Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T04:00:58.604Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Mid-Victorian Revolution in Wesleyan Methodist Home Mission

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2018

DAVID W. BEBBINGTON
DAVID W. BEBBINGTON*
Affiliation:
Department of History and Politics, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 LA; e-mail: d.w.bebbington@stir.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Wesleyan Methodists in Victorian Britain are supposed to have been hampered by traditional methods of mission. From the 1850s onwards, however, they launched a strategy of appointing home missionary ministers. Although Wesleyans adopted no new theology, left structures unchanged and still relied on wealthy laymen, they developed fresh work in cities, employed paid lay agents, used women more and recruited children as fundraisers. Organised missions, temperance activity and military chaplaincies bolstered their impact. District Missionaries and Connexional Evangelists were appointed and, in opposition to ritualist clergy, Wesleyans increasingly saw themselves as Nonconformists. They experienced a quiet revolution in home mission.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , January 2019 , pp. 77 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I should like to express my gratitude to the members of staff at the John Rylands Library, Manchester, for help with sources for this paper and to the staff of the Nazarene College, Didsbury, Manchester, for the invitation to deliver it to a seminar at the college while holding a Visiting Fellowship at the John Rylands Institute/Manchester Wesley Research Centre.

References

1 Inglis, Kenneth S., Churches and the working classes in Victorian England, London 1963, 85–100Google Scholar.

2 Rack, Henry D., ‘Wesleyan Methodism, 1849–1902’, in Davies, Rupert and others (eds), A history of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, London 1965–88Google Scholar, iii. 123.

3 Brown, Callum G., The death of Christian Britain: understanding secularisation, 1800–2000, 2nd edn, London 2009, 149–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clive D. Field, ‘The social structure of English Methodism: eighteenth–twentieth centuries’, British Journal of Sociology xxviii (1977), 199–225.

4 Inglis, Churches and the working classes, 89–90.

5 Oldstone-Moore, Christopher, Hugh Price Hughes: founder of a new Methodism, conscience of a new Nonconformity, Cardiff 1999Google Scholar.

6 Methodist Times, 12 Mar. 1885, 161, quoted in Inglis, Churches and the working classes, 91.

7 Inglis, Churches and the working classes, 87–8.

8 Standing, Roger, The Forward Movement: Evangelical pioneers of ‘social Christianity’, Milton Keynes 2015, 60Google Scholar.

9 Turner, John Munsey, Wesleyan Methodism, Peterborough 2005, 50Google Scholar.

10 Gowland, David A., Methodist secessions: the origins of Free Methodism in three Lancashire towns: Manchester, Rochdale, Liverpool, Manchester 1979Google Scholar.

11 Urwin, Evelyn C., The significance of 1849: Methodism's greatest upheaval, London 1949, 23Google Scholar.

12 Bunting, Thomas P., The life of Jabez Bunting, D.D., London 1887, 727Google Scholar.

13 Charles Haydon to Nehemiah Curnock, 3 Apr.1853, MAM, PLP 51.29.9.

14 Bunting, Jabez Bunting, p. 727.

15 Prest, Charles, Fourteen letters on the home-work of Wesleyan Methodism, its sustentation and extension, London 1856, 44Google Scholar.

16 Watts, Michael R., The Dissenters, II: The expansion of Evangelical Nonconformity, Oxford 1995, 28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Report (1856), 6.

18 Prest, Fourteen letters, 61–3.

19 Report (1860), 12.

20 Thomas Farmer to Isaac Keeling, 12 Nov. 1855, MAM, PLP 38.68.16; Prest, Fourteen letters, 39–40.

21 Report (1856), 8; (1857), 12, 14; (1861), 14–15.

22 Report (1856), 32.

23 Prest, Fourteen letters, 31, 32.

24 Report (1856), 5.

25 Pritchard, John, Methodists and their missionary societies, 1760–1900, Farnham 2013, 211Google Scholar.

26 Report (1860), 11.

27 Report (1861), 31.

28 Report (1872), 9.

29 Prest, Fourteen letters, 59–60.

30 Report (1856), 23.

31 Report (1858), 10, 11, 12.

32 Report (1862), 11.

33 Report (1876), 27.

34 Report (1877), 20.

35 Report (1857), 17; (1860), 18; (1865), 15; (1872), 14; (1875), 13.

36 Report (1863), 10.

37 Wesley, John, The works of John Wesley, X: The Methodist societies: the minutes of Conference, ed. Rack, Henry D., Nashville, Tn, 2011, 324Google Scholar.

38 Report (1858), 11, 10.

39 Bebbington, David W., Evangelicalism in modern Britain: a history from the 1830s to the 1980s, London 1989Google Scholar, ch. i.

40 Report (1861), 6.

41 Waddy, Adeline, The life of the Rev. Samuel D. Waddy, D.D., London 1878, 72Google Scholar.

42 Report (1858), 13, 8.

43 Report (1862), 11.

44 Report (1857), 3; (1862), 40.

45 Vickers, John A. (ed.), A dictionary of Methodism in Britain and Ireland, Peterborough 2000, 215Google Scholar.

46 Sir Francis Lycett to Gervase Smith, 28 Dec. 1872, MAM, PLP 71.18.2.

47 Alexander M'Aulay to Richard Tabraham, 7 Apr. 1868, MAM, PLP 71.35.32.

48 Calculated from Watts, Dissenters, ii. 682–3, 708–9.

49 Report (1856), 19.

50 Report (1871), 14, 15.

51 LMMM, 19 Jan. 1866.

52 Report (1861), 13, 15.

53 Sampson, William, Rev. Alexander McAulay, the Apostle of East London, London 1896, 18–20Google Scholar; Report (1861), 16.

54 Report (1868), 46.

55 Report (1859), 12.

56 Macdonald, Frederic W., The life of William Morley Punshon, LL.D., London 1887, 195–9Google Scholar, 275–8.

57 Report (1861), 34–5.

58 Report (1862), 30–1.

59 Report (1874), 45.

60 Standing, Roger, ‘Charles Garrett and the birth of the Wesleyan Central Mission Movement’, Wesley and Methodist Studies vi (2014), 89–123CrossRefGoogle Scholar at pp. 92–4.

61 Obituary of Garrett, Methodist Recorder (n.d.), MAM, PLP 43.29.1; Report (1876), 34.

62 Report (1858), 12.

63 Report (1861), 34.

64 LMMM, 21 Feb. 1876, 17 Feb. 1879.

65 M'Cullagh, H. H., Thomas M'Cullagh: a short story of a long life, London 1909, 66Google Scholar.

66 Report (1876), 42.

67 Report (1878), 36.

68 Lenton, John H., ‘Labouring for the Lord: women preachers in Wesleyan Methodism, 1802–1932: a revisionist view’, in Sykes, R. (ed.), Beyond the boundaries: preaching in the Wesleyan tradition, Oxford 1998, 67Google Scholar, 71.

69 Brown, Death of Christian Britain, 96–7.

70 Ellison, James E., History of the Lincoln Fields Wesleyan Methodist Sunday School and society (Brunswick Circuit, Leeds), 1830–1894, Leeds 1895, 75Google Scholar.

71 Cooke, Harriette J., Mildmay: or, The story of the first deaconess institution, 2nd edn, London 1893Google Scholar.

72 Bradfield, William, The life of the Reverend Thomas Bowman Stephenson, B.A., LL.D., D.D., founder of ‘The Children's Home’ and of the Wesley Deaconess Institute, London 1913, 173Google Scholar.

73 Report (1878), 3; Bradfield, Stephenson, chs xi, xix.

74 Leeds First Circuit Schedule Book, 1863–73, WYL 490, 206, West Yorkshire Joint Services Archives, Leeds.

75 Blake, Joseph, The day of small things: or, Incitement to juvenile activity and usefulness, founded on practical effort, in connection with Christian missions, London 1849Google Scholar.

76 Idem, The day of small things: or, A plain guide to the formation of Juvenile Home and Foreign Missionary Associations in Sunday and day schools and private families, Sheffield 1865Google Scholar.

77 Report (1872), 36.

78 At Home and Abroad: A Magazine of Home and Foreign Missions liii (May 1883), 98.

79 Report (1872), 36.

80 Report (1870), 48.

81 Report (1871), 46.

82 Watts, Dissenters, ii. 661.

83 Report (1878), 18.

84 Report (1870), 44.

85 LMMM, 13 Sept., 20 Nov. 1876.

86 Report (1877), 20.

87 James Loutit to John E. Coulson, 7 Feb. 1872, MAM, PLP 70.37.8.

88 Obituary of Garrett, Methodist Recorder (n.d.), MAM, PLP 43.29.1; Brake, George Thompson, Drink: ups and downs of Methodist attitudes to temperance, London 1974, 15Google Scholar.

89 Report (1870), 47; (1873), 38.

90 Brake, Drink, 19–23; Report (1877), 16; (1878), 11, 12, 14.

91 At Home and Abroad lxi (Jan. 1884), 30.

92 Jobson, Frederick J., The course fulfilled: a sermon preached in City Road Chapel, London, September 6th, 1875, on the death of the Rev. Charles Prest, General Secretary of Wesleyan Home-Missions, with a sketch of the life and services of the deceased; and a plea for the mission work he officially represented, London [1875], 41Google Scholar.

93 Report (1858), 21.

94 Ibid. 24.

95 Owen Spencer Watkins, Soldiers and preachers too, London 1906, chs v, vi.

96 Report (1873), 13.

97 Report (1858), 22.

98 Oldstone-Moore, Hugh Price Hughes, esp. pp. 137–8.

99 Report (1859), 5–6.

100 Report (1856), 28.

101 Report (1865), 11.

102 Report (1873), 10.

103 Jobson, Frederick J., A plea for the spread and support of Methodism in the villages, London [1873]Google Scholar.

104 Report (1874), 7.

105 Report (1875), 12.

106 Report (1876), 31–4.

107 Smart, Henry T., Thomas Cook's early ministry, London 1892, 72–4Google Scholar.

108 Report (1861), 27; (1877), 24.

109 Report (1859), 25, 27.

110 Report (1872), 7.

111 Report (1866), 53; (1874), 40.

112 Report (1867), 5; (1868), 12.

113 Edmund Grindrod to Jabez Bunting, 26 June 1837, MAM, PLP 47.16.56.

114 Prest, Fourteen letters, 19.

115 Report (1874), 39.

116 Report (1866), 54.

117 Report (1871), 43.

118 Report (1874), 7.

119 Bebbington, David W., The Nonconformist conscience: Chapel and politics, 1870–1914, London 1982Google Scholar, ch. iv.

120 Watts, Michael R., The Dissenters: III: The crisis and conscience of Nonconformity, Oxford 2015, 85–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.