Welsh Journals

Bebbington is careful to note that evangelicals brought to this campaign not a fresh theoretical perspective but the dedication which enabled them eventually to win the day. The romantic movement brought a new shift in emphasis to evangelical life during the 1830s: combining an interest in the supernatural with the theological concepts of the holiness movement, adventism and dispensationalism. The modernism of the 1960s, with its down- grading of verbal skills and its "uninhibited exuberance" found its evangelical counterpart in the charismatic movement. Thus evangelical historicity is no clear-cut affair, as many of its defenders would wish to assert, though the main agent of change is ideological and cultural, rather than the Marxist's contention that all change can be explained by economic and political issues. This thesis is attractively and at times compellingly argued: the range of reading and the depth of scholarship substantial, but one must ask, is it necessarily true? Can one assert that Daniel Rowland and Howel Harris, with their naked belief in divine providence, were children of the enlightenment? And what about their early associate, Edmund Jones, whose belief in the supernatural must mark him out as a precursor of the romantic age? And did not Wesley accept the power of witchcraft? Was Wales immune from these influences because of its linguistic barrier? One senses that Welsh theology during the 19th century was not over-concerned with adventism or dispensationalism, but about the dying embers of a once strict calvinism leading onto an interest in revivals and, more regretfully, into the soul-destroying alliance with politics in order to effect the disestablishment of the so-called alien Church. RLB Jane Ross, A Light upon the Road: Archdeacon John Hughes of Aberystwyth (1787-1860), Aberystwyth 1989. 59pp. Copies £ 2.50 (including postage) from The Rectory, Laura Place, Aberystwyth SY23 2AU, marking on envelope "John Hughes Order". John Hughes, vicar of Llanbadarn Fawr and perpetual curate of St Michael's Aberystwyth for over thirty years, and archdeacon of Cardigan for a brief year before his death in 1860, is generally remembered as the curate of Deddington, near Oxford, whose preaching talents were much admired by Newman. While this is an apocryphal story, Jane Ross points out that there is some evidence to suggest it may be true. She rescues John Hughes from oblivion, as one of the leaders of the evangelical party in Wales during the mid-nineteenth century. His outstanding preaching gifts were fully used in the area around Aberystwyth, but his organisational ability created a flourishing parochial life in the newly emerging seaside resort of