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An Unsettled Ministry? Some Aspects of Nineteenth-Century British Nonconformity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Kenneth D. Brown
Affiliation:
Reader in economic and social history in the Queen'sUniversity of Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Extract

As befits its importance in the nineteenth century, British nonconformity has attracted a lot of attention from scholars. Eminent personalities and denominational development or doctrine tend to dominate the earlier writing, while another long-established genre which is still producing fruitful work has been the analysis of the impact of nonconformity in society at large, for example in national or local politics, trade unionism, and education.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1987

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References

The research on which this paper is based was financed by grants from the Social Science Research Council (now the Economic and Social Research Council) and the Twenty Seven Foundation.

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7. Methodist Recorder, 8 August 1873, 24 October 1912.

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9. There was much argument in Congregational circles about this matter in the last years of the century. The most convincing statistical presentation was made by the secretary of the Congregational Union at the end of 1894. He calculated that there were then about 271 vacant chapels and 258 unemployed ministers. Independent and Nonconformist, 3 January 1895.

10. Calculated from information in Spurgeon's College, Register of Students, 1880–1889. Spurgeon's College Archives, uncatalogued. Spurgeon did not place a major emphasis on his students's academic qualities. He was not willing, he said, to turn away zealous men just because they were poor and had sparse education. See Dallimore, Arnold, Spurgeon (Chicago, 1984), p. 102.Google Scholar For the criticisms of this approach see British Weekly, 26 March 1891.

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