Nonconformity and the local historian

The Noncoformitst chapel has played a crucial role in the history of the English and Welsh nations. When the great French historian Elie Halevy sought to explain the contrast between the turbulent history of his own country and the peaceful evolution of England in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries he found the key in the latter country's Evangelical religious revival, of which the Nonconformists, argued Halevy, was crucial in presevrving England from the revolutions that racked so much of Europe in the nineteenth century.

"For all their freedom of theological difference the (Nonconformists) sects agreed amongst themselves and with the national authorities to impose upon the nation a rigorous ethical conformity and at least an outward respect for the Christian social order."