The Evangelical Conversion Narrative Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England

This widely acclaimed volume, now issued in paperback, examines a popular genre of spiritual autobiography that proliferated during the last two-thirds of the eighteenth century within the context of the Evangelical Revival. Using extensive, untapped archival sources, Bruce Hindmarsh traces the origin of conversion narrative in the seventeenth century and analyses its revival in the following century among several different religious communities in Britain. The Evangelical Conversion Narrative shows how different forms of expression among the educated and uneducated, pastors and laypeople, women and men, and Western and non-Western peoples cohered in a significant narrative that had the power to shape the identity of individuals and communities on the cusp of the modern era. Book jacket.

D. Bruce Hindmarsh is the James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology, Regent College, Vancouver