The Religious History of Wales: A Survey of Religious Life and Practice from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day

This volume is an essential reference guide that draws together an impressive collection of academics and religious practitioners to map out for the first time the religious multiplicity and diversity of Wales. For the first 1,500 years or so of its existence, the Christian Church in Wales was a unified entity. The Welsh Church, initially Celtic, but then Roman Catholic, held a virtual monopoly over religious life and belief in the country. The 16th-century Reformation ended the notion of a monolithic Christendom; the proliferation of Protestant sects guaranteed that competition and variety would be the norm. By charting the gradual proliferation of religious communities in Wales, from the 17th to the 21st centuries, this volume seeks to dispel many of the myths of a monochrome Christian, Protestant, or even Nonconformist Wales. Each chapter also uniquely examines the persistence of faith, often in surprising places, in post-Christian Wales. The following religious institutions are discussed: The Church in Wales * Independents (Congregationalists) * Baptists * The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) * Roman Catholicism * Calvinistic Methodism * Wesleyan Methodism * The Moravian Church * Unitarianism * Salvation Army * Pentecostalism * United Reform Church * Seventh-Day Adventism * The Church of the Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) * Jehovah’s Witnesses * Evangelicalism * Judaism * Islam * Sikhism * Baha’i Faith * The Ecumenical Dimension.