‘Heathenism’ in the Protestant Atlantic World, c. 1558 - c. 1700
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation argues that the concept of the 'heathen' expressed the exclusionary and expansionist precepts of English Protestantism in the Atlantic world between c. 1558 and c. 1700. Building upon recent scholarly developments in the cultural history of unbelief and the global history of Protestantism, the dissertation investigates language as a fundamental bridge between theology and culture in England and North America during the Long Reformation. It demonstrates that Protestants deployed the idea of the 'heathen' in historical, polemical, devotional, and colonial contexts in order to reinforce and reconfigure the relationship between the predestinarian framework of salvation, the postlapsarian condition of human beings, and the boundaries of the true church. Imbued with interconnected theological, rhetorical and literal meanings, the figure of the 'heathen' provided Protestant writers with a diachronic non-Christian persona that played a fundamental role in charting the continuously unfolding sacred history of the 'true religion'. The multivalent and adaptable, yet coherent and provocative concept of the 'heathen' reveals that ideas about numerous forms of non- Christianity were essential to the development of Protestantism. Etymologically derived from the uncultivated environment of the 'heath', the concept of the 'heathen' was pervasive in the English Bibles, where it referred to a fundamental connection between non-belief, idolatry, and the natural world, while also inviting the possibility of salvation through the intertwined physical and spiritual processes of planting, propagation, cultivation and conversion. As a feature of Protestant historical writing about early Christianity in the ancient world, the 'heathen' could refer either to the opponents and persecutors of Christian believers or to prospective converts. Invoking the concept of the 'heathen' could articulate animosity towards Catholicism, but it also exposed the waywardness that seemed to lu…
abstract: This dissertation argues that the concept of the 'heathen' expressed the exclusionary and expansionist precepts of English Protestantism in the Atlantic world between c. 1558 and c. 1700. Building upon recent scholarly developments in the cultural history of unbelief and the global history of Protestantism, the dissertation investigates language as a fundamental bridge between theology and culture in England and North America during the Long Reformation. It demonstrates that Protestants deployed the idea of the 'heathen' in historical, polemical, devotional, and colonial contexts in order to reinforce and reconfigure the relationship between the predestinarian framework of salvation, the postlapsarian condition of human beings, and the boundaries of the true church. Imbued with interconnected theological, rhetorical and literal meanings, the figure of the 'heathen' provided Protestant writers with a diachronic non-Christian persona that played a fundamental role in charting the continuously unfolding sacred history of the 'true religion'. The multivalent and adaptable, yet coherent and provocative concept of the 'heathen' reveals that ideas about numerous forms of non- Christianity were essential to the development of Protestantism. Etymologically derived from the uncultivated environment of the 'heath', the concept of the 'heathen' was pervasive in the English Bibles, where it referred to a fundamental connection between non-belief, idolatry, and the natural world, while also inviting the possibility of salvation through the intertwined physical and spiritual processes of planting, propagation, cultivation and conversion. As a feature of Protestant historical writing about early Christianity in the ancient world, the 'heathen' could refer either to the opponents and persecutors of Christian believers or to prospective converts. Invoking the concept of the 'heathen' could articulate animosity towards Catholicism, but it also exposed the waywardness that seemed to lu…
author: McGhee, Patrick
language: en
keywords: History, religion, culture, Atlantic, America, Atheism, Unbelief, Theology, Colonisation, Empire, Race, Imperialism, Colonial, Protestant, Reformation, Bible, Heathen, Civilty, Seventeenth Century, Atlantic world, Belief, Cultivation, Missionary, Evangelism, Britain, Americas, Virginia, New England, Congregationalism, Massachusetts, cultural history, global, global history, transnational, literary criticism, colonization, migration
license: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/9d537a87-59fb-43bc-b3e6-389a3a81d9d7/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2020-07-18
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:32Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.50767