not "conform" to the governance and usages of the state church—in England, and in Wales until 1914, the Church of England.
The United Reformed Church (URC) is a Protestant Christian church in the United Kingdom. As of 2022 it had approximately 40,000 members in 1,284 congregations with 334 stipendiary ministers.
The Seekers, or Legatine-Arians as they were sometimes known, were an English dissenting group that emerged around the 1620s, probably inspired by the preaching of three brothers – Walter, Thomas, and Bartholomew Legate. Seekers considered all organised churches of their day corrupt and preferred to wait for God's revelation. Many of them subsequently joined the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
The General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches is the umbrella organisation for Unitarian, Free Christians, and other liberal religious congregations in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It was formed in 1928, with denominational roots going back to the Great Ejection of 1662. Its headquarters is Essex Hall in central London, on the site of the first avowedly Unitarian chapel in England, set up in 1774.
Congregational churches are Protestant churches in the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition practicing congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs.
The Brethren Church is an Anabaptist Christian denomination with roots in and one of several groups that trace its origins back to the Schwarzenau Brethren of Germany.
The Priestley Riots took place from 14 July to 17 July 1791 in Birmingham, England; the rioters' main targets were religious dissenters, most notably the politically and theologically controversial Joseph Priestley. Both local and national issues stirred the passions of the rioters, from disagreements over public library book purchases, to controversies over Dissenters' attempts to gain full civil rights and their support of the French Revolution.
English Dissenters or English Separatists were Protestants who separated from the Church of England in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Abraham Rees was a Welsh nonconformist minister, and compiler of Rees's Cyclopædia.
Old Lutherans were originally German Lutherans in the Kingdom of Prussia, notably in the Province of Silesia, who refused to join the Prussian Union of churches in the 1830s and 1840s. Prussia's king Frederick William III was determined to unify the Protestant churches, homogenize their liturgy, organization and even their architecture. In a series of proclamations over several years the Church of the Prussian Union was formed, bringing together the majority group of Lutherans, and the minority of Reformed. The main effect was that the government of Prussia had full control over church affairs, with the king recognized as the leading bishop.
Joseph Priestley was a British natural philosopher, political theorist, clergyman, theologian, and educator. He was one of the most influential Dissenters of the late 18th-century.
Newington Green Unitarian Church (NGUC) in north London is one of England's oldest Unitarian churches. It has had strong ties to political radicalism for over 300 years, and is London's oldest Nonconformist place of worship still in use. It was founded in 1708 by English Dissenters, a community of which had been gathering around Newington Green for at least half a century before that date. The church belongs to the umbrella organisation known as the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, and has had an upturn in its fortunes since the turn of the millennium.
William Russell was a practical Christian, a Birmingham merchant, a practising Unitarian, and a close friend and sponsor of Joseph Priestley. He promoted and defended Rational Christianity, and helped lead the agitation for the repeal of penal laws against Dissenters, canvassing support for a political union of the nation's Dissenters.
The dissenting academies were schools, colleges and seminaries run by English Dissenters, that is, those who did not conform to the Church of England. They formed a significant part of England's educational systems from the mid-seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.
From 1649 to 1660, Puritans in the Commonwealth of England were allied to the state power held by the military regime, headed by Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell until he died in 1658. They broke into numerous sects, of which the Presbyterian group comprised most of the clergy, but was deficient in political power since Cromwell's sympathies were with the Independents. During this period, the term "Puritan" becomes largely moot, therefore, in British terms, though the situation in New England was very different. After the English Restoration, the Savoy Conference and Uniformity Act 1662 and Great Ejection drove most of the Puritan ministers from the Church of England, and the outlines of the Puritan movement changed over a few decades into the collections of Presbyterian and Congregational churches, operating as they could as Dissenters under changing regimes.
The Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland is a small, Scottish, Presbyterian church denomination. Theologically they are similar to many other Presbyterian denominations in that their office-bearers subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith. In practice, they are more theologically conservative than most Scottish Presbyterians and maintain a very traditional form of worship. In 1690, after the Revolution, Alexander Shields joined the Church of Scotland, and was received along with two other ministers. These had previously ministered to a group of dissenters of the United Societies at a time when unlicensed meetings were outlawed. Unlike these ministers, some Presbyterians did not join the reconstituted Church of Scotland. From these roots the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland was formed. It grew until there were congregations in several countries. In 1876 the majority of Reformed Presbyterians, or RPs, joined the Free Church of Scotland, and thus the present-day church, which remained outside this union, is a continuing church. There are currently Scottish RP congregations in Airdrie, Stranraer, Stornoway, Glasgow, and North Edinburgh. Internationally they form part of the Reformed Presbyterian Communion.
Benjamin Avery, LL.D. was an English physician.
James Peirce (1674?–1726) was an English dissenting minister, the catalyst for the Salter's Hall controversy.
Philip Furneaux (1726–1783) was an English independent minister.
In the spring and summer of 1715 a series of riots occurred in England in which High Church mobs attacked over forty Dissenting meeting-houses. The rioters also protested against the first Hanoverian king of Britain, George I and his new Whig government. The riots occurred on symbolic days: 28 May was George I's birthday, 29 May was the anniversary of Charles II's Restoration and 10 June was the birthday of the Jacobite Pretender, James Francis Edward Stuart.
