FROM HERE WE CHANGED THE WORLD
This book from local historian Adrian Gray was launched at the Thomas Helwys commemoration event on Saturday 12th March 2016, at The Well, in Retford. Titled From Here We Changed the World, Adrian’s book delivers “amazing stories of Pilgrims and Rebels from North Nottinghamshire and West Lincolnshire”.
This book is the story of how a few people have influenced hundreds of millions of others across the globe, over the last few centuries, and down to the present day. It was described at the event as “a bold statement, but it is a fact, and one we are very proud of”. But the legacy goes wider, for it was from this same region that the idea of religious tolerance for all people and faiths first took root in public debate, leading to a significant impact still seen today in the American Constitution and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. So all who enjoy the freedom to believe, or not to believe, share in the legacy of these extraordinary people. This book demonstrates the international significance of the two counties of Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire. It is a handbook to the places and their people who have been forgotten for too long; they are part of our heritage and our identity and, for the most part, we are able to take pride in what they achieved.
RESTLESS SOULS, PILGRIM ROOTS
The epic story of the Christian faith across the two great counties of Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire from the origins in the River Trent baptisms of the 7th Century to the final clash of beliefs represented in the Civil War era and the Restoration. It is a story of great personal faith and often sacrifice amongst a people that produced great medieval buildings and scholarship, yet from the 1500s became increasingly radical in their beliefs.
Men like Thomas Cranmer, John Foxe, John Smyth, John Robinson and John Cotton provided an agenda of change that spread across the World on the ships to America. Some of them then developed a unique belief in total freedom of religion, but within a few years many found themselves fighting for the right to worship in peace – this is the area that produced the Quakers but also those who hanged them in America.
Adrian Gray’s epic book provides an absorbing insight into how the many characters of the story, men and women, interacted to build freedom and faith at the cost of prison, persecution and sometimes death by fire.
Order from usual online stores or direct from the publisher: https://bookwormretford.co.uk/product/restless-souls-pilgrim-roots-by-adrian-gray/