Tanner Moore, Ph.D.

My research and teaching interests in early modern religion and medicine explore the timeless human desire for physical and emotional stability. My book project, “A Gentleman’s Calling: Richard Allestree’s Transformation of the Church of England, 1619-1700,” provides a new lens to explore the religious, political, and social upheavals of Stuart England through the lens of the life of Richard Allestree (1691/21?-1681).  Allestree was a soldier, spy, professor, theologian, survivor of the plague (1665) and Great Fire (1666) of London, and author of the best-selling devotional of seventeenth-century England: The Whole Duty of Man. His work contributes to our understanding of the dilemmas faced by the late seventeenth-century clergy, caught between the secular rationalism of the Enlightenment and the wild enthusiasm of Protestant dissenting groups.

My forthcoming article in Anglican and Episcopal History, "Finding God in the Bread: Explanations of the Real Presence and Richard Allestree’s Heresy of Impanation in Early Modern England, 1534-1681," explores how the lack of a consensus of belief on the Eucharist led to institutional instability within the early modern Church of England, a problem still affecting the church to this day. My article examining how perceptions of early modern healing informed American churches’ COVID-19 responses, “COVID-19, The Eucharist, and Spreading Disease Through Christianity’s Holiest Rite," is forthcoming in Theology.