Editing Nonconformist (Protestantism) (section)

===Trends within Nonconformism===

Nonconformists in the 18th and 19th century claimed a devotion to hard work, temperance, frugality, and upward mobility, with which historians today largely agree.{{clarify|date=September 2020}} A major [[Unitarianism|Unitarian]] magazine, the ''Christian Monthly Repository'' asserted in 1827:

{{blockquote|Throughout England a great part of the more active members of society, who have the most intercourse with the people have the most influence over them, are Protestant Dissenters.  These are manufacturers, merchants and substantial tradesman, or persons who are in the enjoyment of a competency realised by trade, commerce and manufacturers, gentlemen of the professions of law and physic, and agriculturalists, of that class particularly who live upon their own freehold.  The virtues of temperance, frugality, prudence and integrity promoted by religious Nonconformity...assist the temporal prosperity of these descriptions of persons, as they tend also to lift others to the same rank in society.<ref>Richard W. Davis,  "The Politics of the Confessional State, 1760–1832". ''Parliamentary History'' 9.1 (1990): 38–49, {{doi|10.1111/j.1750-0206.1990.tb00552.x}}, quote p.&nbsp;41</ref>}}

====Women====
{{Further|Separate spheres}}
The emerging middle-class norm was for women to be excluded from the public sphere—the domain of politics, paid work, commerce and public speaking. Instead, it was considered that women should dominate in the realm of domestic life, focused on care of the family, the husband, the children, the household, religion, and moral behaviour.<ref>{{cite book |last1= Robyn Ryle |title= Questioning gender: a sociological exploration |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=CHHz_p-j9hMC&pg=PA342 |year= 2012 |publisher= SAGE/Pine Forge Press |location= Thousand Oaks, Calif. |isbn= 978-1-4129-6594-1 |pages= 342–43}}</ref> Religiosity was in the female sphere, and the Nonconformist churches offered new roles that women eagerly entered. They taught [[Sunday school]], visited the poor and sick, distributed tracts, engaged in fundraising, supported missionaries, led Methodist [[class meeting]]s, prayed with other women, and a few were allowed to preach to mixed audiences.<ref>Linda Wilson, {{"'}}Constrained by Zeal': Women in Mid‐Nineteenth Century Nonconformist Churches". ''Journal of Religious History'' 23.2 (1999): 185–202. {{doi|10.1111/1467-9809.00081}}.</ref>