'Bunyan and the Dissenting Tradition' - the Sixth Triennial Conference of the International John Bunyan Society, University of Keele, UK, 26-28 July 2010

I always look forward to this conference; few academic societies are as welcoming and warm as the International Bunyan Symposium. Jim Forrest, who had for so many years imagined such a society, would have been very pleased to see such a congenial gathering of scholars - including many of his own students - from so many places and disciplines. For its triennial conference, the Society met at the University of Keele, Staffordshire, England, for two days' discussion on the theme of 'Bunyan and the Dissenting Tradition'. Roger Pooley, the President of the Society, was our kind host from 26-28 July 2010.The four plenary sessions took us through evangelical adaptations, a theology of violence, a post-secular reading, and a panel on teaching Bunyan. The conference opened with a presentation by Isabel Rivers, Queen Mary University of London, a particular pleasure for those of us whose introduction to the Renaissance came from her Classical and Christian Ideas in English Renaissance Poetry. She spoke on ''The Pilgrim 's Progress in the Evangelical Revival', exploring editions and adaptations of Bunyan' s allegory by John Wesley, John Newton, and others. It is in those adaptations, she argued, that we can detect not just attitudes towards Bunyan but the history of evangelism itself. The University of Leicester's John Coffey presented the second plenary on 'Bunyan and Violence.' There we heard about the peaceful man whose work rings with violence and violent metaphor. Although the conventional notion is that violence in The Pilgrim 's Progress is almost a distraction from its purpose, Coffey argues that that violence is actually necessary to an understanding of Bunyan' s theology. I was especially energized by the panel presentation on teaching Bunyan, which suggested that whether we teach at large institutions or small, public or private, we share both the challenges and the rewards of helping undergraduates discover Bunyan's work. Nigel Smith (Princeton, chair), Dan Runyon (Spring Arbor), Peter Hinds (Plymouth), and Maxine Hancock (Regent College, Vancouver) each shared experiences of teaching Bunyan in a variety of course settings and levels. We closed the conference with an inspiring and provocative talk by Lori Branch from the University of Iowa, author of Rituals of Spontaneity: Sentiment and Secularism from Free Prayer to Wordsworth. She gave a loving reading of Bunyan, followed by, in her words, a 'manifesto' for a new post-secular criticism: a reading that neither completely rejects nor completely embraces faith.Of course, one can tell a good conference when it is intensely difficult to choose among concurrent sessions, as it was here. I heard Arlette Zinck (King's University College) and Maxine Hancock (Regent College, Vancouver) introduce us to questions of ageing in Bunyan and Baxter. Michael Davies (Liverpool) asked us to wonder, as we all called to mind the illustrations from various editions, which Bible Christian is carrying at the beginning of Pilgrim 's Progress. …

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