Introduction: the associational ideal defined and extended

So disparate a body of religious institutions, precariously financed and nebulously sustained, positively demanded a defining principle for their future prosperity. This was the associational ideal. At one level, it was a very simple ideal. It insisted that the Christian faith was sustained in and through the Christian Church. Hence it placed the highest premium upon the maximisation of the Church's membership. But it was not thereby a shallow ideal, for it did not presume that every person was immediately fit to be a member of the Church. It held only that every adult could become fit for that end. To that end, it extolled the virtuous means of common association; more specifically, of a common association through which men and women might be taught the rudiments of the faith; by which they might be induced to join societies dedicated to the faith, and finally from which they might be emboldened to spread that faith through mission, bands and tracts.

To be sure, it was not an ingenuous ideal. Denominational organisations emphasised its primacy as part of their competitive purposes. Nor did it exhaust the Christian virtues. Even the most devoted partisan still recognised the significance of private prayer. So much was, and is, obvious. Less so was the degree to which it became a way of organisational life increasingly determined, in its characteristic forms, by the urban and industrial environment in which it matured.