The Church Missionary Society and Architecture in the Mission Field: Evangelical Anglican Perspectives on Church Building Abroad, c. 1850-1900

2015 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 197-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Turner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Infrastructure Development ◽  
Gothic Revival ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Church Building ◽  
Church Missionary Society ◽  
Architectural Development ◽  
The Church

The Gothic Revival occupies a central place in the architectural development of the Church of England in the nineteenth century, both at home and abroad. Within the expanding British colonial world, in particular, the neo-Gothic church became a centrally important expression of both faith and identity throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. From a symbolic and communicative perspective, the style represented not only a visual link to Britain, but also the fundamental expression of the Church of England as an institution and of the culture of Englishness. As such, it carried with it a wide range of cultural implications that suited the needs of settler communities wishing to re-established their identity abroad. Expansion during this period, however, was not only limited to the growth of settler communities but was also reflected in growing Anglican missions to the non-Christian peoples of annexed territories. The two primary organs of the Church of England in the field, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) and the Church Missionary Society (CMS), actively employed the revived medieval style throughout the Empire as missions were solidified through infrastructure development. As a popular style with direct connotations to the Christian faith, revived medieval design became increasingly popular with Anglican missionaries abroad in the period between the early 1840s and the end of the century. Not only did its origins in ecclesiastical buildings make it attractive, but it was also stylistically distinctive, and set apart as a sacred style from both secular and ‘heathen’ structures.

Contradictions between the Sacred and the Secular Life: The Church Missionary Society in Ukaguru, Tanzania, East Africa, 1876–1914

1981 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas O. Beidelman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Initial Contact ◽  
East Central ◽  
Missionary Work ◽  
Church Missionary Society ◽  
A Minor ◽  
The Church ◽  
Made In

This essay discusses some beliefs and activities of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), a missionary body of Evangelicals in the Church of England, as its members attempted to found and expand missionary work in Ukaguru, an area inhabited by the Kaguru people about one hundred and fifty miles inland in east-central Tanzania. In the nineteenth century, Ukaguru lay on the most frequented caravan route used to reach the great interlacustrine kingdoms of Uganda. Initial contact with the Kaguru was made in 1876 by CMS members en route to Buganda. Although CMS work in East Africa was concentrated in Uganda and coastal and highland Kenya, a minor station in Ukaguru was established in 1878, in part as a rest-stop for those proceeding inland but also to save souls.

George IV and William IV in their Relations with the Church of England*

2019 ◽  
Vol 134 (571) ◽  
pp. 1440-1470
Author(s):  
Nicholas Dixon
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Church Building ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Political Actions ◽  
The Church

Abstract George IV and William IV have long been represented as fundamentally pleasure-seeking monarchs who had little or no interest in religion. However, this assumption has never been sustained by detailed evidence. This article comprehensively challenges the stereotype by presenting the regency and reign of George IV together with William IV’s reign as a distinct and significant period in the relationship between the British monarchy and the Church of England. Three main aspects of this relationship are considered: George IV and William IV’s private commitments as manifested in court religion, the political actions of these monarchs in relation to the established church and their encouragement of Anglican church building and educational projects. The article draws upon a wide range of neglected sources, and especially the private correspondence and memoirs of those closest to George IV and William IV. Most notably, it introduces into the discussion the extensive and revealing autobiography of George IV’s chaplain Hugh Pearson, which has received scant attention from historians until now. From such sources, there emerges a picture of royal interaction with Anglicanism that almost entirely overturns the conventional view. Not only were the two last Hanoverian kings interested in religion; their Anglican beliefs directed much of their public and private conduct. This reinterpretation has important implications for our understanding of monarchy, religion and political culture in pre-Victorian England.

‘This Romish business’ - Ritual Innovation and Parish Life in Later Nineteenth-Century Lincolnshire

1999 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 384-395
Author(s):  
R. W. Ambler
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
The State ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Holy Communion ◽  
Parish Church ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church ◽  
Mixing Water

In February 1889 Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln, appeared before the court of the Archbishop of Canterbury charged with illegal practices in worship. The immediate occasion for these proceedings was the manner in which he celebrated Holy Communion at the Lincoln parish church of St Peter at Gowts on Sunday 4 December 1887. He was cited on six specific charges: the use of lighted candles on the altar; mixing water with the communion wine; adopting an eastward-facing position with his back to the congregation during the consecration; permitting the Agnus Dei to be sung after the consecration; making the sign of the cross at the absolution and benediction, and taking part in ablution by pouring water and wine into the chalice and paten after communion. Two Sundays later King had repeated some of these acts during a service at Lincoln Cathedral. As well as its intrinsic importance in defining the legality of the acts with which he was charged, the Bishop’s trial raised issues of considerable importance relating to the nature and exercise of authority within the Church of England and its relationship with the state. The acts for which King was tried had a further significance since the ways in which these and other innovations in worship were perceived, as well as the spirit in which they were ventured, also reflected the fundamental shifts which were taking place in the role of the Church of England at parish level in the second half of the nineteenth century. Their study in a local context such as Lincolnshire, part of King’s diocese, provides the opportunity to examine the relationship between changes in worship and developments in parish life in the period.

Anglican Emigrant Chaplaincy in the British Empire and Beyond,c.1840–1900

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 314-327
Author(s):  
Rowan Strong
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Direct Involvement ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Church

In the 1840s the Church of England, through the agency of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), established an official chaplaincy to emigrants leaving from British ports. The chaplaincy lasted throughout the rest of the nineteenth century. It was revitalized in the 1880s under the direction of the SPCK in response to a surge in emigration from Britain to the colonies. This article examines the imperial attitudes of Anglicans involved in this chaplaincy network, focusing on those of the 1880s and 1890s, the period of high imperialism in Britain. It compares these late nineteenth-century outlooks with those of Anglicans in the emigrant chaplaincy of the 1840s, in order to discern changes and continuities in Anglican imperialism in nineteenth-century Britain. It finds that, in contrast to the imperialist attitudes prevalent in Britain during the late nineteenth century, Anglicans in this chaplaincy network focused more on the ecclesiastical and pastoral dimensions of their work. Indeed, pro-imperial attitudes, though present, were remarkably scarce. It was the Church much more than the empire which mattered to these Anglicans, notwithstanding their direct involvement with the British empire.

“The Cambridge Camden Society and the Medieval Revival in the Church of England during the Nineteenth Century.”

1960 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-207
Author(s):  
James Floyd White
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
The Church

A Leicestershire Recusant Family: The Nevills of Nevill Holt – I

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
James I ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
The Church

At the Reformation, three possibilities faced English Catholics. They could continue to be Catholics and so suffer the penalties of the penal laws; they could conform to the Church of England; or they could adopt a middle course and become Church Papists. The Nevills of Nevill Holt, near Market Harborough in Leicestershire, went through all three phases. In the reign of Edward VI, Thomas Nevill I became a Protestant. His grandson, Thomas Nevill II, became a Church Papist under James I; and Thomas II’s son, Henry Nevill I, continued to be one at the time of the Civil War. But Henry l’s son William was definitely a Catholic and went into exile with King James II, while William’s son, Henry Nevill II, was an open Catholic under Charles II. Henry Nevill II’s descendants continued to be Catholics throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries until they left Nevill Holt in the late nineteenth century.

The Ethics of the Empty Church: Anglicanism’s Need for a Theology of Architecture

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Whyte
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Development ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Church Building ◽  
International Importance ◽  
University Of Manchester ◽  
The Church ◽  
Church Buildings

AbstractIn this polemical paper, produced for the Churches, Communities, and Society conference at the Lincoln Theological Institute, University of Manchester, I argue that the Church of England has failed to develop a coherent or convincing theology of architecture. Such a failure raises practical problems for an institution responsible for the care of 16,000 buildings, a quarter of which are of national or international importance. But it has also, I contend, produced an impoverished understanding of architecture’s role as an instrument of mission and a tool for spiritual development. Following a historical survey of attitudes towards church buildings, this paper explores and criticizes the Church of England’s current engagement with its architecture. It raises questions about what has been done and what has been said about churches. It argues that the Church of England lacks a theology of church building and church closing, and calls for work to develop just such a thing.

The Shifting Discourse Culture of Methodism, 1791–1832

2019 ◽  
pp. 142-175
Author(s):  
Andrew O. Winckles
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Hannah More ◽  
Sunday Schools ◽  
Discourse Practices ◽  
The Church

This chapter lays out some of the shifts in Methodist discourse culture that occurred during the early nineteenth century and suggests that, in response to these changes, Methodist women found new ways to reach their audiences and work around the Methodist hierarchy. In particular, it focuses on the lives and writings of Sarah Crosby, Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, Mary Tooth, and other members of their circle in order to illustrate how they adapted earlier Methodist discourse practices for new and potentially subversive purposes. It then turns to the work of evangelical Anglican Hannah More in the 1790’s and early 1800’s to consider how a very well-known female evangelical within the Church of England negotiated a shifting discursive terrain, especially in her Cheap Repository Tracts and her work with the Mendip Hills Sunday Schools which led to the Blagdon Controversy.

Deaconesses in the South China Missions of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), 1922–1951

2018 ◽  
pp. 85-106
Author(s):  
Peter Cunich
Keyword(s):  
South China ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Southern China ◽  
Women Missionaries ◽  
Northern European ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Church Missionary Society ◽  
Christian Order ◽  
Mission Field ◽  
The Church

The ancient Christian order of deaconess, reintroduced into the northern European churches from the 1830s, had grown to include nearly 60,000 women around the world by the 1950s. The Church of England set aside its first deaconess in 1862, but the potential benefits of deploying deaconesses in the southern China missions was not appreciated so quickly by the Church Missionary Society. The Fukien mission ordained the first six deaconesses for southern China in 1922, and another three were ordained in the Kwangsi-Hunan diocese in 1932, but these were all European women. Seven Chinese deaconesses were ultimately ordained in Fukien before 1942, but the only other mission field where the female diaconate rose to prominence was Hong Kong, where Florence Li Tim-oi’s ordination as a deaconess in 1941 led to her controversial ordination to the priesthood in 1944. This essay examines the slow growth of the deaconess movement in the CMS south China missions up to 1950 and evaluates the achievements of these women before the closure of China to Western missionaries. It also suggests some reasons why the widespread hopes that the female diaconate would provide an ‘enlarged sphere of service’ for women missionaries in south China ultimately proved elusive.

Mission, Empire, and the Ultimate Good: Colonel John Munro, Benjamin Bailey, and the Church Missionary Society “Mission of Help” to Travancore (1816–18)

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-241
Author(s):  
Gary McKee
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Great Commission ◽  
Societal Transformation ◽  
Specific Instance ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Great Commandment ◽  
Church Missionary Society ◽  
The Church

Abstract The Church Missionary Society “Mission of Help” to the Syrian Church of Travancore in the nineteenth century provides much instructive food for thought concerning debates that continue in mission up to the present day. In particular, the episode shows that the links between mission and empire cannot be reduced to seeing mission as a mere handmaiden to imperial concerns, although empire certainly provided a context to missionary endeavor throughout the imperial period. In this specific instance it was the forceful personality of Colonel John Munro who ensured that the Mission of Help became more intertwined with empire than might otherwise have been the case. Another effect of this imperial context for the Mission of Help was that the nature and scope of mission inevitably ended up being broadened to include aspects of societal transformation. It is shown that Benjamin Bailey was not primarily motivated by such concerns, yet was not unconcerned about them. Bailey’s thinking through of these tensions perhaps provide a way to think today about the links between the “Great Commission,” the “Great Commandment,” and cultural transformation.

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