In English church history, a Nonconformist is a Protestant Christian who did not "conform" to the governance and usages of the established church, the Church of England. Use of the term in England was precipitated after the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, when the Act of Uniformity 1662 renewed the opponents of reform within the established church. By the late 19th century the term specifically included other Reformed Christians, plus the Baptists, Brethren, Methodists and Quakers. The English Dissenters such as the Puritans who violated the Act of Uniformity 1559 – typically by practising radical, sometimes separatist, dissent – were retrospectively labelled as Nonconformists.
Congregational churches are Protestant churches in the Calvinist tradition practising congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs.
Edward Arthur Milne FRS was a British astrophysicist and mathematician.
In United States history, the Gilded Age was an era that occurred during the late 19th century, from the 1870s to about 1900. The Gilded Age was an era of rapid economic growth, especially in the Northern and Western United States. As American wages grew much higher than those in Europe, especially for skilled workers, and industrialization demanded an ever-increasing unskilled labor force, the period saw an influx of millions of European immigrants. The rapid expansion of industrialization led to real wage growth of 60%, between 1860 and 1890, and spread across the ever-increasing labor force. The average annual wage per industrial worker rose from $380 in 1880, to $564 in 1890, a gain of 48%. Conversely, the Gilded Age was also an era of abject poverty and inequality, as millions of immigrants—many from impoverished regions—poured into the United States, and the high concentration of wealth became more visible and contentious.
The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) was among the first American Christian missionary organizations. It was created in 1810 by recent graduates of Williams College. In the 19th century it was the largest and most important of American missionary organizations and consisted of participants from Protestant Reformed traditions such as Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and German Reformed churches.
Swadlincote is a former mining town in the district of South Derbyshire, England, lying within The National Forest area. It borders the counties of Leicestershire and Staffordshire, 5 miles (8 km) south-east of Burton upon Trent and north-west of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, and 11.5 miles (19 km) south-west of Derby. It also covers Newhall, Oversetts, Midway and the villages of Church Gresley and Woodville, with the sub-district of Goseley. It has a population of some 36,000. Castle Gresley is 2 miles (3 km) to the south-west and Albert Village 1.5 miles (2 km) to the south.
The Congregational Christian Churches were a Protestant Christian denomination that operated in the U.S. from 1931 through 1957. On the latter date, most of its churches joined the Evangelical and Reformed Church in a merger to become the United Church of Christ. Others created the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches or joined the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference that formed earlier in 1945. During the forementioned period, its churches were organized nationally into a General Council, with parallel state conferences, sectional associations, and missionary instrumentalities. Congregations, however, retained their local autonomy and these groups were legally separate from the congregations.
The Half-Way Covenant was a form of partial church membership adopted by the Congregational churches of colonial New England in the 1660s. The Puritan-controlled Congregational churches required evidence of a personal conversion experience before granting church membership and the right to have one's children baptized. Conversion experiences were less common among second-generation colonists, and this became an issue when these unconverted adults had children of their own who were ineligible for baptism.
John Milne was a British geologist and mining engineer who worked on a horizontal seismograph.
The London Missionary Society was an interdenominational evangelical missionary society formed in England in 1795 at the instigation of Welsh Congregationalist minister Edward Williams. It was largely Reformed in outlook, with Congregational missions in Oceania, Africa, and the Americas, although there were also Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and various other Protestants involved. It now forms part of the Council for World Mission.
George Sherwood Eddy (1871–1963) was a leading American Protestant missionary, administrator and educator. He was a prolific author and indefatigable traveler. His main achievement was to link and finance networks of intellectuals across the globe, especially Christian leaders in Asia and the Middle East. He enabled missionaries to better understand and even think like the people they were serving. His long-term impact on the Protestant communities in the United States, and in the Third World, was long lasting. From the 1930s onwards, he became a Christian socialist.
The Cambridge Platform is a statement describing the system of church government in the Congregational churches of colonial New England. It was written in 1648 in response to Presbyterian criticism and in time became regarded as the religious constitution of Massachusetts. The platform explained and defended congregational polity as practiced in New England and also endorsed most of the Westminster Confession of Faith. The document was shaped most directly by the thinking of Puritan ministers Richard Mather and John Cotton.
Stoke Bardolph is a village and civil parish in the Gedling district of Nottinghamshire. The population of the civil parish taken at the 2011 census was 170. It is to the east of Nottingham, and on the west bank of the River Trent. Nearby places include Burton Joyce and Radcliffe on Trent.
Burton Joyce is a large village and civil parish in the Gedling district of Nottinghamshire, England, 7 miles east of Nottingham, between Stoke Bardolph to the south and Bulcote to the north-east. The A612 links it to Carlton and Netherfield to the south-west and Lowdham to the north-east. Initially the site of an Iron age fort, it was occupied by Norman nobility, who founded St Helen's Church. From being a farming community, Burton Joyce grew in the early Industrial Revolution, earning repute up to the 1920s for its textile products. Many of today's 3,443 inhabitants commute to work or school in Nottingham. It forms with Stoke Bardoph and Bulcote the Trent Valley ward of Gedling, with two councillors.
Bulcote is a village and civil parish in the Newark and Sherwood district of Nottinghamshire, England. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 330, reducing to 309 at the 2011 Census. The village is on the fringe of the Greater Nottingham area, and is about 7 miles north-east of Nottingham city centre. Nearby places are Burton Joyce and Lowdham.
The Garrick Club is a gentlemen's club in the heart of London founded in 1831. It is one of the oldest members' clubs in the world and since its inception has catered to members such as Charles Kean, Henry Irving, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Arthur Sullivan, Laurence Olivier, Raymond Raikes, Stephen Fry and John Gielgud. From the literary world came writers such as Charles Dickens, H. G. Wells, J. M. Barrie, A. A. Milne, and Kingsley Amis. The visual arts have been represented by painters such as John Everett Millais, Lord Leighton and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
In the early 17th century, thousands of English Puritans colonized North America, mainly in New England. Puritans were generally members of the Church of England who believed that the Church of England was insufficiently reformed, retaining too much of its Roman Catholic doctrinal roots, and who therefore opposed royal ecclesiastical policy under Elizabeth I of England, James I of England, and Charles I of England. Most Puritans were "non-separating Puritans" who did not advocate setting up separate congregations distinct from the Church of England; these were later called Nonconformists. A small minority of Puritans were "separating Puritans" who advocated setting up congregations outside the Church. The Pilgrims were a Separatist group, and they established the Plymouth Colony in 1620. Non-separating Puritans played leading roles in establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629, the Saybrook Colony in 1635, the Connecticut Colony in 1636, and the New Haven Colony in 1638. The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was established by settlers expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony because of their unorthodox religious opinions. Puritans were also active in New Hampshire before it became a crown colony in 1691.
Samuel Milne FRSA was a prominent 19th century English businessman in the cotton and woolen trade. Originally from Oldham in Lancashire, Milne became a major figure in the town's cotton-spinning industry through his highly successful partnership with Bagley & Wright from 1863 until his death in 1877. Prior to this, he oversaw huge growth in the Glodwick area, which has since become synonymous with one of Oldham's more significant contributions to the Industrial Revolution of the mid-Victorian period.
Congregationalism in the United States consists of Protestant churches in the Reformed tradition that have a congregational form of church government and trace their origins mainly to Puritan settlers of colonial New England. Congregational churches in other parts of the world are often related to these in the United States due to American missionary activities.
Robertson Street Congregational Church is a former United Reformed church in the centre of Hastings, a seaside town and borough in East Sussex, England. Built in 1885 on the site of an earlier church which had been constructed in 1857, it was designed by Henry Ward (1854–1927), who was responsible for many of the key buildings in the town of Hastings, not least the Town Hall. The building, a "large urban ... church with richly detailed exteriors and interiors", is situated between Robertson Street and Cambridge Road and has a split-level arrangement with part of the gallery occupying a flying freehold over the alleyway adjacent to the entrance on Robertson Street. The church is listed at Grade II for its architectural and historical importance.
