Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-rkxrd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T18:48:05.272Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Roots of Resurgence: Evangelical Parish Ministry in the mid-Twentieth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Mark Smith
Mark Smith*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Historical analyses of twentieth-century evangelicalism have rarely focused on the experience of the parish. In many respects this is unsurprising. The renaissance in the historiography of evangelicalism since the 1970s has concentrated primarily on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, leaving the twentieth – and especially the period after the Second World War – relatively unexplored. Where work has been done, it has tended to focus on ecclesiastical politics, activity in universities, and biographies of major leaders. Nor are more general histories particularly illuminating in this respect. Roger Lloyd, for example, concentrates on Anglo-Catholics and modernists rather than evangelicals and Paul Welsby, whose work devotes considerable space to pastoral ministry, is more concerned with its organization than with its practice. The consequence of this historiographical gap has not been so much to create a vacuum in relation to mid-twentieth century Anglican evangelicalism as to leave an impression of a rather elitist movement, dominated by the products of Public Schools and the Inter-Varsity Fellowship (IVF) and therefore almost irremediably middle class. Ironically, this impression has been reinforced by the one substantial study of mid-twentieth century parish evangelicalism so far in print – Alister Chapman’s study of the ministry of John Stott at All Souls, Langham Place: ‘Evangelical Anglicans,’ he notes, just as much if not more than other Anglicans, continued to be associated with the middle classes, and they had significant difficulties reaching people lower down the social scale.’

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 44: Revival and Resurgence in Christian History , 2008 , pp. 318 - 328
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2008

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.)

References

1 See, for example, R Manwaring, From Controversy to Co-existence: Evangelicals in the Church of England 1914–1980 (Cambridge, 1980); Goodhew, D., ‘The Rise of the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union, 1910–1971’, JEH 54 (2003), 62–88 Google Scholar; McGrath, A., To Know and Serve God: a Biography of James I. Packer (London, 1997)Google Scholar.

2 Lloyd, R., The Church of England 1900–1965 (London, 1966)Google Scholar.

3 Welsby, P. A., A History of the Church of England 1945–1980 (Oxford, 1994), 131–50 Google Scholar.

4 Chapman, A., ‘Secularisation and the Ministry of John R W. Stott at All Souls, Langham Place, 1950–1970’, JEH 56(2005), 496–513, at 509 Google Scholar.

5 Cornell, S. F., The History of Christ Church Chadderton, 1870–1920 (Oldham, 1920), 10–25 Google Scholar.

6 Manchester Central Library, Christ Church, Diocesan Visitation Return 1931, M39/addnl/103.

7 Christ Church Baptism Register 1934–57 (Unless otherwise stated all records relating to Christ Church and St Saviours are located on the church premises as is the collection of material relating to the Butler Green Mission formerly in the possession of Mr E. Turner).

8 Dixon, A., Christ Church Chadderton: the First Hundred Years (Manchester, 1970), 12 Google Scholar.

9 The Manchester Diocesan Directory (Altt’mcham, 1950–60).

10 PCC minutes, 16 December 1953.

11 Ibid.

12 Interview with Mr E. Smith, 19 May 2006; PCC minutes, 4 September 1951, 25 March 1952.

13 Christ Church Preachers Book 1953–9; St Saviours Preachers Book 1953–61; Butler Green Service Register 1952–69; E. Smith interview.

14 Green, S.J.D., Religion in the Age of Decline (Cambridge, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 PCC Minutes, 15 April 1952.

16 Ibid., 20 April 1954.

17 Peskett, O. F., To China For Love (Whitstable, n.d.)Google Scholar; Crowe, P., ed., Keele ’67: the National Evangelical Anglican Congress Statement (London, 1967), 23 Google Scholar.

18 PCC Minutes, 11 November 1952.

19 Ibid., 8 September 1953; 20 April 1954.

20 Ibid., 20 April 1954; E. Smith interview; Interview with Mrs V Smith 18 May 2006.

21 Smith, M., Religion in Industrial Society: Oldham and Saddleworth, 1740–1865 (Oxford, 1994), 101–4 Google Scholar.

22 Brown, C., Religion and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain (Harlow, 2006)Google Scholar.

23 For example, PCC minutes, 9 September 1952.

24 E. Smith interview.

25 PCC Minutes, 20 April 1954.

26 Chapman, , ‘Secularisation’, 502–3 Google Scholar, Bebbington, , Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: a History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London, 1989), 254 Google Scholar.

27 PCC Minutes, 8 March 1955.

28 Peskett, China for Love, 116.

29 News-cutting in collection of Mr E. Butterworth, Oldham, Lanes.

30 Handbill in Butterworth Collection; Oldham Evening Chronicle, 24 May 1957.

31 PCC Minutes, 20 April 1954.

32 S. Piatt, The Mission’ (MSs memoir in Turner collection).

33 PCC Minutes, 9 September 1952,31 October 1955.

34 Ibid., 14 july 1953; 31 October 1955.

35 Compare Green, Age of Decline, 387–90.

36 PCC Minutes, 10 September 1957.

37 Communicants fellowship minutes, 29 May 1952.

38 PCC minutes, 31 July 1956.

39 Ibid., 10 March 1953; 13 July 1954; 7 September 1954.

40 Ibid., 15 April 1952; 8 September 1953; E. Smith interview.

41 PCC minutes 3 October 1951.

42 Ibid., 3 October 1952, 7 April 1953; V. Smith interview; Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 226.

43 PCC minutes 9 March 1954.

44 Ibid., 9 December 1952; 20 April 1954.

45 V. Smith interview.

46 Brown, Religion and Society, 216.

47 A reunion of this group held in 1994 attracted sixty surviving participants. The extent to which increasing access to higher education in the 1960s, by increasing the geographical and social mobility of potential lay leaders, may have undermined the community-based approach of many churches in Britain is an issue that deserves further attention.

48 Christ Church Preachers Book, St Saviours Preachers Book, Manchester Diocesan Directory (1950–60).

49 PCC minutes, 9 March 1976.

50 Ibid., 7 April 1953; E. Smith interview; V. Smith interview; Peskett, China for Love, 115.

51 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 252.