The Death of Christian Britain

— The Death of Christian Britain —
to be key innovators in evangelical agency: William Collins (whose
publishing empire was to be founded on Christian and temperance work),
David Stow (the innovator of infant schools), and David Nasmyth (who
in 1826 founded the Glasgow City Mission upon the aggressive system of
evangelisation, and who later inspired the formation of city missions in
Dublin, Liverpool, London and New York). So much innovation occurred
in Glasgow that by the 1830s one evangelical dubbed it ‘Gospel City’. 34
The core of the Chalmerian system had three elements: locality, the ‘aggressive
system’, and entry to the home. Chalmers argued in 1821 for ‘an actual
search and entry upon the territory of wickedness’: ‘go out to the streets
and the highways,’ he urged, ‘and, by every fair measure of moral, and
personal, and friendly application, compel the multitude to come in.’ To
win cities to Christianity, the passive building of churches and even distribution
of tracts in the street was insufficient: ‘we most assuredly need not
expect to Christianise any city of nominal Christendom, by waiting the
demand of its various districts, for religious instruction, and acting upon
the demands, as they arrive. There must be as aggressive a movement in
the one case as in the other.’ 35 Action in the streets was not enough. ‘The
readiest way of finding access to a man’s heart,’ wrote Chalmers, ‘is to go
into his house, and there to perform the deed of kindness, or to acquit
ourselves of the wonted and the looked for acknowledgement.’ 36
Taken together, locality, aggression and entry to the home delineated
the system of the home mission which started to take shape in the 1820s
and which was spread by the 1850s to virtually every Protestant denomination
of Britain, North America and the Empire. It involved the creation
of a massive system of evangelisation, involving a variety of agencies, techniques
and personnel with different skills. In 1863, the London City
Mission was reported as having 380 paid agents who closed 203 shops on
Sundays. They made 2,012,169 home visits during the year at which the
Scriptures were read 579,391 times. They distributed 9,771 copies of the
Bible and 2,970,527 tracts, and held 46,126 indoor meetings. They ‘induced’
1,483 persons to become communicants of Christian churches, 619 families
to begin family worship, and 360 cohabiting couples to marry; and
‘saved from ruin’ some 619 ‘fallen ones’, presumably women. Nine of the
Mission’s agents were dedicated to visiting public houses, one of whom
alone made 26,564 visits during the year. 37 This was typical. Evangelising
work involved multi-targeting: of individuals by age, sex and occupation;
of sites of ‘sin’ such as public houses, betting houses and Sunday traders;
and of town councils and parliament who were lobbied for restrictive byelaws
and legislation. Moral suasion and moral force were combined to create
a moral nation.
One of the most remarkable features of the aggressive system was its
opening-up of the British working-class home. District visitation called not
just for door-knocking and conversation at the doorstep, but entry to the
46