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Silent Preachers in the Age of Ingenuity: Faith, Commerce, and Religious Tracts in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2011

Joseph Stubenrauch
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Extract

“Why should not system be opposed to system, brevity to brevity, cheapness to cheapness, entertainment to entertainment, and perseverance to perseverance? Thus alone can the enemy be met in his marches and his countermarches, and thus a reasonable hope may be indulged of baffling his schemes.”

–Annual Report of the Religious Tract Society, 1808
On the Thursday morning of August 23, 1821, the executive committee members of the Religious Tract Society (RTS) gathered for a special meeting. Spread before them were specimens of irreligious street literature sold by their competitors. Balefully, they eyed a “good number of the low, mischievous, and disgusting publications now on the table.” The committee was in fact already intimately familiar with these types of publications, but their review of them inspired the RTS to redouble their efforts “to publish tracts with the express purpose of meeting and suppressing the lowest class of books now circulating.” To this end, they deemed it “expedient to descend the scale which the society's publications have hitherto maintained, in order to meet the evil so much complained of.” Furthermore, the committee resolved to focus their attention on discovering “the best means” for putting their new, lowbrow tracts into “extensive circulation.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 80 , Issue 3 , September 2011 , pp. 547 - 574
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2011

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References

1 Proceedings of the First Twenty Years of the Religious Tract Society (London: Benjamin Bensley, 1820), 101Google Scholar.

2 United Society for Christian Literature / Religious Tract Society Executive Committee Minutes, August 23, 1821. The USCL/RTS archives are held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

3 Jones, William, ed., The Jubilee Memorial of the Religious Tract Society: Containing a Record of its Origin, Proceedings, and Results, A.D. 1799 to A.D. 1849 (London: Religious Tract Society, 1850), appendix 2Google Scholar.

4 The most thorough and recent study of the RTS focuses on the Victorian period and thus rarely consults pre-1840 materials: Fyfe, Aileen, Science and Salvation: Evangelical Popular Science Publishing in Victorian Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 For an overview of these two traditions, see Haddorff, David W., “Religion and the Market: Opposition, Absorption, or Ambiguity?” Review of Social Economy 58 (December 1, 2000): 483–504CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For consumer goods as a “secular, vulgarized expression of popular religion,” see Loeb, Lori Anne, Consuming Angels: Advertising and Victorian Women (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 102–3Google Scholar.

6 Fyfe, Aileen, “Commerce and Philanthropy: The Religious Tract Society and the Business of Publishing,” Journal of Victorian Culture 9 (2004): 164–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jeremy, David, ed., Business and Religion in Britain (Brookfield, Vt.: Gower, 1988)Google Scholar; Sheils, W. J. and Wood, Diana, The Church and Wealth (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987)Google Scholar; Garnett, Jane, “Evangelicalism and Business in mid-Victorian Britain,” in Evangelical Faith and Public Zeal: Evangelicals and Society in Britain, 1780–1980, ed. Wolffe, John (London: SPCK, 1995), 59–80Google Scholar. Alternately, some scholars have studied religious business networks from the vantage point of ethnic minorities. This approach reconnects British religion with transnational histories of minority communities but at the cost of setting aside these faith communities' specific beliefs. Cf. Jeremy, David, ed., Religion, Business and Wealth in Modern Britain (London: Routledge, 1998)Google Scholar.

7 Hilton, Boyd, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988)Google Scholar; Waterman, A. M. C., Revolution, Economics and Religion: Christian Political Economy, 1798–1833 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Searle, G. R., Morality and the Market in Victorian Britain (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Christian political economy in the United States in this period, see Davenport, Stewart, Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon: Northern Christians and Market Capitalism, 1815–1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Searle, Morality and the Market, 13–14.

9 Ward, W. R., “Methodism and Wealth, 1740–1860,” in Religion, Business and Wealth in Modern Britain, ed. Jeremy, David (London: Routledge, 1998), 69Google Scholar.

10 Fyfe, “Commerce and Philanthropy”; Fyfe, Science and Salvation; Howsam, Leslie, Cheap Bibles: Nineteenth-Century Publishing and the British and Foreign Bible Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

11 Fyfe, Science and Salvation, 39.

12 Fyfe, Science and Salvation, 274.

13 Howsam, Cheap Bibles, 205.

14 Nord, David Paul, Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Noll, Mark, ed., God and Mammon: Protestants, Money, and the Market, 1790–1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Morgan, David, Protestants and Pictures: Religion, Visual Culture, and the Age of American Mass Production (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

15 Nord, Faith in Reading, 43–45.

16 Lambert, Frank, “Pedlar in Divinity”: George Whitefield and the Transatlantic Revivals, 1737–1770 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Lambert, Inventing the “Great Awakening.”

17 Howsam, Cheap Bibles, 205; Fyfe, Science and Salvation, 186.

18 Fyfe, “Commerce and Philanthropy,” 166; Fyfe, Science and Salvation, 14, 186.

19 “Address of the Religious Tract Society,” The Evangelical Magazine, 7 (1799): 307–8Google Scholar.

20 Vincent, David, The Rise of Mass Literacy: Reading and Writing in Modern Europe (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000), 9–10Google Scholar. Proceedings, postscript.

21 Proceedings, vi.

22 Proceedings, 26.

23 Proceedings, postscript.

24 Neuberg, Victor, “The Literature of the Streets,” in Victorian City: Images and Realities, ed. Dyos, Harold James and Wolff, Michael (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), 1:206–7Google Scholar.

25 “The Beautiful Muff,” Collection: Street Ballads, Rare Book 492647, Huntington Library; “Murder,” Broadsides: Murders and Executions Folder 4 (36), John Johnson Collection, Bodleian Library; “A copy of a letter written by our blessed Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. And found under a great stone, sixty-five years after his crucifiction [sic],” Rare Book 18199, Huntington Library.

26 Proceedings, postscript.

27 Proceedings, 178.

28 Their concern for basic solvency, however, became an increasing concern in the 1820s and their ever-expanding publishing efforts produced vigorous and prolonged fundraising efforts which were ultimately successful. Memorials of William Jones of the Religious Tract Society (London: Nisbet, 1857) 94–96Google Scholar.

29 Jubilee Memorial, 119.

30 Proceedings, 75.

31 Jubilee Memorial, 220.

32 USCL/RTS Hawkers Subcommittee Minutes (hereafter, HSM), February 25, 1809.

33 USCL/RTS Executive Committee Minutes (hereafter, ECM), April 4, 1823.

34 USCL/RTS HSM, February 7, 1815.

35 USCL/RTS ECM, January 26, 1824.

36 USCL/RTS ECM, June 2, 1824.

37 USCL/RTS ECM, June 8, 1824.

38 USCL/RTS HSM, June 14, 1814.

39 USCL/RTS ECM, May 23, 1820.

40 USCL/RTS ECM, May 30, 1820.

41 USCL/RTS ECM, December 5, 1820.

42 Mayhew, Henry, London Labour and the London Poor, vol. 5: Those That Will Not Work (London: Charles Griffin, 1864) 24Google Scholar. I am grateful to Christopher Ferguson for bringing this reference to my attention.

43 Tract Magazine (1:1834), 15.

44 USCL/RTS ECM, October 20, 1807.

45 USCL/RTS ECM, June 13, 1820. The RTS gave him two hundred tracts in response.

46 Jubilee Memorial, 221. These tickets could be used to ease a variety of distressed circumstances, such as when the Committee set aside tract ticket funds for “poor Africans” in London, USCL/RTS ECM, December 31, 1822.

47 Chalmers, Thomas, “The Influence of Bible Societies on the Temporal Necessities of the Poor,” The Works of Thomas Chalmers (Philadelphia, Pa.: Towar and Hogan, 1830)Google Scholar.

48 Jubilee Memorial, 221. Also, Proceedings 174.

49 Jubilee Memorial, 174–76.

50 USCL/RTS ECM, October 2, 1821; and Jubilee Proceedings, 177.

51 USCL/RTS ECM, September 26, 1820, and August 23, 1821.

52 USCL/RTS ECM, April 9, 1822, and February 18, 1823.

53 USCL/RTS ECM, December 18, 1821.

54 USCL/RTS ECM, November 8, 1822, and February 18, 1823. The Committee, at times, gave much thought to the organization of their catalogue and how to classify and arrange tracks to make them “conspicuous.” Cf. USCL/RTS HSM, June 14, 1814, or USCL/RTS ECM, December 3, 1822.

55 USCL RTS ECM, July 16, 1822.

56 Hilton, The Age of Atonement, 69.

57 Hilton, The Age of Atonement, 87.

58 Proceedings, 75.

59 USCL/RTS HSM, March 25, 1806; and USCL/RTS ECM, May 15, 1821.

60 USCL/RTS ECM, January 2, 1820; and USCL/RTS ECM, May 21, 1823. An “indifferent likeness” of the regent on a tract earned the committee's ire and a demand for another version, USCL/RTS ECM, July 3, 1821.

61 USCL/RTS ECM, December 16, 1823.

62 USCL/RTS ECM, January 6, 1824.

63 USCL/RTS ECM, September 18, 1821; and USCL/RTS ECM, September 25, 1821.

64 USCL/RTS ECM, December 12, 1809.

65 “Christ the Only Refuge from the Wrath to Come” (Religious Tract Society), RB.23.a.23197 (3), British Library.

66 “Christ the Only Refuge from the Wrath to Come” (Religious Tract Society), 863.k.4 (72), British Library.

67 USCL/RTS ECM, February 26, 1821.

68 USCL/RTS ECM, August 23, 1822.

69 USCL/RTS ECM, July 3, 1821.

70 USCL/RTS ECM, July 3, 1821; August 16, 1821; November 25, 1823; March 4, 1828; December 31, 1822; February 4, 1823; December 10, 1711; February 8, 1820; September 25, 1821; and Proceedings, 171.

71 USCL/RTS ECM, May 29, 1810.

72 The Hull Packet and Original Weekly Commercial, Literary and General Advertiser (Hull, England), March 13, 1810, issue 1209.

73 The Hull Packet and Original Weekly Commercial, Literary and General Advertiser (Hull, England), February 13, 1810, issue 1205.

74 The Hull Packet and Original Weekly Commercial, Literary and General Advertiser (Hull, England), April 3, 1810, issue 1212.

75 USCL/RTS ECM, May 29, 1810.

76 The Hull Packet and Original Weekly Commercial, Literary and General Advertiser (Hull, England), Tuesday, April 17, 1810, issue 1214.

77 Thomas Scott to Zachary Macaulay, February 7, 1811. MY747, Huntington Library.

78 USCL/RTS ECM, August 8, 1809.

79 Tract Magazine (2:1834), 40. The trope of children converting and/or giving religious access to their parents enjoyed popularity in the literature of many benevolent societies: Laqueur, Thomas W., Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and English Working Class Culture, 1780–1850 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1976), 7–8Google Scholar.

80 USCL/RTS HSM, December 29, 1818.

81 USCL/RTS ECM, August 23, 1821; and Jubilee Memorial, 120.

82 Proceedings, 82–83.

83 Proceedings, 16.

84 Proceedings, 16–17.

85 Proceedings, 156.

86 Proceedings, 9.

87 Proceedings, 8–9.

88 Proceedings, 9, 11.

89 Proceedings, 10.

90 Proceedings, 17.

91 Proceedings, 10.

92 Proceedings, 8.

93 Fry, Elizabeth Gurney, Memoir of the Life of Elizabeth Fry, with Extracts from Her Journal and Letters, vol. 1, ed. Fry, Katherine and Cresswell, Rachel Elizabeth Fry (London: C. Gilpin, J. Hatchard, 1847), 485–86Google Scholar.

94 Proceedings, 10.

95 Proceedings, 13.

96 Fyfe, Science and Salvation, 32–33.

97 Proceedings, 180, 421; Tract Magazine (3:1834), 60.

98 Proceedings, 389, 419. In overseas contexts, the tracts took on exciting roles such as “spies” or even “little pioneers of Divine Truth” in the RTS's imagination. Proceedings, 276.

99 USCL/RTS ECM, February 27, 1821 and April 23, 1821. The slang and lower-class accents in this tract made it especially suited to the Hawkers' Series of lowbrow tracts.

100 For a study of other ways that cabs were imagined as circulating through cities and spreading a different type of influence, see Matthew L. Newsom Kerr, “‘Perambulating fever nests of our London streets’: Cabs, Omnibuses, Ambulances, and Other ‘Pest-Vehicles’ in the Victorian Metropolis,” Journal of British Studies 49, no. 2 (April 2010): 283–310.

101 Morning Chronicle, 1823. Fourth Anniversary Meeting of the Orange-Street Chapel Religious Tract Society. November 6.

102 Proceedings of the First Twenty Years of the Religious Tract Society (London: Benjamin Bensley, 1820), 10Google Scholar. Efforts to target servants would continue; see, for example, USCL/RTS ECM, August 28, 1821, and October 29, 1822.

103 USCL/RTS ECM, February 14, 1807; USCL/RTS ECM, April 7, 1807, and December 15, 1807; USCL/RTS ECM, March 17, 1824.

104 USCL/RTS ECM, November 17, 1829; and Proceedings, 9.

105 Corfield, Penelope, “Walking the Streets of London: The Urban Odyssey in Eighteenth-Century England,” Journal of Urban History, no. 16 (February 1990): 133CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Bogart, Dan, “Neighbors, Networks, and the Development of Transport Systems: Explaining the Diffusion of Turnpike Trusts in Eighteenth-Century England,” Journal of Urban Economics 61, no. 2 (March 2007): 238–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar. While turnpikes had existed in Britain since 1663, they did not become widespread until the 1770s. In the 1790s, Pitt enacted turnpike reforms in order to provide well-maintained roads for increasing trade and travel since the over nine hundred turnpike trusts in Britain had hitherto presented a rather spotty record of upkeep.

106 For more detailed accounts, see Kverndal, Roald, Seaman's Missions – Their Origin and Early Growth: A Contribution to the History of the Church Maritime (Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library, 1986)Google Scholar; and Blake, Richard, Evangelicals in the Royal Navy, 1775–1815: Blue Lights and Psalm-Singers (Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2008)Google Scholar.

107 USCL/RTS ECM, June 13, 1820.

108 USCL/RTS ECM, October 17, 1809.

109 USCL/RTS ECM, October 10, 1820; October 31, 1820; November 18, 1823; November 25, 1823; and December 2, 1823.

110 USCL/RTS ECM, February 23, 1830.

111 Titles included “The Seaman's Friend,” “A Dialogue between Two Seamen,” “The Seaman's Spyglass,” “Conversation in a Boat, between Two Seamen,” “The Shipmates, an Evening Conversation,” “The Shipwreck,” “The Storm at Sea, a Dialogue,” and “The Brave British Tar.”

112 Proceedings, 130.

113 USCL/RTS ECM, April 30, 1822.

114 Proceedings, 433.

115 The RTS regularly set aside grants of tracts for Colliers, cf. Proceedings, 370 and 382.

116 Proceedings, 244–45.

117 Proceedings, 434–35.

118 Jubilee Memorial, 242.

119 Fyfe, Science and Salvation, 34.

120 Proceedings, 10.

121 Proceedings, 30.

122 “The Tract Magazine, or Christian Miscellany,” Eclectic Review 21 (May 1824), 476.

123 Proceedings, 101.

124 “An Address to Heads of Families, on the proposed formation of a Bible Association, For the Town and Neighbourhood of Honiton,” January 2, 1815, Box: Bible Societies, John Johnson Collection, Bodleian Library; Owen, John, The History of the Origin and First Ten Years of the British and Foreign Bible Society (London: James Eastburn, 1817), 543Google Scholar.

125 Proceedings, 13, 20–21.

126 Proceedings, 17.

127 Searle, Morality and the Market, 13–14.

128 For an overview the Society's management of benevolent and commercial funds, see Fyfe, “Commerce and Philanthropy.”

129 Proceedings, 6.