Description: Laudianism was both a way of being Christian and a political ideology. This definitive account establishes the theological roots and political resonances of Laudianism, and shows how it was based on the recuperation of the theological principles and ecclesiastical and pietistic ambitions that underpinned it. Peter Lake shows how the Laudians' famous obsession with the beauty of holiness contained a plan for the reinvigoration of both the church and the state. It represented a self-conscious reaction against the long-term evils of puritanism and of the immediate political crisis of the 1620s, caused in turn by the evils of (an often puritan) popularity. The result was a coherent account of the theological, liturgical and political essence of the Church of England. On Laudianism explores how this intensely controversial movement, and the strong reactions it provoked, helped cause the English Civil War, but over the long term provided one of the visions of the national church, one that has been in contention to define 'Anglicanism' ever since.
Brief description: Peter Lake is the University Distinguished Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of twelve books, including Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge University Press, 1982) and Bad Queen Bess?: Libels, Secret Histories, and the Politics of Publicity in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I (2015). He is a Fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the British Academy and has published widely on the religious and political history of post-reformation England.
Review Quotes: 'Lake's research has thus definitively put Laudianism on the map as a movement that has taken a place alongside Puritanism and Reformed conformism within the 17th-century English state church.' R. W. de Koeijer (in Dutch), Theologia Reformata