The Elusive Quest of the Spiritual Malcontent: Some Early Nineteenth-Century Ecclesiastical Mavericks

Timothy C. F. Stunt has gathered a range of his essays both published and unpublished in a collection of largely biographical studies. His subjects range from discontented Quakers hesitating over their identity to respectable Anglicans who were fascinated with the charismatic phenomena of tongue speaking and healing. Some of the characters with whom he is concerned can be described as mavericks on account of their strikingly individualist inclinations. Occasionally their unpredictability takes on a quasi-comic identity which could even qualify them to be described as loose cannons. On the other hand some of them like Edward Irving Norris Groves and John Darby played a crucial part in the development of nineteenth-century evangelicalism. In their quest for the ideal church of their dreams they were often disappointed but one cannot but admire the single-mindedness of their quest. Those who wish to follow a thread through the now-obscure environs of early nineteenth century British Protestant religious dissent will find a surefooted guide in Timothy Stunt. The Elusive Quest of the Spiritual Malcontent supplies an anthology of some of the best of Stunts writings penned over a half-century. How fluid were the lines separating established parish church dissenting chapels and the rising Restorationist movements! --Kenneth J. Stewart Covenant College & author Restoring the Reformation: British Evangelicalism and the Francophone Reveil Evangelicalism has produced a multitude of seekers and finders who exerted to the full their right of private judgment when traveling along their spiritual track in search of an ideal church. Religious history is often written from the perspective of the big battalions and Stunts lively and deeply researched book offsets this bias by rescuing from near oblivion some of the unusual pilgrims who undertook this quest. A fascinating study. --John Walsh Emeritus Fellow Jesus College Oxford A gem of a book. With learning sympathy and lightness of touch it brings before us a succession of earnest people from different religious traditions and backgrounds who sought to be radically Christian in the circumstances of their own time and introduces us to the underside of some of the major modern Christian movements of renewal. These essays constitute a serious contribution to Western Church history in the nineteenth century. --Andrew F. Walls University of Edinburgh Liverpool Hope University and Akrofi-Christaller Institute Ghana Timothy C. F. Stunt has taught Ancient and Modern History for nearly fifty years in secondary schools in England Switzerland and the United States. He is the author of From Awakening to Secession (2000) and has contributed some forty articles to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.