The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
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— <strong>The</strong> <strong>Death</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Christian</strong> <strong>Britain</strong> —<br />
splinter clubs from the original. Congregations were linked in denominations<br />
– the Wesleyan Methodists, the General Baptists, the Congregationalists,<br />
the United Secession Church – which formed assemblies or<br />
synods to act as regional and national (and indeed international) parliaments,<br />
exercising control over congregational behaviour and organising the<br />
bigger schemes <strong>of</strong> evangelisation and church growth. So the member <strong>of</strong> one<br />
club could enjoy reciprocal rights <strong>of</strong> membership wherever he or she might<br />
go in the country, finding a welcome for Sunday worship and like-minded<br />
people with whom to socialise and make contacts.<br />
<strong>The</strong> congregational clubs <strong>of</strong> Victorian <strong>Britain</strong> recreated the nature <strong>of</strong><br />
organised <strong>Christian</strong>ity as an expanding, evangelising territory. Almost every<br />
club had territorial dimensions, a ‘parish’ defined by its denomination, but<br />
it overlapped with parishes or clubs <strong>of</strong> other denominations, and in any<br />
event usually had only notional significance. Members <strong>of</strong> the club might<br />
come from long distances, and new members were rarely rejected because<br />
they lived outwith the parish. <strong>The</strong> congregational club differed from the<br />
parish state <strong>of</strong> the pre-industrial period in creating an abstract territoriality,<br />
a claim on social space. In one particular, though, there was an important<br />
literal territoriality: the home-mission district. By the 1840s and 1850s,<br />
urban dissenting congregations drew up parts <strong>of</strong> cities, <strong>of</strong>ten quite small<br />
ones <strong>of</strong> a few streets, inhabited by what were deemed alienated workingclass<br />
families which became targeted for intensive evangelisation on a<br />
permanent basis. Here the agencies <strong>of</strong> the congregation were deployed in<br />
integrated work: Sunday schools, millgirl prayer meetings, young men’s<br />
societies, bible classes, medical missions, gospel temperance societies and<br />
tract distributors. <strong>The</strong> home-mission district was a defining function <strong>of</strong><br />
the congregation. It gave the members a sense <strong>of</strong> religious and social<br />
‘otherness’, a group <strong>of</strong> people in more straitened financial conditions who<br />
required <strong>Christian</strong> charity <strong>of</strong> a ‘useful’ and ‘improving’ kind. This work<br />
was not the giving <strong>of</strong> dole, but the <strong>of</strong>fering <strong>of</strong> means to social and moral<br />
rescue: the <strong>Christian</strong> gospel, the temperance gospel, the thrift gospel<br />
and so on. <strong>The</strong> congregation deployed these ‘agencies’ as different but integrated<br />
means for social reform.<br />
This work made the church, and especially the dissenting church <strong>of</strong> the<br />
nineteenth century, a hive <strong>of</strong> activity. 31 In physical terms, the congregational<br />
church grew from being in 1800 a mere meeting house to being by<br />
1900 a centre with many different halls for various meeting groups, and<br />
usually also with a satellite church or station in the mission district.<br />
Dissenters were ebullient with their success. <strong>The</strong>y did this work themselves,<br />
they donated vast amounts <strong>of</strong> money, organised committees and collecting<br />
systems, got building loans, and managed themselves into a religious entity.<br />
But they were always aware <strong>of</strong> the ‘problem’ – the non-churchgoers <strong>of</strong> the<br />
slums and industrial districts. Indeed, it was this awareness that drove them<br />
in their evangelisation work. <strong>The</strong> existence <strong>of</strong> the ‘religious other’ was<br />
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