Following the vote in favour of birth control at the 1930 Lambeth Conference, the Church of England became the first major Christian denomination explicitly to condone the use of birth control. This paper argues that the bishop of Winchester, Theodore Woods, was the previously unheralded principal actor responsible for reversing the position of the Church. Woods was convinced that the Church needed to ‘modernise’ its position in order to secure a receptive audience for its higher-ordered teachings on marriage, sex and especially procreation. In turn, he hoped to bring about an increased birthrate amongst the eugenically ‘desirable’ English middle and upper classes.

During the Second World War, the British Government interned or asked the Holy See to replace many of the Italian clergy within the territories that it controlled. This led to a political conflict between London and the Vatican which was not resolved until the end of the war. This article addresses the development of the controversy and its causes, concluding that it stemmed from traditional imperial hegemonic goals rather than from anti-Catholicism. It also stresses that the Church's response was weakened by national rivalries within the Catholic clergy in the region, and the fundamentally different views of the war of London and the Vatican.

Roman Catholic missions preceded Protestant missions in Burma by three hundred years. Scripture extracts is the only known extant Burmese translation of portions of the Bible by the earlier Catholic missionaries. Produced by the Italian Barnabite missionary Guiseppe d'Amato, Scripture extracts represents the Catholic missionary strategy of inculturation. It was printed by the British Baptist missionaries to Burma, Felix Carey and James Chater, in Serampore in 1811, and passed on to the American Baptist missionary Adoniram Judson. Scripture extracts was an important resource for Judson's translation of the entire Bible into Burmese, although he employed a different translation approach.

The 1994 Rwandan genocide transformed the leadership of the Anglican Church in a way that mirrored the ethnic divides that had precipitated the genocide itself. This transition was effected through a church conflict that unfolded in the midst of a cataclysmic civil war. Understanding the nature of the conflict and leadership transition illuminates the way in which African church identity is constructed as a result of an interplay between local, regional and global actors. The post-genocide conflict in the diocese of Kigali is studied at particular length to indicate the ways in which these actors each sought position and influence.

John Owen (1616–83) was one of the foremost English Puritans of the seventeenth century. His story has been largely limited to events in Britain. The letters examined in this article, translated from the French, reveal Owen's reputation and activity among Huguenots at the end of Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate. Responding to critics of English religion like Moïse Amyraut, they highlight the largely neglected internationality of Interregnum religion and politics in which Owen participated through epistolary and print culture. They display the apocalyptic themes behind attempts at international Protestant union where ecclesiological debates over the nature of synods, toleration, political sovereignty and Church-State relations were decisive.

It may appear odd to write a review article focused on two books that are fundamentally different in intention and scope. The first is a self-conscious attempt by a moral theologian of conservative inclinations to contribute a Christian ethical perspective to the culture wars currently raging on both sides of the Atlantic on empire, race, and slavery. Its author, Nigel Biggar, is the Emeritus Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford. The second book is a collection of papers by imperial and mission historians given at a workshop at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, in July 2018. Its brief is more limited, namely to explore the professed commitment of nineteenth-century Christian missions to bringing a gospel of peace into contexts that were frequently sites of violence, not least between indigenous peoples and European settlers and other colonial actors. Its geographical remit is limited to Africa and the Pacific. Biggar's book has provoked a predictable storm of criticism, both within the historical academy and beyond it. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, for example, rapidly published a 15,000–word rebuttal of Biggar's arguments by Alan Lester, Professor of Historical Geography at the University of Sussex, together with an almost equally lengthy reply by Biggar.1 In contrast, Geoffrey Troughton's edited volume, extremely valuable though it undoubtedly is, seems unlikely to attract notice beyond the limited constituencies of professional historians and scholars of mission studies. Although obviously differing in character, these two books, when set in juxtaposition, bring into focus some of the most pertinent issues raised for Christianity by the imperial past and the ambiguous role played within it by Christian missions.

This article offers a reconsideration of religious mobilisation in the inter- and postwar periods. It focuses on how the Church of Sweden gradually altered its catechetical activities aimed at children to meet changing needs. Built on a range of statistical sources, this article calls for a reconsideration of the ways in which larger Protestant denominations adjusted to meet declining religious practices. With a focus on how laypeople became involved in these efforts, it is argued that institutional history, rejuvenated by the introduction of a gender perspective, is essential for our understanding of postwar religious mobilisation in north-western Europe.

The most influential English translation of Henry VIII's Assertio septem sacramentorum against Martin Luther, which is still widely available online and through e-publishing, was originally printed in London in 1687. Its translator, known only by the initials ‘T. W.’ that appear on the title page, is commonly identified in library catalogues as one Thomas Webster. Closer investigation reveals this identification to be based on a series of misunderstandings. It is suggested that this Thomas Webster never existed, and that the more likely translator was the Yorkshire-born controversialist, Thomas Ward.