Apocalypse How

"A study of the relation between religion and political thought during the English Revolution, Mark R. Bell's Apocalypse How? challenges early historical interpretations that portray the Baptists as politically inactive. This reexamination demonstrates that Baptists were close to the secular radicals who became known as the Levellers and to the more religious revolutionaries known as the Fifth Monarchists. The reintegration of the religious and political aspects of their thought reveals the Baptist movements to have been capable of generating support for both radical groups.". "Bell discusses the transformation of Baptists from an aggressively critical sect to one more accomodating to its larger culture. Bell identifies this development with two changes in the Baptists' views of the end time. The first of these was an overall decline in eschatological enthusiasm during the 1640s, while the second was the way apocalyptic language among Baptists gradually came to refer more to endorsing society than to transforming it. This engaging study is a solid contribution to the historiography of the earliest Baptists and of religion in England during the tumultuous seventeenth century."--BOOK JACKET.