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Sectarianism versus Ecumenism: the Impact on British Churches of the Missionary Movement to India, c. 1800–1860

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Stuart Piggin
Stuart Piggin
Affiliation:
Lecturer in History, University of Wollongong, Australia
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Extract

In October 1826, an impassioned letter appeared in The Times, written by an outraged correspondent whose house had been entered unceremoniously by two offensive females who demanded first a donation towards the construction of a missionary training college and then a justification of his refusal to subscribe. He fulminated against the triumphalism of voluntary religious societies: ‘It seems “to grow by what it feeds on”’ The first half of the nineteenth century in Britain was certainly an age of ‘evangelical aggression’, and probably the modern missionary movement was making an impression on British society far deeper than it made on such countries as India and Africa, to which missionaries were sent. Missionary enthusiasm appears to have increased lay giving for home missions as well as foreign missions; it probably stimulated interest in home missions and increased the number of candidates for the ministry; it almost certainly provided a fillip to theological education; it reinforced the already existing tendency to express piety in activity rather than quiescence; it helped to bury fatalistic and deterministic theological systems; it appears to have appealed, like the later temperance movement, to all classes of society; and (perhaps related to the last claim) it declared war on denominational bigotry.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , October 1976 , pp. 387 - 402
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

page 387 note 1 ‘W. J.’ to the Editor of The Times, 19 October 1826.

page 387 note 2 When, in 1825, the Church Missionary Society (C.M.S.) founded its training college at Islington, the Church of England had no tradition of theological colleges and St. Bees' College, Cumberland, founded as recently as 1816, was the only precedent which the C.M.S. had for such an action. A further nine colleges were established before 1859. The C.M.S. may be seen to have lent early support to the movement for specialised vocational training, which was essential to a society which was attaching increasing importance to professionalism. It is also unlikely that the Wesleyan Theological Institution would have been established in 1834 were it not for the support of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (W.M.M.S.). See Minutes of the W.M.M.S., 12 November 1834, 349 ff. (Methodist Missionary Society Headquarters, Marylebone Road, London), and a broadsheet entitled Wesleyan Missionary Society, 12 November 1834 (Methodist Archives, City Road, London). In the Baptist and Congregational denominations many of the most active committee men of the Baptist Missionary Society (B.M.S.) and the London Missionary Society (L.M.S.) were tutors in theological colleges.

page 388 note 1 For example, Chadwick, O.. in The Victorian Church, London 1966Google Scholar and 1970, not only refuses to follow Victorian Christianity into foreign lands (i. 6), but he largely ignores the British missionary organisations which made this expansion possible.

page 388 note 2 Ward, W. R., Religion and Society in England, 1790–1850, London 1972, 45.Google Scholar

page 388 note 3 This criticism can be levelled at the otherwise very useful first chapter of Laird, M. A., Missionaries and Education in Bengal 1793–1837, Oxford 1972Google Scholar, and at Gunson, W. N., ‘Victorian Christianity in the South Seas: a Survey’, The Journal of Religious History, 8 (1974), 183–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 389 note 1 The seven were: (i) Ralph Wardlaw (1779–1854); North Albion Street Meeting Place (1803–19), West George Street Chapel (1819–53), Glasgow; director of the L.M.S. for 25 years, (ii) William Roby (1766–1830); Cannon Street Chapel and (after 1807) Grosvenor Street Chapel, Manchester; a founder of the L.M.S. and director for 25 years, (iii) John Angell James (1785–1859); Carr's Lane Chapel, Birmingham; director of the L.M.S. for 34 years, (iv) Joseph Fletcher (1784–1843); Blackburn (1807–23), Stepney Meeting, London (1823–43); director of the L.M.S. for 21 years. (v) John Philip (1775–1851); Belmont Street Chapel, Aberdeen (1804–18), superintendent of the L.M.S.'s Mission to South Africa (1819–51); director of the L.M.S. for 34 years, (vi) Thomas Binney (1798–1874); King's Weigh House Chapel, London (1829–69); director of the L.M.S. for 5 years, (vii) Thomas Stollery (1770–1832); Chapel Street, Soho (1796–1832).

page 389 note 2 Stollery's fame did not reach beyond his congregation.

page 389 note 3 Of Philip, John, Wardlaw remarked: ‘He was a man of a catholic, or rather … of a Christian spirit … distinguished … for his willingness to co-operate with Christians of other denominations, in any or every work that had for its object either the amelioration of the social condition of the people, or the extension of the religion of Christ at home and abroad’: What is Death? A Sermon delivered … on occasion of the Recent Death of the Rev. John Philip D.D., Glasgow 1852, 49f.Google Scholar

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page 389 note 5 Alexander, W. L., Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Ralph Wardlaw, D.D., Edinburgh 1856, 171;Google ScholarEscott, H., A History of Scottish Congregationalism, Glasgow 1960, 94f.Google Scholar

page 389 note 6 Fletcher, J. (Jr.), Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of the Late Rev. Joseph Fletcher, D.D., London 1846, 175.Google Scholar

page 390 note 1 Ibid., 335.

page 390 note 2 Dale, R. W., The Life and Letters of John Angell James, London 1862, 146.Google Scholar

page 390 note 3 Peel, A., These Hundred Years: a History of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, 1831–1931, London 1931, 49.Google Scholar

page 390 note 4 Ibid., 10, 46.

page 390 note 5 Ibid.

page 390 note 6 Payne, E. A., The Baptist Union: a Short History, London 1959, 6, 24, 59.Google Scholar

page 390 note 7 Ibid., 39.

page 390 note 8 Ibid., 22.

page 390 note 9 Ibid., 20.

page 390 note 10 Ibid. 24, 44f. On Ivimey's enthusiasm for home, Irish, and foreign missions, see Dictionary of National Biography and Pritchard, G., Memoir of the life and Writings of the Rev. Joseph Ivimey, London 1835, passim.Google Scholar

page 390 note 11 Rouse, R. and Neill, S. C. (eds.), A History of the Ecumenical Movement, London 1967, chaps. 6 and 7.Google Scholar

page 390 note 12 W. L. Alexander, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Ralph Wardlow, D. D., 498.

page 391 note 1 Ibid., 336f.

page 391 note 2 Davie, G. E., The Democratic Intellect: Scotland and her Universities in the Nineteenth Century, Edinburgh 1964, 267.Google Scholar

page 391 note 3 R. Rouse and S. C. Neill, op. cit., 282.

page 391 note 4 ‘My esteemed friend, Dr. Fletcher, had the thought in his mind before it came to me’, admitted James: R. W. Dale, op cit., 241.

page 391 note 5 Thomas Chalmers and R. S. Candlish were also among the contributors. They were prominent ministers in the Free Church of Scotland and, in their respective parishes and colleges, nurtured many missionaries.

page 391 note 6 In 1840 the Irish Evangelical Society became denominational. Ralph Wardlaw acted as arbitrator in its negotiations with the Congregational Union of Ireland and the Congregational Union of England and Wales: Correspondence of R. Wardlaw, 494/1, 10 and 11 June 1840, New College, London.

page 391 note 7 James, J. A., The Attraction of the Cross, a Sermon preached before the London Missionary Society at Surrey Chapel, London 1819, 36f.Google Scholar

page 392 note 1 James, J. A., Missionary Prospects, a Sermon … at the Opening of Hoxton College as a Missionary Seminary, London 1826, 32f.Google Scholar

page 392 note 2 Ibid., 27f.

page 392 note 3 Eclectic Review, January-June 1837, 180f.

page 393 note 1 W. Summer to Mr. Elliott, 25 September, 1795: C7/14, C.M.S. Archives. This statement is interesting early evidence of the self-consciousness of Evangelicalism. It was obviously a recognisable interdenominational movement—a fact which makes one sceptical of John Kent's irritated outburst that ‘Evangelicalism, like the Feudal system, never existed’: Kent, J. H. S., The Age of Disunity, London 1966, xi.Google Scholar

page 393 note 2 Ibid.

page 393 note 3 Lovett, R., The History of the London Missionary Society, 1795–1895, London 1899, i. 35.Google Scholar Bogue became tutor of the Gosport Academy and Missionary Seminary, where almost half of the L.M.S.'s missionaries studied before 1825 when Bogue died. Consequently, ‘the union of affection which all Christian missionaries should feel, was ever inculcated at Gosport, as highly conducive to the accomplishment of the grand object’: Bennett, J., Memoirs of the Life of the Rev. David Bogue, D. D., London 1827, 213. It has been remarked that Gosport was ‘a factory’ for the production of orthodox Congregationalists: W. N. Gunson, ‘Evangelical Missionaries in the South Seas, 1797–1860’, Ph.D. Thesis, Australian National University 1959, 62. This, emphatically, it was not.Google Scholar

page 393 note 4 L.M.S., Board Minutes, 9 May 1796, 98. See I. Fletcher, ‘The Formative Years of the London Missionary Society with Special Reference to the Fundamental Principle’, L.M.S. 1961, Typescript.

page 393 note 5 L.M.S., Minutes of the Committee of examination, 25 February 1805, 69.

page 393 note 6 Ibid., 10 January 1820, 48.

page 394 note 1 Jeal, T. (Livingstone, London 1973, 18) is in error in claiming that Baptists were acceptable to the L.M.S.Google Scholar

page 394 note 2 L.M.S., Minutes of the Committee of Examination, 17 February 1817, 77.

page 394 note 3 Ibid., 7 August 1799, 9: 27 August 1824, 115.

page 394 note 4 L.M.S., Candidates' Papers: A Leitch to J. Arundel, 4 December 1837, and j. Duthie to the Directors, 6 October 1853.

page 394 note 5 Ibid.: D. Wallace to E. Prout, 29 September 1853.

page 394 note 6 Ibid.: J. Paterson to J. Arundel, 22 January 1838.

page 394 note 7 Morris, J. H., The History of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists' Foreign Mission, to the end of the year 1904, Carnarvon 1910, 25 ff. In fact, behind the rejection by the L.M.S. of Thomas Jones—a rejection which provoked the Connexion to form its own missionary society—was the opinion of the Directors that his educational attainments were not sufficiently high to justify their having him trained for service in India, the field to which he insisted on being sent. See L.M.S. Minutes of the Committee of Examination, 23 December 1839, 55.Google Scholar

page 395 note 1 Rupp, E. G., Thomas Jackson: Methodist Patriarch, London 1954, 20.Google Scholar

page 395 note 2 Ibid., 29.

page 395 note 3 Minutes of the Wesleyan Theological Institution, 3 July 1845, 86f.: Methodist Archives, London.

page 395 note 4 T. Coke to R. Smith, 29 October 1812: Methodist Archives, London.

page 395 note 5 Even such a hard-headed advocate of the Wesleyan theological scheme as Jabez Bunting could offer only praise after hearing a sermon preached by the Scottish Calvinist, Thomas Chalmers: ‘In descanting on the perfect freeness of spiritual privileges and urging the people to embrace by faith a present salvation, as offered in the Gospel to every one of them, he almost excelled everything I heard or read’: Bunting, T. P. and Rowe, G. S., The Life of Jabez Bunting, D.D., London 1887, 551Google Scholar. Bunting's pleasure at hearing Chalmers's Calvinism recalls Simeon's delight with John Wesley's Arminianism (Moule, H. C. G., Charles Simeon, London 1948, 79f.Google Scholar) and emphasises that in preaching and evangelism there was little to distinguish Evangelical Calvinism from Wesleyan Arminianism.

page 396 note 1 Samuel Mateer, for example, applied to the L.M.S. because the W.M.M.S. would not let him go to India as a married man: L.M.S., Candidates' Papers, Letter from S. Mateer, 8 January 1858.

page 396 note 2 Findlay, G. G. and Holdsworth, W. W., The History of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, London 1921–1924, V. 194Google Scholar; W.M.M.S., Minutes, 9 June 1852, 50f.; Penny, F., The Church in Madras, London 1904–1922, III. 366, 369; S.P.G., Standing Committee Minutes, 30 December 1842, 225.Google Scholar

page 396 note 3 Stock, E., The History of the Church Missionary Society, London 1899, I. 64f.Google Scholar

page 396 note 4 C.M.S., Minutes, 2 October 1815, 386.

page 396 note 5 George Finch wrote a number of books on this subject, including A Sketch of the Romish Controversy, London 1831.Google Scholar

page 396 note 6 C.M.S., G/AC3: E. Dewdney to the Secretary, 11 August 1837.

page 397 note 1 C.M.S., C/AC3: G. G. Cuthbert to the Committee, 4 April 1845.

page 397 note 2 C.M.S., C/AC1/3/547: Letter from G. F. Cameron, 29 May 1852.

page 397 note 3 C.M.S., C/AC1/3: I. Hay to W. Knight, 20 June 1853.

page 397 note 4 C.M.S., C/AC1/3/304: W. H. Howard to the Secretary, 10 February 1851.

page 397 note 5 C.M.S., C/AC3: G. C. Greenway to the Committee, 26 May 1835.

page 397 note 6 C.M.S., Proceedings, 1843, Appendix, 113–43, for documents relating to Humphrey's dismissal.

page 397 note 7 Ibid.: ‘Basement plan of proposed church at Mayaveram’, facing p.130.

page 397 note 8 Cnattingius, H., Bishops and Societies: a Study 0fAnglican, Colonial and Missionary Expansion, 1698–1850, London 1952, 222.Google Scholar

page 397 note 9 C.M.S., Minutes: 30 November 1841, 398.

page 397 note 10 Church, R.W., The Oxford Movement: twelve Years 1833–1845, London 1892, 264f.Google Scholar

page 397 note 11 C.M.S., Proceedings, 1843, 132f.; E. Stock, op. cit., i. 392.

page 398 note 1 Bishop's College, Calcutta, 1820–1970, Calcutta 1970, 14.Google Scholar

page 398 note 2 S.P.G., x-115, Minutes of the Candidates' Committee, December 1839–June 1848, 15 May 1846, 213.

page 398 note 3 For example, Joseph Walpole, George Weidemann and Thomas Suter were Evangelicals who served with the S.P.G. in India before 1859.

page 398 note 4 S.P.G., x-114, 118f.

page 398 note 5 Bateman, J., The Life of the Right Rev. Daniel Wilson, D.D., London 1860, II. 185.Google Scholar

page 398 note 6 F. Penny, op.cit., iii. 373.

page 398 note 7 In the formation of its Mission to India the Church of Scotland exhibited a similar capacity to cut across the division between Evangelicalism and Moderatism. See D. Chambers, ‘The Origins of the Church of Scotland's Official Foreign Mission Scheme: Evangelical Revival or Moderate Revival?’ in a forthcoming issue of The Journal of Religious History. Chambers quotes a remarkable passage from Native Education written by James Bryce, a founder of the Mission, on ‘the Catholic character’ of this project which won the support of ‘Men of all sides of the Church’.

page 399 note 1 C.M.S., C/AC 1/3/327: W. Hodgson's letter, 2 April 1851.

page 399 note 2 C.M.S., C/AC 1/4: R. H. Vickers' answers to questions, 20 June 1854.

page 399 note 3 W.M.M.S., Minutes, 10 June 1832, 186.

page 399 note 4 Mitchell, J. M., Memoir of the Rev. Robert Nesbit, London 1858, 28, 36f.Google Scholar

page 399 note 5 The committee of the W.M.M.S. expressed thinking common in missionary circles when it refused to finance Bourne's Book Society on the grounds that money should not be spent on an ‘object which appears to be purely controversial’: Minutes, 10 June 1832, 186. It was also appreciated that sectarian enthusiasm could easily prove counter-productive. William Hanna, reporting on the formation of an auxiliary branch of the Scottish Missionary Society in the Royal Academical Institution, Belfast, lamented that interest in missions was diminished because of a flourishing controversy with Roman Catholics: W. Hanna to J. Wilson, 10 May 1826: Correspondence of the Edinburgh University Missionary Association, New College, Edinburgh.

page 399 note 6 T. P. Bunting and G. S. Rowe, op. cit., 418.

page 399 note 7 Ibid., 507.

page 400 note 1 Wilson, J., Observations on the Motives and Encouragements to Active Missionary Exertions, Edinburgh 1827, 12.Google Scholar

page 400 note 2 Ibid., 11.

page 400 note 3 Macdonald, J., Statement of Reasons for Accepting a Call to go to India as a Missionary, Glasgow 1839, 19.Google Scholar

page 400 note 4 Ibid., 16.

page 400 note 5 C.M.S., G/AC3: Letter from T. Scott, 19 July 1820.

page 401 note 1 Taylor, I, Natural History of Enthusiasm, London 1829, 269f.Google Scholar

page 401 note 2 Ritson, J. H., Records of Missionary Secretaries, an Account of the Celebration of the Centenary of the London Secretaries' Association, London 1920.Google Scholar

page 401 note 3 R. Rouse and S. C. Neill, op. cit., 312; cf. Goodall, N., The Ecumenical Movement, London 1961, 5f.Google Scholar

page 402 note 1 C.M.S. candidates were expected to ‘cultivate habits of economy’ as they were supported by funds ‘a very considerable portion of which arises from the contribution of the labouring orders’: Minutes, 11 November 1816, 546. The financing of the modern missionary movement has not yet been researched, but that it aimed to win support from all social classes is well illustrated by the penny associations of the C.M.S. See E. Stock, op. cit., i. 138; Hole, C., The Early History of the Church Missionary Society, London 1896, 469.Google Scholar