Seeking God’s Kingdom

The years between 1906 and 1939 in Europe were characterized by a concern, expressed in political, economic, and religious terms, about the social conditions that had resulted from more than a century of industrialization. This concern found a unique expression in the context of Welsh Nonconformity, a Protestant revivalist movement that rejected the authority of the established Church of England. Seeking God’s Kingdom examines the work of Welsh Nonconformity’s four main protagonists of social thinking: David Miall Edwards, Thomas Rees, Herbert Morgan, and John Morgan Jones. It explores the ways in which they were influenced by European intellectual and philosophical ideas, showing how religion was reinterpreted by them to promote social improvement and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of their approach.
 
This is a comprehensive and compelling study of liberal theology’s attempt to come to terms with the demands and challenges of an industrialized society. This edition includes a new preface and updated bibliography and endnotes.

Robert Pope is a reader in theology at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. He is the author of Building Jerusalem: Labour, Nonconformity and the Social Question in Wales, 1906-1939, also published by University of Wales Press.

1. Preface to the Second Edition
2. Discovering Jerusalem
3. Wales and the Social Gospel
4. A Crisis of Faith
5. The Question of Context

“A fascinating and thorough exploration of the development of theology in Wales from the end of the great religious awaking in 1906 to the outbreak of the Second World War. The author does justice to the immediacy of the Welsh social, intellectual and political environment, but the broader international perspective is not forgotten, which raises important comparative questions for the history of religion. Seeking God’s Kingdom thus provides a much-needed account in English of a vital but hitherto neglected period in Welsh religious history. It is of value not only to the theologian but also to intellectual and social historians of this period.”

“This is a well-focused work, analytical in its approach, dealing with a crucial period in the history of religious practice and theological interpretation in Wales—all told, we have here a significant move forward in the study of religion within its social dimensions which have filled a yawning gap in historical scholarship in modern Wales.”

“Robert Pope has done for Wales what nobody has done for England. He has written a study of the thought of the period in the early twentieth century when theologians were trying to come up with answers to the questions posed by the state of society.”—