"The essays collected in this volume were originally delivered as papers during a conference held at Westminster College, Cambridge, in July 2001" - Pref.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

A dissenting historian's formation / Clyde Binfield -- Professor Clyde Binfield: a critical appreciation / Reg Ward -- 'Thews and sinews': nonconformity and sport / Hugh McLeod -- Nonconformity and the pottery industry / John Briggs -- 'An important work': building a Victorian chapel / John Handby Thompson -- Newman, Pugin and the architecture of the English oratory / Sheridan Gilley -- The cultural aspirations of the Welsh clergy / Frances Knight -- Honorary doctorates and the nonconformist ministry in nineteenth-century England / Timothy Larsen -- Cultural aspiration and the dissenting colleges: the first students at Mansfield College, Oxford / Elaine Kaye -- Nonconformists at Cambridge before the First World War / David M. Thompson -- Methodist attitudes to education and youth: Halifax, 1800-2000 / John A. Hargreaves -- The dissenting political upsurge of 1833-34 / David Bebbington -- Educational aspirations versus social hierarchies: the 1906 education bill / John Wigley -- Abraham Lincoln, religion and self-improvement / Richard Carwardine -- The disruption in London: English Presbyterians and the Scottish Disruption of 1843 / David Cornick -- From union to church: autobiographical recollections on congregational ecclesiology in the 1960s / Alan P.F. Sell.