The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
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— <strong>The</strong> Salvation Economy —<br />
family home, inquiry into the ‘religious condition’ <strong>of</strong> each <strong>of</strong> the occupants,<br />
and, if possible, reading <strong>of</strong> Scripture, handing over <strong>of</strong> tracts, recruitment <strong>of</strong><br />
adults and children to appropriate religious organisations or mission<br />
churches, accompanied by prayer and sometimes the singing <strong>of</strong> hymns or<br />
psalms. This work was ‘scientifically’ organised, with both pr<strong>of</strong>essional missionaries<br />
and volunteer visitors assigned streets and houses, and a duty to<br />
compile notebooks <strong>of</strong> visits and progress with individual families. One<br />
woman, Miss M.S.S. Herdman, established a small organisation specialising<br />
in the evangelisation <strong>of</strong> soldiers which in 1878 became the Soldier’s Bible<br />
(later Scripture) Union. Much <strong>of</strong> her own work was at Aldershot, where<br />
‘visiting in married quarters is similar to ordinary district visiting. In a general<br />
way commonplace and disheartening, occasionally a gleam <strong>of</strong> sunshine<br />
and hope breaks the clouds.’ Here are samples <strong>of</strong> her visiting notes:<br />
No. 4 we found to be a dirty hovel. Private —, minus his tunic, was<br />
nursing a squalling child, while another lay asleep in a basket cradle.<br />
His wife came in from the public-house secreting a bottle <strong>of</strong> gin under<br />
her shawl. Drink was here the bane <strong>of</strong> happiness.<br />
Visited No. 1, E lines. – Corporal —, a steady, well-educated,<br />
<strong>Christian</strong> man. His wife tidy, clean, respectable, the room a model <strong>of</strong><br />
neatness, quite a pleasure to hold a little service in. 38<br />
Refusal <strong>of</strong> entry must have been common though it was rarely openly<br />
reported in evangelical publications. In 1871 a minister reported how he<br />
knocked at a seventy-five-year-old woman’s door asking if he might read<br />
the Scriptures and pray in her house. With ‘a scowling look, a muttered<br />
curse, and a closed door,’ he was rebuffed ‘as every minister must have had<br />
in indiscriminate visiting’. 39 But what is most astounding to the modern<br />
reader is how readily entry to the home was gained, despite the apparent<br />
gulf in attitudes between visiting evangelist and the occupier. <strong>The</strong> Anglican<br />
parish missionary in Islington in the 1890s held quite pr<strong>of</strong>ound and personal<br />
conversations with householders, and was able to make notes – like that<br />
concerning Mr Duncan at 34 Pickering Street: ‘really an infidel and ridicules<br />
many <strong>of</strong> the truths <strong>of</strong> the Bible such as the Fall <strong>of</strong> Adam and Eve and the<br />
Resurrection <strong>of</strong> Christ and called it “a beautiful hallucination”.’ 40 This<br />
was intrusive work, and it is remarkable to the early twenty-first-century<br />
eye the extent to which evangelical visitors were admitted to the homes <strong>of</strong><br />
the poor and the working classes.<br />
Evangelism, and especially the aggressive system, had a pr<strong>of</strong>ound impact<br />
on its practitioners as well. David Stow, founder <strong>of</strong> infant schools, noted<br />
the impact upon Chalmers’ lay elders at the Tron Church in Glasgow in<br />
1815–19:<br />
Till Dr. Chalmers came to Glasgow, parochial <strong>Christian</strong> influence was<br />
a mere name – it was not systematic, it was not understood – there<br />
47