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Between Evangelicalism and a Social Gospel: The Case of Joseph Rayner Stephens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Dale A. Johnson
Dale A. Johnson
Affiliation:
assistant professor of church history in the Divinity School, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee
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Extract

The transition from Pietism and Evangelicalism to a social gospel in the thought and activities of a number of Christians, occurring as it did in the nineteenth century, was a transition largely provoked by the impact of the Industrial Revolution on landscape and people. Yet those who were among the earliest to respond to the new industrial and geographical situation often retained an older vision of life and society and left to others the task of developing a more effective response.Joseph Rayner Strphens (1805–79), sometime Methodist, notorioue revolutionary of the late 1830s, advocate of the Ten Hours Bill and vigrous opponent of the factory system in nineteenth-century England, was just such a person; he provides and illumination case study in the stryggle to carve out a social gospel which was virtually without precedent at the time.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , June 1973 , pp. 229 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1973

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References

1. For studies of Stephens, see Holyoake, George J., Life of Joseph Rayner Stephens (London, 1881)Google Scholar; Ward, J. T., “Revolutionary Tory; the Life of J. R. Stephens of Ashton-under-Lyne (1805–1879).” Trans. Lancashire and Cheshire Antiq. Society, 68 (1958), pp. 93–116Google Scholar; Cole, G.D.H., Chartist Portraits (London: Macmillian 1941), pp. 63–79Google Scholar. I am grateful for assistance from Rev. Michael S. Edwards, Oxford, England.

2. Toryism and the People, 1832–8846 (London: Constable & Co., 1929), pp. 226 and 227.Google Scholar

3. See Oastler, , Convocation: The Church and the People (London, 1860), p. 75Google Scholar, where he compared the “idolatry” of the French Revolution with that of the Manchester school of political economy: “To have preferred the worship of Reason to God in 1795, was hardly more absurd than to hope for universal peace by the exaltation of Mammon in 1860. To maintain that the increase of commerce, uninfluenced by religion, can become a bond of peace among the nations of the world, is quite as ridiculous as to have expected with Rousseau to regenerate mankind by a return to a state of nature. I mark in all such theories self-delusion, and in their propagation and success positive danger to the best interests of mankind.”

4. The Fleet Papers, 1:5 (01 30, 1841), p. 39.Google Scholar

5. Speech at Ashton, , 01. 27, 1834; in The Case of the Rev. Joseph Rayner Stephens, Wesleyan Methodist Minister: collected from the Christian Advocate newspaper [2nd. ed. (London, 1834) p. 3].Google Scholar

6. Ibid., p. 5.

7. Sermon … at Charlestown, 01. 6, 1839… (London, 1839), p. 4Google Scholar. See Oastler, , Convocation p. 29Google Scholar: “I entirely reject the modern notion, that ‘Religion has nothing to do with politics.’ … I gather my polities from the Holy Scriptures; I read them in the books of the Church, and learn from the judges of the land, that ‘Christianity is part and parcel of the law,’ and that ‘Christianity is interwoven in our Constitution’.”

8. Ashton Chronicle, April 29, 1848; Ibid., June 16, 1849.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid., March, 10, 1849.

11. The Political Preacher (London, 1839), pp. 12–13.Google Scholar

12. Stephens' Monthly Magasine, 07, 1840, p. 160Google Scholar, and The Champion, January 12, 1850, where Stephens labelled the period as “the Age of Infidelity”; Ashton Chronicle, Sept., 1, 1849.Google Scholar

13. Ashton Chronicle, Sept. 1, 1849.

14. The Champion, Dec. 1, 1849.

15. Ashton Chronicle, April 29, 1848.

16. The Political Preacher, p. 28,

17. “Unless a priest of the living God be… a politician in the pulpit, he has no business being there at all” (The Political Preacher, p. 20).

18. Ibid., p. 37.

19. Ashton Chronicle, May 13, 1848.

20. Ibid., July 28, 1849.

21. The Champion, Dec. 15, 1849.

22. Ashton Chronicle, Feb. 17, 1849. See Ibid., Feb. 24, 1849, Aug. 4, 1849; The Champion, 2, pp. 5, 7, 16. There were other references to clerical participation without indication of denomination.

23. The Political Pulpit (London, 1839), 8, p. 56.Google Scholar

24. All cited in Jephson, Henry, The Platform: Its Rise and Progress (London, 1892), 2, pp. 215–16.Google Scholar

25. Ibid., p. 247. For this period, see Ward, pp. 97–105.

26. Three Sermons… 05 12, 1839, 1, p. 9Google Scholar; also printed in a somewhat different version in The Political Pulpit, 6, pp. 41ff.Google Scholar

27. The Political Pulpit, 9, pp. 70–72.Google Scholar

28. Three Sermons… 05 12, 1839, 3, p. 24.Google Scholar

29. Ibid., pp. 24–25.

30. Ibid., in The Political Pulpit, 8, p. 61.Google Scholar

31. The Political Pulpit, 13, p. 103.Google Scholar

32. Ashton Chronicle, Aug. 5, 1848.

33. Ibid., July 7, 1849.

34. Ibid., Aug. 5, 1848; The Champion, 2, p. 10.Google Scholar

35. Ibid., April 1, 1848; March, 1848.

36. Ibid., April 1, 1848. Not surprisingly, Stephens linked, through the category of “practical infidelity”, the revolution in France and the ideas and activities of Robert Owen. Both were the products of rational religion, made possible by the failures of the church in each country to fulfill its appointed mission and allowing the people to be misled by “delusive premises of the paradise of equality and human perfectability.” The solution was not to deal with the surface issues, but to go to the root—“to set ourselves right with God and the poor” (Ibid., Nov. 11, 1848). See also The People's Magazine, November, 1841, where Stephens compared Owenism and Chartism as “the two points, spiritual and political, at which the dark genius of revolution has planted his advance posts” (p. 350).

37. Ibid., April 29, 1848. On this same question of fundamentals Stephens opposed the organization of economic and social cooperatives. “You believe,” he told one audience, “that co-operation as you call it, will regenerate society. I do not” (Co-operation, A Speech… Nov. 24, 1866).

38. The Champion, Nov. 10, 1849.

39. Ibid.

40. The Political Pulpit, 4, pp. 20–22Google Scholar. (mispaged).

41. Three Sermons… 05 12, 1839, 1, p. 4.Google Scholar

42. The Political Pulpit, 4, pp. 25–26.Google Scholar

43. Three Sermons, 1. p. 7Google Scholar. Although Stephens himself had technically begun another group, he regularly exhorted his followers to eschew a sectarian mentality and instead concentrate on the truth of Jesus Christ, which stood above any human partisan qualities. “In religion, bear in mind you are not a sect—in politics never belong to a party” (Stephens' Monthly Magazine, 04, 1840, p. 92).Google Scholar

44. Three Sermons, 3, p. 19Google Scholar; The Champion, 2, p. 4.Google Scholar

45. The Champion, 2, p. 9.Google Scholar

46. Ibid., 2, p. 25. One activity which he used for his particular interests were Sabbath observance, noting instances where factory and mill owners violated the law by compelling Sunday work (for example, The Champion, Nov. 10, 1849).

47. Micklewright, F. H. Amphlett, “Joseph Rayner Stephens, 1805–1879,” Notes and Queries, 186 (1944), p. 10.Google Scholar

48. The Champion, 2, p. 9.Google Scholar

49. The Political Pulpit, 3, p. 22.Google Scholar

50. Ibid.

51. Ibid., p. 23.

52. Three Sermons, 2, pp. 12–13.Google Scholar

53. The Political Preacher, p. 40.

54. The Political Pulpit, 4, p. 24.Google Scholar

55. Ibid., 3, pp. 23–24.

56. Stephens' Monthly Magasine, 06, 1840, p. 124.Google Scholar

57. The Political Pulpit, 2, p. 11.Google Scholar

58. Ibid., p. 12.

59. Ashton Chronicle, Jan. 20, 1849.

60. Ibid., Dec. 2, 1848.

61. Ibid.