'Choosing the Elect: Fifth Monarchists and the Seventeenth-Century Conversion Narrative'

CREMS 'Brown Bag Lunch' Seminar with CREMS visiting scholar Belinda Molteberg Steen (Oslo). 

This paper will investigate the narrative communities formed by two radical English Puritan congregations in the seventeenth century. By focusing on two Fifth Monarchist collections of conversion narratives published in London in 1653, Vavasor Powell’s Spiritual Experiences of Sundry Beleevers and John Rogers’ Ohel, or Beth-Shemesh, the paper will examine the admission processes of the two congregations, based in Ireland and Wales. The narratives of these collections concern themselves with what has often been referred to as intra-faith conversion – conversion not as a change of church, but rather, as a change of soul: A turning away from sin towards God. To become a member of these congregations one was required to orally deliver a conversion narrative and give visible as well as scriptural evidence of one’s election. Making up their own rules of admission and creating a hierarchical system of salvation, this paper will argue, the Fifth Monarchists enforced a sense of fellowship through storytelling. The right to belong to the religious community – and by extension, the possibility of eternal life through Christ – was dependent upon an effective narrative.

CREMS will provide tea and coffee, please bring your own lunch.