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The Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Movement: Revival in the West Midlands, 1875–90?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
In January 1875 John Blackham, a West Bromwich draper, a deacon and Sunday school teacher from the Ebenezer Congregational Church, went to Birmingham intent on hearing the American evangelist Dwight D. Moody. So large was the crowd that Blackham was turned away from the meeting. He then went to look for an alternative Christian gathering and, in his own words,
I came across a room where about 30 fine young fellows were assembled listening to their teacher, a magnificent man, with a marvellous store of information. His address was so long and so good that my head and back ached with the prolonged attention. … I wondered how it was that Moody could get 4,000, while this splendid Bible class leader could only draw about thirty, and as I thought on this the first light broke in, and I saw clearly why we had failed. I learnt also how not to do it. I realised that if the men were to be won, we must give them a service neither too long nor too learned, we must avoid dullness, gloom, and constraint.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 44: Revival and Resurgence in Christian History , 2008 , pp. 262 - 274
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2008
References
1 The P.S.A. Reporter & Record for Stockport and District, No. I, March 1892, 1–7. The P.S.A. Leader, June 1898, 98. John Richards, ‘On a Sunday Afternoon’, The Blackcountryman 2: 4 (1969), 38–42.
2 P.S.A. Leader, June 1898, 98.
3 A. Holden Byles said that the PSA ‘sprang out of the Adult Bible-Class movement originated in Birmingham forty-five years ago by the late Mr. Joseph Sturge&. The P.S.A. Movement – started by Mr. Blackham in West Bromwich fifteen years ago – is a further effort in the same direction, but on somewhat different lines’. Byles, The P.S.A. What it is, and How to Start it (London, 1891), 4. See, further, S. Lees, ‘History of Ebenezer Chapel, West Bromwich’ (1906 ms., copy in William Salt Library, Stafford).
4 P.S.A. Reporter &Record, No. 1, March 1892, 5. Of course, this figure needs to be properly investigated; even if halved, to exclude those who attended occasionally, it is a remarkable figure.
5 Inglis, K. S., Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England (London, 1963), 79–85 Google Scholar. Two brief works written by officials of the Brotherhood Movement are Tuffley, J. W., The Sowers (London, 1937)Google Scholar, and Gregory, A. E. H., Romance and Revolution: the Story of the Brotherhood Movement 1873–1975 (Sevenoaks, n.d.c. 1975)Google Scholar. The Brotherhood and Sisterhood Movement continues today with about 2,000 members, run from Penge Congregational Church in south-east London.
6 Rogers, J. Guinness, ‘The Churches and the Working Classes’, The Congregationalism May 1886, 329–36 Google Scholar. Rogers does point to the ‘special services for working men on Sunday afternoons’ that he established when minister at Ashton-under-Lyne, which he describes as a ‘denominational class’.
7 Blackham (1834–1923), was a linen draper in West Bromwich, in partnership with William Eld, a fellow member of Ebenezer Congregational Church. He and Eld, from 1892–1900, traded as ‘linen drapers, booksellers and publishers’, supplying books to the PSA; from 1900 the two men ‘ran ‘The PSA Bookshop”, 63 & 64 Moor Street., Birmingham’. Blackham opposed the idea of a PSA federation and declined to become its first president. He is not mentioned in any of the standard biographical works. For obituaries, see the Liberal West Bromwich Free Press, 8 June 1923, 6, and the West Bromwich Weekly News, 8 June 1923. 5.
8 P.S.A. Reporter & Record, No. 1, March 1892, 7.
9 Brown, H. Stowell, Lectures to the Men of Liverpool, 3 vols (Liverpool, 1858, 1859, 1860)Google Scholar.
10 Thompson, D., ‘John Clifford’s Social Gospel’, Baptist Quarterly 31:5(1986), 199–217 Google Scholar.
11 Blackett, R. J. M., Beating against the Barriers: the Lives of Six Nineteenth-Century Afro-Americans (Ithaca, NY, 1986), 210 Google Scholar.
12 Randall, Ian M., Spirituality and Social Change: the Contribution of F.B. Meyer (Carlisle, 2003), 233 Google Scholar.
13 The P.S.A. Leader, March 1906, 33. According to Rogers, J. Guinness, An Autobiography (London, 1903)Google Scholar, whose second pastorate was at Old Albion Chapel, Ashton-under-Lyne (Congregational), the Sunday School was ‘a mighty force, not only in promoting the work of the congregation, but in the influence which it exerted upon the town’ (109). Rogers formed a Working Men’s Class ‘which itself was a remarkable power for good in a stratum of the social life of the town where such influence was sadly needed. It grew partly out of a series of lectures delivered by me on Sunday afternoons addressed to the working classes’ (200 men, met week days and on Sundays); ‘one of the most conspicuous members’ soundly converted from a ‘blackguardly life’, became a stalwart supporter of Rogers and the Class (no).
14 Byles, The P.S.A., 19, 21–4. PSA. Leader, November 1902, 166. See also Theodore Taylor’s account of starting a PSA class in Batley, quoted in Greenwood, George A., Taylor of Batley: a Story of 102 Years (London, 1957), 48–9 Google Scholar. Taylor (1850–1952), was president of the Batley Congregational Church PSA from 1891–1922 when he became a Labour M.P.
15 The Congregationalist, January 1883, 83, reported that several thousand listened to Moody at Southampton but that Archibald Brown, of East London Tabernacle, ‘records with heaviness of heart his conviction that the reverse of the picture is true, and getting daily more so&. Last week some 10,000 homes were visited, and the inhabitants pressed to come to some services being held in this neighbourhood. Result: a congregation of 120.’
16 This is mentioned by Bebbington, David, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: a History from the 1730s to 1980s(1989 London, 1993), 116–17 Google Scholar.
17 Parsons, Gerald, ‘Emotion and Piety: Revivalism and Ritualism in Victorian Christianity’, idem, ed., Religion in Victorian Britain, vol. 1 : Traditions (Manchester, 1988), 213–34, at 218 Google Scholar.
18 Kent, John, Hold the Fort: Studies in Victorian Revivalism (London, 1978), 161 Google Scholar.
19 The badge of the PSA and the subsequent Brotherhood movement showed clasped hands. The PSA class at Belgrave Chapel, Leeds, produced a weekly magazine called The Helping Hand, 1896–8.
20 Luker, David, ‘Revivalism in Theory and Practice: the Case of Cornish Methodism’, JEH 37 (1986), 603–19, at 619 Google Scholar.
21 P.S.A. Reporter & Record, No. 1, March 1892,5; and No. 2, April 1892, 17.
22 Mellors, Robert, How Two Thousand Men Have Been Won (Nottingham, 1889)Google Scholar. Mellors (1835–1931) was president of the PSA class begun in the Albert Hall in October 1887; he was a member of the new Nottinghamshire County Council, and his account was given at the World’s Sunday School Convention, London, 4 July 1889.
23 As A. Holden Byles was later to comment about the music at his own Hanley class, ‘The solo may be made one of the most profitable parts of the service.& Mr. Sankey has taught us that a sermon which is sung may be quite as effective as one that is spoken’. Byles, The P.S.A., 26–7.
24 Mellors, Two Thousand Men, 3–5. The ‘United Gospel Mission is an evangelistic agency, designed to aid and supplement the work of the Churches. It includes, as workers, many persons who are connected with various Churches. The persons rent the largest Hall in the town for Evangelistic purposes. A part of the work carried on was a Bible Class of thirty or forty men. The members of that Bible Class determined, God helping them, they would largely increase their numbers; they sent a deputation over to Derby to see Mr. Hodder’s Class; they sought for additional workers, and so set the Class a going.’ Ibid., 12.
25 Mellors, Two Thousand Men, 14–15.
26 Ibid., 17–18.
27 W. Higginbottom, ‘Paper Read at the Conference of P.S.A. Classes Held October 1st 1891’, P.S.A. Magazine, No. 1, 1 December 1891, 3.
28 Ibid., 6.
29 Byles, The PSA, 40–1.
30 P.S.A. Reporter & Record, No. 1, March 1892, 12.
31 The Congregationalist, March 1883, 269.
32 London, Congregational Library/Dr Williams’s Library, MS II.a.52. Collection of letters To the Revd F. B. Meyer B. A., Septr 1895’. For example, ‘Bro W. Wallin’ wrote that ‘I have given up gambling and evere (sic) thing that was bad. And give my heart to god and now I am in the right Path. And I mean to go on fighting the good fight that he has given me to do and bring others to the fold &’ H. Newton, in a badly spelled and constructed letter thanked Meyer: ‘I was a black sinner I was a blackslider (sic) I had wandered so far in sin through my unpure actions many and time & and at last I was running the drunkards and gamblers path often I was playing cards all day on Sunday& and a long time after that I gave up drink and about 9 months later when in the p.s.a. I gave my heart to God 12 months last July and now in stead of taking my wife in the pubs we booth (sic) get on our nees (sic) every night by our bed side to ? & live happy prayerful lives with his love I abide very close to my saviours side’. G. E. Johnson, of Waterloo Road, recounted his conversion in the PSA meeting and that afterwards he had been ‘through the summer engaged in outdoor work for the Master’.
33 P.S.A. Reporter & Record, No. 1, March 1892, 7.
34 John Blackham answered these criticisms in the Belgrave Chapel, Leeds, PSA magazine, Helping Hand, 4 December 1898.
35 Typical of a PSA that moved in this direction was the class started by the Revd Richard Westrope at Belgrave Chapel, Leeds in 1890, which by 1895–6 was involved in supporting various trade union disputes, in part reflecting Westrope’s own political radicalism. This divided the congregation of the Chapel, possibly the PSA as well, and resulted in Westrope’s resignation in early 1896. See Dixon, J. W., Pledged to the People: a Sketch of Rev. Richard Westrope and Congregational Aggressive Work in Leeds (Leeds, 1896)Google Scholar, and issues of Helping Hand, the Belgrave PSA magazine 1896–8.
36 For example, the Revd R. F. Horton argued in the British Weekly, 9 February 1893, 259, that the ‘Forward Movement’ was ‘to bring the vast uncared for masses back to God’, while his fellow Congregationalist, Dr J. Guinness Rogers wrote that ‘What I understand & by the Forward Movement is some action inspired by devoted loyalty to the Master for bringing men to faith in Him& [with] one aim& the conversion of souls to Jesus Christ& The process of change is from within outward, not from the outside inward.’ Rogers, The Forward Movement and the Christian Church (London, 1893), 4, 8, 12, 14 (his italics). See further Oldstone-Moore, C., Hugh Price Hughes: Founder of a New Methodism, Conscience of a New Nonconformity (Cardiff, 1999), ch. 5; Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes, 70–1 Google Scholar.