Champions of Choice and Change: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century England and the Rise of Democratic Ideals in Western Society

Dennis C. Bustin

Aug. 2023 · Wipf and Stock Publishers

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Champions of Choice and Change examines the role of seventeenth-century English dissenting religious groups and the rise of democratic ideals in western society. Many people assume that the French philosophers whose ideas and writings gave rise to the Revolution in France were the creators and initiators of the democratic theories which would shape, order, and give direction to modern Western society as it developed. This work argues otherwise, claiming that such advances--ideas related to equality, choice, political involvement, education, enabling and inclusion of women, religious liberty/toleration--occurred first, not in the secular context of late eighteenth-century Enlightenment France, but in the spiritual context of radical and/or dissenting religious groups in Stuart England over a century earlier, shaped by previous ideas of the European Reformers.

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Dennis C. Bustin’s early academics focused on New Testament studies and backgrounds (Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, MDiv; Harvard University, ThM), later shifting to Reformation and British/European history (Queen’s University in Kingston, ON, Canada, MA and PhD). His research concentrates on the Stuart era, particularly on dissenting religion. His book, Paradox and Perseverance (2006), examined the life and thought of Hanserd Knollys, a founder of the Particular Baptists in London. Dennis is currently associate professor of history (on leave) at Crandall University in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, where he resides with his wife Diane.