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United Conversionist Activities Among the Jews in Great Britain 1795-1815: Pan-Evangelicalism and the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

R. H. Martin
R. H. Martin
Affiliation:
Assistant professor of history and Associate Director of Development inMiddlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont.
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Extract

This paper is concerned with examining the British pan-evangelical impulse of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries from the perspective of a little known but very important organization called the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews. The London Society, as it was better known, was a product of the same general missionary impulse that brought into being its better known sister organizations such as the London Missionary Society, the Religious Tract Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society. Like the Missionary Society out of which it evolved in 1809, the London Society was a missionary organization dedicated to evangelizing the world. It differed from the Missionary Society only in emphasis, suggesting that the Jews rather than the heathen would first be converted to Christian principles.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 46 , Issue 4 , December 1977 , pp. 437 - 452
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1977

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References

1. See Evangelical Magazine, 10 1793, p. 157 ff.Google Scholar

2. For an overview of the pan-evangelical impulse, see Brown, F. K., Fathers of the Victorians (Cambridge, 1961),CrossRefGoogle ScholarFoster, C. I., An Errand of Mercy (Chapel Hill, 1960),Google ScholarMartin, R. H., “The Pan-Evangelical Impulse in Great Britain 1795–1830: With Special Reference to Four London Societies,” Unpublished Oxford D.Phil. Thesis, 1974.Google Scholar

3. In the context of the present study, the term Evangelical, when capitalized, refers to the evangelical party within the Church of England. When uncapitalized, the term evangelical refers to the evangelical party in general, inclusive of the Anglicans, Methodists and Dissenters.

4. The early history of the evangelical mission to the Jews is found in the minutes and correspondence of the London Missionary Society (refixed L.M.S.) now deposited in the archives of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Material for the London Society (prefixed L.S.) is taken from the Society's minute books now located in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Unfortunately the correspondence of the London Society was totally destroyed by German bombs during the last year. I would like to thank the General Secretaries of both societies for permission to use their archives, and Dr. Martin E. Lodge and Dr. John D. Walsh for reading the manuscript and making several valuable suggestions.

5. See Verete, M., “The restoration of the Jews in English Protestant Thought,” Middle Eastern Studies 8 (1972): pp. 3–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. See Evangelical Magazine, 10 1796, p. 403,Google Scholar Cf. Margoliouth, M., The History of the Jews in Great Britain (London, 1851), Vol. 2, p. 147 ff.Google Scholar

7. For the autobiography of Frey (pronounced “Free”), see Evangelical Magazine, 01 1806, p. 3 f.Google Scholar Cf. Dictionary of American Biography (New York, 1957).Google Scholar

8. Sec L.M.S. Jewish Committee MSS: L. Langton to W. Alers-Hankey, April 15, 1807; “Memorandum on the Jewish School to the Jewish Committee,” October 19, 1807. Cf. Frey, C. F., Narrative of the Reverend Joseph Samuel C. F. Frey (London, 1809), p. 122 f.Google Scholar

9. L.M.S. Minutes, July 22; August 19, 26; September 13, 1805; October 19, 26, 1807; February 29, 1808. Cf. Frey, op.cit., p. 141.

10. L.M.S. Minutes, November 9, 23, 1807; April 27, 1808.

11. See An Address from the Committee of the London Society. (London, 1808).Google Scholar

12. Cited in Frey, op.cit., p. 172.

13. L.S. Minutes, October 20, 1808. Cf. Frey, op.cit., p. 190 ff.

14. L.S. Minutes, February 15, 1809. Cf. City of Refuge. An Address from the Committee of the London Society to Christians of every Denomination (London, 1809).Google Scholar The Society later changed its name to the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews.

15. See L.M.S. Minutes, February 26, 1810.

16. See L.S. Minutes, April 1, June 9, December 8, 1809; January 12, 16, 1810. Cf. Haisted, T., Our Missions: History of the Principal Missionary Transactions of the London Society (London, 1866),Google Scholar Appendix B.

17. See L.S. Minutes, November 17, 1809; January 12, April 24, 1810. Cf. Gidney, W. T., The History of the London Society (London, 1908), p. 45.Google Scholar

18. Report of the Committee of the First Half-Yearly Meeting of the London Society (London, 1809), p. 9.Google Scholar

19. L.S. Minutes, January 2, 12, 1810.

20. The Third Report of the Committee of the London Society (London, 1811), p. 13.Google Scholar Cf. Norris, H. H., The Origin, Progress and Existing Circumstance of the London Society (London, 1825), p. 26.Google Scholar

21. See L.S. Minutes, January 26, February 9, 1810. Cf. Norris, op.cit., p. 291f.

22. Norris, op.cit., p. 29 f.

23. L.S. Minutes, October 23, 1810; Norris, op.cit., p. 29 f.

24. L.S. Minutes, June 2, 1809; Norris, op.cit., p. 38.

25. Norris, op.cit., p. 38. Frey, op. cit., p. 270 f.

26. This is suggested by Henry Handley Norris, rector of St. John's Hackney and a High Church critic of the Society. See Norris, op. cit. An examination of the Society's baptismal register for the years under study leads one to the same conclusion. See L.S.: Register of Baptisms 1810–1814.

27. L.S. Minutes, November 28, 1809, April 30, 1810. Cf. Williams, A. L., Mission to the Jews: An Historical Retrospect (London, 1897), p. 49 f.Google Scholar

28. L.S. Minutes June 2, 1809; January 16, 26, 1810; January 22, 1811.

29. Cf. L.S. Minutes, October 30, 1810; August 20, November 12, 1811; Cf. Margoliouth, op.cit., II, p. 221.

30. Frey, op.cit., p. 165.

31. L.S. Minutes, November 28, 1809.

32. L.S. Minutes, January 22; February 5, 16, 19, 1811; January 29, 1814.

33. For Frey's rather checkered career after 1815 and his subsequent removal to America, see Sailman, M., The Mystery Unfolded or an exposition of the extraordinary means employed to obtain converts the agents of the London Society (London, 1817), p. 45 f.Google Scholar, and Rumyanek, J., “Early Conversionist Activities in London: A Missing Chapter in Anglo-Jewish History,” The Jewish Guardian, 05 29, 1931, p. 8 f.Google Scholar In 1820, Frey founded the American Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Jews. See Ratner, L., “Conversion of the Jews and Pre-Civil War Reform,” American Quarterly, 13 (1961): 43–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. L.S. Minutes, June 11, 1810; February 27, 1811. Cf. Norris, op.cit., pp. 62, 70 fn.

35. Cf. L.S. Minutes, April 26, 1814. Cf. Gidney, op.cit., p. 46.

36. Cf. L.S. Minutes, May 31, September 27, October 25, 1814.

37. Cf. The Seventh Report of the Committee of the London Society (London, 1815), p. 35.Google Scholar Cf. L.S. Minutes, February 6, 1815.

38. L.S. Minutes, December 23, 27, 1814; January 31, 1815.

39. See Norris, op.cit., pp. 104 f.; L.S. Minutes, February 17, 1815.

40. L.S. Minutes, February 17, 21, 24, 1815.

41. L.S. Minutes, February 28, 1815.

42. Loc. Cit.; L.S. Minutes, April 25, 1815.

43. Cited in Sailman, op.cit., p. 7.

44. Witherby, T., The Wisdom of the Calvinistic Methodists Displayed (London 1810), p. 17.Google Scholar

45. In 1826, a group of evangelicals founded the Philo-Judean Society. Nominally interdenominational, this organization concentrated almost solely on providing temporal assistance to distressed Jews. It also sponsored legislation in Parliament favoring Jewish emancipation. See Henriques, U., Religions Toleration in England (London, 1961), p. 177 f.Google Scholar For the Jewish mission in Scotland during the 1830s, see Chambers, D., “Prelude to the last things: The Church of Scotland's mission to the Jews,” Scottish Church Historical Society Records, 19 (part 1), (1975): 43–58.Google Scholar