No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
‘Too Peculiarly Anglican’: The Role of the Established Church in Ireland as A Negative Model in the Development of the Church Missionary Society’s Commitment to Independent Native Churches, 1856-1872
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
Henry Venn, the CMS honorary secretary between 1841 and 1872, is rightly regarded as the great exponent of self-supporting, self-propagating, and self-governing churches. I have argued elsehwere that his principles took many years to assume their final shape and that, when they did, they contained what was regarded as an ecclesiological anomaly—that there should be separate bishops for different races in the same geographical area. Between about 1856 and 1872 Venn became increasingly daring in his proposals, abandoned his support for the idea of a single European bishop wherever there were European settlers and was instrumental, not only in having Samuel Crowther appointed as the first black bishop in West Africa or in responding positively to suggestions of an Indian bishop for South India, but also in proposing, both in India and in China, that the needs of a truly culturally integrated independent ‘native’ church demanded that its structures should be separated from those of the imported European church.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1989
References
1 Church Missionary Society (MS, London, CMS and Birmingham, University of Birmingham).
2 C. Peter Williams, ‘The Ideal of the Self-Governing Church: An Examination of the Official Policies of the Church Missionary Society in Reladon to the Development of Self-Governing Churches, with Special Reference to Creating an Independent Native Episcopate from C.1850-C.1910’ (Ph.D. diesis, University of London, 1986), cap. 1.
3 Baumgart, Winfried, Imperialism: The Idea and Reality of British and French Colonial Expansion, 1880-1914 (Oxford, 1982), p. 15 Google Scholar.
4 C. Peter Williams, The Recruitment and Training of Overseas Missionaries in England between 1850 and 1900’ (M.Litt, thesis, University of Bristol, 1976), pp. 6-7.
5 Church Missionary Intelligencer (hereafter CMI) (1862), p. 123;(1869), p. 98.
6 From 1856 Irish Roman Catholics favouring disestablishment made links with the Liberation Society in Britain and the strength of the case grew through the sixties. See Nowlan, Kevin B., ‘Disestablishment: 1800-1869’ in Hurley, Michael (ed.), Irish Anglicanism, 1869-1969 (Dublin, 1970), pp. 10–17 Google Scholar.
7 Bowen, Desmond, The Protestant Crusade in Ireland, 1800-70: A Study of Protestant-Catholic Relations between the Act of Union and Disestablishment (Dublin, 1978), pp. 73–4, 246–7 Google Scholar.
8 Shenk, Wilbert R., ‘Henry Venn as Missionary Theorist and Administrator’ (PhD. thesis. University of Aberdeen, 1978), p. 258 Google Scholar.
9 Venn, Henry, The Missionary Life and Labours of Francis Xavier Taken from His Own Correspondence with a Sketch of the General Results of Roman Catholic Missions among the Heathen (London, 1862)Google Scholar.
10 CMI (1871), p. 193.
11 Yates, T. E., Venn and Victorian Bishops Abroad: The Missionary Policies of Henry Venn and Their Repercussions upon the Anglican Episcopate of the Colonial Period, 1841-1872 (London, 1978), pp. 99–109 Google Scholar.
12 G/AZ/1/1, no. 92, 14 April 1856. ‘Memorial of the Church Missionary Society upon the Extension of the Episcopate in India’; ibid., no. 93, 13 April 1857, another Memorial with the same title; ibid., no. 98,12 April 1858,’Letter to a Friend with the Views of the Committee of the Church Missionary Society on the Extension of the Episcopate in India”, Henry Venn.
13 ‘Letter to a Friend’, p. 2 [my italics].
14 ‘The Idea of the Missionary Bishop in Mid-Nineteenth Century Anglicanism’, MST, General Theological Seminary, New York (1968), p. 86.
15 CMI (1858), p. 162.
16 Ibid., p. 163.
17 Ibid., p. 172.
18 Ibid., p. 173.
19 Ibid., pp. 173-4.
20 Ibid., p. 174.
21 Ibid., p. 38.
22 Ibid., p. 176.
23 Ibid., p. 171.
24 There were other powerful opponents including Bishop Tait of London. See Davidson, Randall Thomas and Benham, William, Life of Archibald Campbell Tail: Archbishop of Canterbury, 2 vols (London, 1891), 1, p. 329 Google Scholar.
25 C A3/L1, p. 65, 23 May 1860, Venn to Crowther. See also CN/L6, pp. 384-8, 8 June 1860, Venn and W. Knight’s instructions to the Revd and Mrs J. W. Gedge.
26 Venn wrote three papers on the organization of the native church (1851,1861, and 1866) and these, together with his 1868 paper on nationality, contained the core of his thinking on this subject. They can be found in Knight, W., The Missionary Secretariat of Henry Venn, BD (London, 1880), pp. 282–92, 305–21 Google Scholar.
27 Knight, The Missionary Secretariat, p. 313.
28 CMI (1861), p. 274.
29 Ibid., p. 275.
30 Ibid., p.276.
31 Ibid., p. 277.
32 C A2/049/65,15 November 1864, the Revd David Hinderer to Venn.
33 Grey-Edwards, A. H., The Life of a Great Missionary, Memoir of the Revd John Thomas, CMS Missionary at Megnanapuram Tinnevelly, South India, 1836-1870 (London, 1904), p. 148 Google Scholar.
34 CI1/L6, pp. 430-1, 26 December 1864, Venn to Bishop Cotton.
35 Yates, Venn and Victorian Bishops Abroad, p. 131; for Stock see Williams, ‘The Ideal’, pp. 66, 69-70,108-9, 344-5.
36 See Williams, The Ideal’, pp. 50-76.
37 Ibid., pp.63-73.
38 The article, like the others considered, was not signed by Ridgeway but Eugene Stock, who was in the best position to know, attributes the 1858, 1861, and 1869 articles tohim, see CMI (1901), p. 261 and History of the Church Missionary Society, 3 vols (London, 1899), 2, p. 590.
39 CMI (1869), p. 99.
40 Papers on Africa, Mauritius, China, and New Zealand, no. 37, August 1872 ‘Memorandum on the Need of Some Modification of an Order in Council, May 1848, Respecting the Jurisdiction of the Bishop of Victoria (China)’, p. 2.
41 CMI (1869), p. 99.
42 Ibid., p. 100.
43 Ibid., p. 104.
44 Ibid. p. 105.
45 Ibid., p. 317.
46 Ibid., p. 106.
47 Ibid., p. 312.
48 Ibid., p. 106.
49 Ibid., p. 105.
50 Lambeth Palace Archives, Tait Papers, vol. 169. fol. 313, 14 May 1870, Bishop Alford to Archbishop Tait.
51 CMI (1869), pp. 106,316.
52 History, 2, p. 42s.
53 CMI (1870), p. 230. Again the article is anonymous but Stock (History, 2, p. 425) makes it clear that it is by Ridgeway.
54 CMI (1870), p. 231.
55 Ibid., p. 232; see also CMI (1869), p. 102. On contemporary evangelical attitudes to disestablishment see A. Bendey, The Transformation of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England in the Late Nineteenth Century’ (PhX). thesis, University of Durham, 1971), pp. 24-30.
56 Conference on Missions Held in 1860 at Liverpool (London, 1860), p. 77.
57 CMI (1869), p. 316.
58 ‘Pamphlets and Papers on India, Educational etc.’, n.d., no. 13, ‘Native Church Organization’, p. 3. M. A. C. Warren, in his index on North India, p. 85, deposited in CMS London, speculates that this may have been from an ‘associate’ or ‘disciple’ or Venn’s or even a final memorandum from him. It was in fact published in the Madras Church Missionary Record in 1872 and is quoted extensively by Sir Bartle Frere in Church Congress Report (London, 1882), pp. 531-3.
59 See the ‘Memorandum upon the Resolutions Passed at the Conference of the Bishops of the Province of India and Ceylon’ etc., and bound into CMI (1877), p. 7.
60 Williams, The Ideal’, cap. 5.