Undomesticated Dissent

On the north end of Londonliesan old nonconformistburial ground named Bunhill Fields. Bunhill becamethefinal resting place for some of the most honored names of English Protestantism. Burialoutside the city walls symbolized that thoseinterredat Bunhill lived and died outside the English body politic.Bunhill, its location declares,isthe properhome for undomesticateddissenters. Amongmore than 120,000 graves, three monuments stand in the central courtyard: one for John Bunyan (1628â1688), a second for Daniel Defoe (1660?â1731), and a third for William Blake (1757â1827). Undomesticated Dissent asks, "why these three monuments?" The answer, as Curtis Freeman leads readers to discover, is anidea as vitalandtransformative for public life today as itwasunsettling and revolutionary then. To telltheuntoldtaleof the Bunhill graves,Freeman focuseson the three classic texts by Bunyan, Defoe, and Blakeâ The Pilgrim's Progress , Robinson Crusoe , and Jerusalem âas testaments of dissent. Their enduring literary power, as Freeman shows,derives from theiroriginal political and religious contexts.But Freeman also traces theabidingpropheticinfluenceof these texts,revealingthe confluence of great literature and principled religiousnonconformityin the checkered story of democraticpoliticalarrangements. Undomesticated Dissent provides a sweeping intellectual history of the public virtue of religiously motivated dissent from the seventeenth century to the present, by carefully comparing, contrasting, and then weighing the various types of dissentâevangelicaland spiritual dissent (Bunyan), economic and social dissent (Defoe),radical andapocalyptic dissent (Blake). Freemanoffersdissentingimaginationasagenerative source for democracy, as well as a force forresistancetothe coercivepowers of domestication.By placing Bunyan, Defoe, and Blake within an extended argument about the nature and ends of democracy, Undomesticated Dissent reveals howthese three mentransmittedtheirdemocratic ideas across the globe,hidden within the text of their stories. Freemanconcludes thatdissent, so crucial to the establishing of democracy, remainsequally essential for its flourishing. Buried deep intheirfull narrative of religion and resistance, the three monuments at Bunhill together declare that dissent is not disloyalty, and that democracy depends on dissent.

Notwithstanding the thorough scholarship that undergirds this book the text is unfailingly accessible and engaging--perhaps one of my most enjoyable reads this year. -- John E. Colwell -- Regent's Reviews, Refreshingly informative. -- Choice, Curtis Freeman's Undomesticated Dissent is a timely read for Christians of all stripes, not just Baptists and their kin, who are its main audience. It raises fundamental questions about the role of opposition in how we conceive of Christianity, and that is exactly the reason you should read it and discuss it with your friends who care about the unity of the church. -- Lori Branch -- Commentary Magazine, When one chooses a topic that is centered around nonconformity, anarchism, resistance, symbolism, and subversion, one runs the risk of a disordered narrative, but also gains the possibility of breaking new ground, of taking the reader into new lands, or new depths. This is the cost-benefit dilemma that Curtis W. Freeman embraces in Undomesticated Dissent, as he presses the tradition of religious dissent in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (and beyond), and offers his provocative and passionate reading of several provocative and passionate writers. -- Michael R. Stevens -- Journal of Markets & Morality, Curtis Freeman has written a book as unexpected as it is timely...This book is creative and constructive, instructive and inspiring. It is a book that cannot be merely read but lived. -- Spencer Boersma -- Reading Religion

Curtis W. Freeman is Research Professor of Theology and Director of the Baptist House of Studies at Duke Divinity School. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.