Religion and Society in the Diocese of St Davids 1485-2011 ed. by William Gibson and John Morgan-Guy (review)

The diocese of St Davids was very much the largest diocese in Wales, covering most of the south of the country, until it was divided in two by the creation of the new diocese of Swansea and Brecon in 1923. This collection of essays does not set out to provide a comprehensive history of the diocese but nevertheless covers a great deal of ground, with four chapters devoted mainly to its history and four more on particular themes set in different periods.

John Morgan-Guy, in two chapters devoted to the "long Reformation," describes a process of change which developed slowly, hampered by a lack of key texts in accessible Welsh until, he argues, the turn of the sixteenth-seventeenth century. He presents it as a largely peaceful and successful process, which benefited from the willingness of many of St Davids' bishops to make haste slowly in the matter of reform, resulting in a relatively small number of dissenters and very few recusants in the diocese after the Restoration.

Robert Pope offers an analysis of theological debate in the diocese over three and a half centuries, moving from the detailed arguments between Calvinists and Arminians, through the rise of scholarly study and the establishment of theological colleges, of which there were several in the diocese, to the response to the challenges of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

William Gibson offers a robust contribution to the developing rehabilitation of the post-Restoration Church of England in Wales. Using examples from the diocese, he argues that the "Great Awakening" was rooted in a church which had already been undergoing a process of reform from within for many years and that the perceived Welsh-English dichotomy in the Church does not stand up to scrutiny.

Eryn White's contribution considers the many revivals which affected the diocese in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and very early twentieth century. She discusses the nature of revival in general and its possible triggers, as well as possible reasons why the phenomenon disappeared after the 1904–05 revival. She argues that, perhaps for linguistic reasons, revivalism in Wales was barely touched by the development of the more mechanistic and deliberate approach to revival developed elsewhere from the mid-nineteenth century.

Mike Benbough-Jackson examines the variety of St David's Day celebrations in the diocese, categorizing them loosely as cultural, religious, political, or military. He notes their fluctuating popularity and their tendency to provide a focus, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, for the expression of rival political and religious points of view.

Harri Williams' study of Bishop John Owen highlights his role in the disestablishment debate. Williams argues that Owen's role in defending the Church before 1914, and especially in encouraging the Welsh dioceses to prepare for disestablishment, rather than campaign for its repeal, has been seriously underestimated. He sees Owen as largely responsible for the improved financial arrangements when the Church was finally disestablished in 1920.

William Price uses successive bishops as a framework to take the reader from disestablishment to the present day. Touching on themes such as ecumenism, clerical churchmanship, gender issues, and clergy numbers, he traces the diocese's response to the challenges of the twentieth century and notes the problems facing the diocese today.

Overall, the volume provides a useful insight into developments in St Davids, and more widely in Wales, over some 450 years, though significant variations in focus, and some overlap between authors, will probably disappoint those expecting a coherent history of the diocese.