Kenneth Gordon Brownell PhD thesis

377 Pages·2013·17.83 MB·English

VOLUNTARY SAINTS: ENGLISH CONGREGATIONALISM
AND THE VOLUNTARY PRINCIPLE, 1825-1962
Kenneth Gordon Brownell
A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD
at the
University of St Andrews
1982
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"VOLUNTARY SAINTS:
ENGLISH CONGREGATIONALISM AND THE VOLUNTARY PRINCIPLE,
1825 - 1862"
by Kenneth Gordon Brownell
Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in the University of St. Andrews
1982
ABSTR.A.CT
This thesis is a study of the theory' and practice of the voluntary principle
in :English Congregationalism between 1825 and 1862. The voluntary pri..llciple came to
be se~1} in this period as of the essense of Congregationalism ~lld its Congregational
ist ad.~erents sought to achieve :l.ts consist~llt practice in every aspect of denomina
tional life.
Chapter 1 describes the breakdo~~ of the old 'catholic' consensus L~ British
evangelicalism. 13-.1 the mid-1820s the cooperation born of revival was be;ng sorely
tested on a number of fronts. Politics was certainly important, but there was also
grovdng denominational self-interest. T.bis was particularly the case in home and
foreign missions and Congregationalists, perhaps the most 'catholic' of bodies, were
under press1lre from within and without to pursue a more partisan policy. Ol:.t 01' these
practical concerns emerged, as chapta' 2 points out, a more clearly articulated theory
01' voluntary churchmanship. Of course voluntarism had been a principle of Congrega
tional Indepe..'"lc1ancy since the 17th century, but some adjustment 1-taS needed to the
new circumst~llces of the 19th century. Congregationalist and other DissentiI'.g apol
ogists honed and refined the pri..llciple ~lld gave it a sha..~ness and comprehensiveness
ith~dnever had before. Even such a 'catholic' Noncon:for~~st as u~~n Angel James
saw the need to instruct :bis congregation in its Dissenting principles. He and many
others provided the theoretical r:;'Gl:C3 for the practical exercise of the voluntary
principle.
With chapters 3 and. 4 I tu.."""Il to th.e internal consolidation of the Congregational
commll.llity. The Congregational Union (chapter 3) provided an agency for deno~ational
activity and a focal point for an otherw"ise hj.ghly decentr;>]'; zed community. L'"l our
period the union was only moderately successful in realizing its objectives, but it
pro-nded a forum for discussion eyen if it showed the li''l'.itations of Congregational
volunt.arism. By the late 1850s the union ..- as seriously tp.reatened by its too many
commitments, local indifference and internal strife. Perhaps more successful was the
Dissenting and denomina.tional press (ch-apter 4) in consolidat;ng the COID..lJlUluty. \
Congregationalists were active in bot!!. the ,.n.der assenting press as well as their
own denominationa.l press.
The voluntary pri.."l.ciple was seen to be of great importance in the areas of
errucation and chapel buildL~g. It was in both these areas that Congregationalism
was most seriously challenged by the Est.ablishment and it was here that the voluntary
principle was most evidently curtailed. The education battle (chapter 5) was a
valiant one, but it was doomed from the start. The Congregationalist system simply
could not susta:L"1 a viable alternative to the state-supported syste."lt. Chapel building
(Chapter 6) was more successful, but its success was itself a recognition of the liw~ted
resources of the Congregational co~~unity and therefore of the voluntary prjnciple.
i
CON TEN T S
Page
Preface ii
Abbreviations iii
Introduction 1
Chapter I DOCTRINE AND DISCORD: THE DECLINE OF THE
OLD CONSENSUS 11
Chapter II DOCTRINE AND DISCORD: THE VOLUNTARY
PRINCIPLE AND THE CONGREGATIONAL WAY 82
Chapter III CONSOLIDATION: THE FORMATION OF THE
CONGREGATIONAL UNION 149
Chapter IV CONSOLIDATION: CONGREGATIONALIS~i AND THE
PERIODICAL PRESS 211
Chapter V CONTAlmiENT: CONGREGATIONALI SM AND
ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 246
Chapter VI CONTAINMENT: CONGREGATIONALISM AND CHAPEL
BUILDING 298
Conclusion 336
Bibliography 344
ii
PREFACE
The purpose and scope of this thesis will be described in the
Introduction. I would like here simply to acknowledge my indebtedness
to several institutions and people. My interest in British Nonconformity
was nurtured while an undergraduate and I am thankful for the opportunities
afforded me to pursue that interest as a postgraduate. In particular, I am
grateful to my parents for their support and continual patience and to the
Inter-collegiate Studies Institute of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania for electing
me to a Richard M. Weaver Fellowship. Numerous people helped me along the
way and I would like to thank especially Dr. Sheridan Gilley, Dr. David
Hempton, Dr. David Bebbington and the Rev. Dr. Clyde Ervine for helping me
to sharpen my ideas when I was beginning my research. Of course an immense
debt is owed to various libraries and their long-suffering staffs. The
majority of my research was done at the Congregational Library, London,
Dr. Williams's Library, London and the University Library, St. Andrews.
I am also thankful for the facilities and aid offered by the libraries
of Cambridge and London Universities, Homerton College, Cambridge, the
Institute of Historical Research, London, the School of African and
Oriental Studies, London, the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland
and the United Reformed Church of England and Wales, as well as to the
Evangelical Library, London and the London City Mission, London and the
Dorset Congregational Union, Boscombe. For help and support of a very
different order I owe more than I can express to my wife. She has learned
to live with my inordinate interest in almost anything that has to do with
Protestant Nonconformity. I trust that this thesis in some small way will
reward her patience.
iii
ABBREVIATIONS
B.A.S.C.A.: British Anti-State Church Association
B.F.B.S.: British and Foreign Bible Society
B.F.S.S.: British and Foreign School Society
C.B.E.: Congregational Board of Education
C.I. & C.M.: London Christian Instructor and Congregational Magazine
C.I.S.: Christian Instruction Society
C.L.MSs.: Congregational Library Manuscripts
~ Congregational Magazine
Colonial M.S.: Colonial ~issionary Society
C.P.M.: Christian's Penny Magazine and Peo~le's Friend
C.U.E.W.: Congregational Union of England and Wales
C.Y.B.: Congregational Year Book
Documents Relatin~: Documents Relating to the Formation of the
Congregational Union of England and Wales
D. W. L.: Dr. Wi lliams~s Library
E.M.: Evangelical Magazine
E.R.: Eclectic Review
H.C.MSs.: Homerton College Manuscripts
H.M.M.: Home Missionary Magazine
H.M.S.: Home Missionary Society
I.E.S.: Irish Evangelical Society
J.Eccl.H.: Journal of Ecclesiastical History
L.C.M.: London City Mission
L.M.S.: London Missionary Society
N.: Nonconformist
N.C.L.C.: New College London Collection
N.C.L.C., B.P.: New College London Collection, Blackburn Papers
P.: Patriot
R.T.S.: Religious Tract Society
S.S.U.: Sunday School Union
T.C.H.S.: Transactions of the Congregational Historical Society
V.I.A.: Village Itineracy Association
V.S.A.: Voluntary School Association
1
niT RODUCTI ON
This thesis is an atteqlt to investigate the borderland between
the internal religious life of one dissenting community, Congregationalism,
and its external political and social life. Many years prior to the period
covered in this thesis Robert Browne referred to his fellow dissenters as
the 'willing sorte', by which he meant that they were voluntary members of
free Christian communities who refused to bow before the coercive powers
of any religious establishment. For Congregationalists the voluntary
principle came into sharpest focus in the autonomy of the local church,
or as John Robinson put it in 1616 in a petition to James I, 'the right
of spiritual administration and government in itself and over itself by
the common and free consent of the people, independently and immediately
under Christ'. My purpose is to show something of the way in which this
principle was reaffirmed and practised by Congregationalists in mid-19th
century England.
Relatively little attention has been paid to the way in which
Congregationalists practised their voluntary cburchmanship in the wider
context of society and politics. Denominational historians have either
tended to be inward-looking and domestic in their treatment or have
stopped short of investigating the full social significance of the
institutions and movements they were writing about. Examples of the
former category would be an older history such as John Waddington's
Congregational History or a work of the present century such as Albert
Peel's These Hundred Years, a History of the Congregational Union of
England and Wales 1831-1931. Peel's work is the standard history of
the union, but it unfortunately suffers from being pedestrian,
unimaginati ve and lacking in almost all references to his sources.
In the latter category would be R.W. Dale's monumental History of
English Congregationalism (1884) which was the product of a lively and
reflective mind passionately committed to voluntary independancy.
2
In his other works Dale saw both the significance of the decline of
the pan-evangelicalism of the early 19th century and the rise of a more
decided churchmanship.l R. Tudur-Jones's more recent Congregationalism in
England (1961) attempted to break out of the mould of many church histories,
but the scope of his work precluded closer examination of the practice
of voluntarism. F.R. Salter's article 'Congregationalism in the Hungry
Forties' (1955)2was particularly perceptive and beamed some light into
the world of Congregational historiography. Salter recognized the
importance of the voluntary principle in integrating the diverse activities
of the Congregational community in the face of multiple challenges to its
mission. Following the insights of Elie Halevy Salter elucidated the
particular institutional tension within Congregationalism between the
independence of the local churches and the common interests of the
whole body, not least as they related to the wider society outside.
Congregationalists felt this tension acutely in the 19th century as they
sought to vindicate themselves as a voluntary community by establishing
their own alternative organizations to those of the Establishment and as
they sought to tackle the political obstacles that lay in the way to the
full realization of their principles. In this light the agonized debates
in the Congregational Union assemblies and the long string of articles
and books on church polity take on a deeper significance than being merely
a prolonged discussion of fami ly affairs. Perhaps more than they were
willing to admit (though Anglican critics were always ready to point this
out) the Congregational cOllllltlllity was engaged in an exercise of adjusting
the classical doctrine of the church that they had inherited from their
Puritan forbears to the new circumstances of 19th century Britain.
1. See R. W. Dale's The Evangelical Revival and other Sermons (London 1880);
Manual of Congregational Church Order (London 1884, 8th edn. 1898);
The Old Evangelicalism and the New (London 1889).
2. F.R. Salter, 'Congregationalism in the Hungry Forties', T.C.H.S.,
XVII (1955).
3
The evangelical revival, political and ecclesiastical reform, the growth
of the towns and cities, the industrial revolution and much else all made
up a world in which Congregationalists had to come to terms with their own
expansion, home and foreign missions, elementary education and competition
from other communities in a pluralistic society. To meet these challenges
it was necessary to consolidate their strength and perpetuate and build
up their institutions. All the while the voluntary principle was being
refined and stretched to the limit both as an apologetic weapon and as a
practical tool.
It is not surprising that there was a loosening of the ties with
the older pan-evangelicalism of the late 18th and early 19th centuries
along with the reassertion of the distinctives of Congregationalism.
This was a fairly widespread process that was regretted by some but was
perhaps the natural response of the various evangelical groups in wanting
to capitalize on what they had gained during the period of expansion.
Home missions was of course the most vulnerable area since there the
question of polity was of paramount importance. But in fact almost
every area where evangelicals had traditionally cooperated was affected.
It was not, however, simply a matter of a practical recognition of
denominational realities, but by the l830s also a question of the
voluntary versus the establishment principles. Dissenters felt keenly
the oppression of the Established Church through the legal disabilities
and Anglicans felt the challenge of Dissenters in political agitation
that threatened their privileges. Evangelicals of both parties were torn
in their loyalty to a common gospel and their fidelity to their
ecclesiastical principles. By the l850s the heat of controversy had
subsided and there was a new coalescence of evangelicals, but the new
unity was as mach a reaction to Romanism, ritualism and incipient
liberalism as a reaffirmation of a common faith. In the ueantime
Congregationalists had built up their denominational organization
upon the foundations of the old pan~vangelicalism. Many Congreg
ationalists s~ the union of 1832 as a repudiation of their evangelical
catholicity, but others recognized it as the only way to maintain that
catholicity OIl realistic terms in a world that was not always to their
liking.
4
Overshadowing almost everything that the Congregational community
tmdertook was the Church of England. Not only was the Church of England
the dominant religious body, but as the established church it called the
ttme to which the Dissen ters danced. As much as they would have liked
to have practised their voltmtarism in a manner similar to their Puritan
cousins in America, English Congregationalists were hemmed in on all sides
by the Establishment and its active support by the state. As such Con
gregationalists partook of a certain defensiveness that manifested itself
in the polemical character of voluntarist writings and the call for a more
dis tinct, if not strident, churchman ship • Do whatever they would Con
gregationalists saw themselves in relation to their dissent from and
nonconformi ty to the Anglican church. Yet one marked feature of our
period, and a contributory factor to the strength of the voltmtary cause,
was the renewed integrity of Congregationalism as a polity. The attempts
to forge links with continental Reformed communities, with the American
churches and the interest in the colonial mission where almost all were on
an equal footing did much to boost the denomination's self-esteem. In
spite of the handicaps Congregationalists seemed to speak, particularly
in the late l830s and l840s, as if the future was theirs. Indeed, much
of early Victorian Congregationalism can be best tmderst'Ood in terms of
its attempts to put its voluntarism into practice - whether in home
missions or in political agitation - in a society that was no longer
conducive to an old-fashioned religious establishment. Thomas Binney
articulated this attitude clearly in his address from the chair of the
Congregational Union in that fateful year in European politics of 1848.
Seeing the question of the separation of church and state at the heart
of the events on the continent, Binney declared, 'Revolutions are con
vulsing the world and they are doing so partly through the medium of
ideas consecrated by us'. As Chris tians they were to preach the gospe 1,
!i!..,
but as Dissenters they had 'a peculiar calling and special work, to
testify against certain errors and institutions; and it must be confessed,
that if our ideas be right, or, whether right or wrong, if they should
• • . ld b 1· ,3
p red01D1n ate , our DIl.SS10ll ••• wou seem to e revo ut1onary.
3. C.Y.B. (1848), p.S.