No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 October 2019
This article discusses some of the ways in which ideas about the city influenced the thinking of British Christians from 1840 to the early twentieth century. First, it explores nonconformist conceptions of the city, suggesting that, although the urban environment offered favourable circumstances for nonconformist growth, a desire to return to, or incorporate elements of, rural life was rarely far away. It explores why, when the garden city movement began, it found such fertile soil among Christian thinkers. Secondly, it considers some of the biblical paradigms that shaped late Victorian thinking about the city. Preachers and writers moved seamlessly from their well-stocked religious imaginations to contemplating the practicalities of the city, and back again. It is argued that the Christian evocation of medieval cities, biblical cities and garden cities shaped in important ways the conceptualizations of the urban world.
1 Holland, H.S., Our Neighbours: A Handbook for the C.S.U. (London, 1911)Google Scholar. For his determination to work with members of other religious groups on urban problems, see 61–2.
2 Bar-Yosef, E., The Holy Land in English Culture 1799–1917: Palestine and the Question of Orientalism (Oxford, 2005), 18–60Google Scholar.
3 Major contributions include Soloway, R.A., Prelates and People: Ecclesiastical Social Thought in England 1783–1852 (London and Toronto, 1969)Google Scholar; Brown, S.J., Thomas Chalmers and the Godly Commonwealth in Scotland (Oxford, 1982)Google Scholar; Waterman, A.M.C., ‘The ideological alliance of political economy and Christian theology, 1798–1833’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 34 (1983), 231–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hilton, B., The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought 1785–1865 (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar; Mandler, P., ‘Tories and paupers: Christian political economy and the making of the new poor law’, Historical Journal, 33 (1990), 85–125CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, M., Religion in Industrial Society: Oldham and Saddleworth 1740–1865 (Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar.
4 McLeod, H., Class and Religion in the Late Victorian City (London, 1974)Google Scholar.
5 Cox, J., The English Churches in a Secular Society: Lambeth, 1870–1930 (Oxford, 1982)Google Scholar.
6 Williams, S., Religious Belief and Popular Culture in Southwark c. 1880–1939 (Oxford, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Morris, J., Religion and Urban Change: Croydon, 1840–1914 (Woodbridge, 1992)Google Scholar.
8 Green, S.J.D., Religion in the Age of Decline: Organisation and Experience in Industrial Yorkshire 1870–1920 (Cambridge, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Brown, C.G., Religion and Society in Scotland since 1707 (Edinburgh, 1997)Google Scholar.
10 Wolffe, J., ‘Towards the post-secular city? London since the 1960s’, Journal of Religious History, 41 (2017), 535CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Williams, R., The Country and the City (London, 1973), 3Google Scholar. See also Briggs, A., Cities and Countrysides: British and American Experience (1860–1914) (Leicester, 1982)Google Scholar. The Ecclesiastical History Society tackled The Church in Town and Countryside as the theme for Studies in Church History, 16, in 1979. It is evident, however, that most of the papers relating to the nineteenth century interpreted this as an opportunity to write about urban religion. The exceptions were the papers by G. Robson, D.W. Bebbington and D.M. Thompson.
12 Brown, C.G., The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800–2000, 2nd edn (Abingdon, 2009), 18–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Ibid., 16.
14 Hunt, T., Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City (London, 2004)Google Scholar; Gange, D. and Ledger-Lomas, M. (eds.), Cities of God: The Bible and Archaeology in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Bar-Yosef, Holy Land, and Quash, B., Rosen, A. and Reddaway, C. (eds.), Visualising a Sacred City: London, Art and Religion (London, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 Pugin, A.W.N., Contrasts: Or, A Parallel between the Noble Edifices of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, and Similar Buildings of the Present Day; Shewing the Present Decay of Taste: Accompanied by Appropriate Text, 2nd edn (London, 1841)Google Scholar.
16 Ibid., plate 1.
17 Pugin, A.W.N., The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (London, 1841), 56Google Scholar.
18 Mann, H. (ed.), Census of Great Britain, 1851: Religious Worship in England and Wales (London, 1854), 106–7Google Scholar. For the Religious Census of 1851, see Snell, K.D.M. and Ell, P.S., Rival Jerusalems: The Geography of Victorian Religion (Cambridge, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19 Beckett, J. and Tolley, B.H., ‘Church, chapel and school’, in Beckett, J. (ed.), A Centenary History of Nottingham (Chichester, 2006), 364Google Scholar.
20 These examples are taken from Broad Street General Baptist chapel book, and refer to Mary Goode (31 Aug. 1842), James Goodson (30 Nov. 1842), Mary Stanger (2 Oct. 1844) and Sarah Cooper (27 Aug. 1867). University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections, Mr M5/1, no foliation.
21 Comments made by clergy and ministers in response to the ‘average attendance’ question in the 1851 Religious Census sometimes highlight this issue. For example, the incumbent of St Mary Magdalene's Lincoln wrote: ‘Very uncertain. They go from church to church, from chapel to chapel and from church to chapel.’ Ambler, R.W. (ed.), Lincolnshire Returns of the Census of Religious Worship, 1851 (Lincoln, 1979), 109Google Scholar. On the general question of continuity in local patterns of religious adherence, see Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems.
22 Orchard, S., ‘The free churches and their nation’, in Husselbee, L. and Ballard, P. (eds.), Free Churches and Society: The Nonconformist Contribution to Social Welfare 1800–2010 (London, 2012), 19Google Scholar.
23 Knight, F., ‘Cremation and Christianity: English Anglican and Roman Catholic attitudes to cremation since 1885’, Mortality, 23 (2018), 301–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
24 The change was part of the shifting mindset signalled by the Second Vatican Council. The Vatican issued Piam et constantem on 5 Jul. 1963. Although earth burial was still seen as the preferred option, cremation was presented as an acceptable possibility. See Knight, ‘Cremation and Christianity’, 311–12.
25 Knight, F., The Nineteenth-Century Church and English Society (Cambridge, 1995), 72Google Scholar.
26 Larsen, T., Friends of Religious Equality: Nonconformist Politics in Mid-Victorian England (Woodbridge, 1999)Google Scholar.
27 For Dale, see Gill, C., History of Birmingham, vol. I (Oxford, 1952), 378–9Google Scholar, and Briggs, A., History of Birmingham, vol. II (Oxford, 1952), 3, 68–9Google Scholar; Dale was one of the most prominent proponents of the civic gospel in Birmingham, but there were others of almost equal significance, notably George Dawson and Charles Vince. As Gill noted, ‘There can be no doubt that the influence of religion was one of the strongest factors in creating that sense of civic pride and civic duty which was so conspicuous in Birmingham in the later years of the century. With these religious leaders loyalty to the City of God implied a corresponding loyalty to the earthly city’: Gill, Birmingham, 377.
28 Dale, A.W.W., The Life of R.W. Dale of Birmingham (London, 1898), 404–5Google Scholar.
29 Thompson, D.M., ‘The emergence of the nonconformist social gospel in England’, in Robbins, K. (ed.), Protestant Evangelicalism: Britain, Ireland, Germany and America c. 1750 – c. 1850 (Oxford, 1990), 255–80Google Scholar.
30 Vaughan, R., The Age of Great Cities: Or, Modern Society Viewed in its Relation to Intelligence, Morals, and Religion (London, 1843), 5Google Scholar.
31 Ibid., 6, 239–49.
32 Ibid., 77, 308.
33 Ibid., 103.
34 Gange and Ledger-Lomas (eds.), Cities of God, 26.
35 Rogerson, J., ‘Samuel Davidson and his dismissal in 1857’, in Rogerson, J., Old Testament Criticism in the Nineteenth Century: England and Germany (London, 1984), 197–208Google Scholar.
36 Bebbington, D.W., ‘The city, the countryside and the social gospel in late Victorian nonconformity’, Baker, D. (ed.), The Church in Town and Countryside, Studies in Church History, 16 (Oxford, 1979), 415–26Google Scholar.
37 Paton, J.B., Evangelization of town and country: a paper prepared for the annual assembly of the West Riding Congregational Union held in Huddersfield, 14 April 1863 (London, 1868), 20Google Scholar.
38 Clifford, J., Religious Life in the Rural Districts of England: A Paper Read at the Baptist Union Held at Birmingham, 2–5 October 1876 (London, 1876), 5–6Google Scholar.
39 Ibid., 9–15.
40 Countering this was one of the reasons offered in favour of the development of garden cities. See Bowie, D., The Radical and Socialist Tradition in British Planning: From Puritan Colonies to Garden Cities (Abingdon, 2017), 179Google Scholar.
41 P. Catterall, ‘Slums and salvation’, in Husselbee and Ballard (eds.), Free Churches and Society, 119–20.
42 Paton, J.B., Applied Christianity: A Civic League – Social and Educational – for our Towns and Cities (London, 1906), 18Google Scholar.
43 Paton, J.L., John Brown Paton: A Biography (London, 1914), 237Google Scholar.
44 Ibid., 235–45.
45 Ibid., 468–78.
46 Paton, Applied Christianity, 35.
47 The first edition of Howard's Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform appeared in 1898, and a second edition, with a slightly less radical sounding title, Garden Cities of Tomorrow was published in 1902.
48 Beevers, R., The Garden City Utopia: A Critical Biography of Ebenezer Howard (Basingstoke, 1988), 79, 118CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
49 Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, DE/FJO/I1/2 Notes made by F. Osborn for a lecture in 1963.
50 In addition to Beevers, Garden City Utopia, on Howard, see Osborn, F.J., ‘Sir Ebenezer Howard: the evolution of his ideas’, Town Planning Review, 21 (1950), 221–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fishman, R., Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; Buder, S., Visionaries and Planners: The Garden City Movement and the Modern Community (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar; Meacham, S., Regaining Paradise: Englishness and the Early Garden City Movement (New Haven, 1999)Google Scholar.
51 Paton preached one of his last sermons at the Free Church in Letchworth, in 1912. Paton, Paton, 500.
52 Paton, Applied Christianity, 36.
53 Meller, H.E. (ed.), The Ideal City: The Ideal City by Canon Barnett and Civics: As Applied Sociology by Patrick Geddes (Leicester, 1979), 55Google Scholar.
54 Ibid., 57, 58.
55 Matheson, A.S., City of Man (London, 1910), 141Google Scholar.
56 Ibid., 142.
57 Ibid., 148. For a slightly longer discussion of Matheson, see Knight, F., Victorian Christianity at the Fin de Siècle: The Culture of English Religion in a Decadent Age (London, 2015), 199–200Google Scholar.
58 Brown, Death, 18–30. Brown, of course, takes the view that the ‘myth of the unholy city’ was indeed a myth, in the sense of being false.
59 Erdozain, D., ‘The secularisation of sin in the nineteenth century’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 62 (2011), 59–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
60 Holland, Our Neighbours, 88.
61 Knight, Victorian Christianity, 159–63.
62 A. Swenson, ‘Sodom’, in Gange and Ledger-Lomas (eds.), Cities of God, 197–227; Cocks, H., ‘The discovery of Sodom, 1851’, Representations, 112 (2010), 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cocks, H., ‘Sodom and Gomorrah, 14 January 1851’, Victorian Review, 36 (2010), 27–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Warner, M., ‘New English Sodom’, American Literature, 64 (1992), 19–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
63 M. Seymour, ‘Babylon’, in Gange and Ledger-Lomas (eds.), Cities of God, 171–8; Nead, L., Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth-Century London (New Haven and London, 2000)Google Scholar.
64 S. Goldhill, ‘Jerusalem’, in Gange and Ledger-Lomas (eds.), Cities of God, 71–110.
65 Knight, Victorian Christianity, 181–4.
66 ‘Work for All: Salvation Army Social Campaign’ lithograph (London, 1890). Quotations taken from the text at the bottom of the picture.
67 Ibid.
68 Ibid.
69 Malina, B.J., The New Jerusalem in the Revelation of John: The City as Symbol of Life with God (Collegeville, MN, 2000), 3Google Scholar.
70 Paton, Applied Christianity, 48–9.
71 Ibid., 16.
72 These were published as Holland, H.S., God's City and the Coming of the Kingdom (London, 1897)Google Scholar.
73 The disestablishment of the Welsh Church was finally achieved in 1920, after a bitter nonconformist campaign which had lasted since 1870.
74 Brown, P., Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (London, 1967), 299–312Google Scholar. For Augustine, the two cities in The City of God were the heavenly realm of the City of God (the church) and the earthly realm of the City of the World.
75 Holland, God's City, 33, 36.
76 Ibid., 45.
77 The Commonwealth: A Social Magazine, 1 (1896), 4.
78 Holland, Our Neighbours, 74.
79 Ibid., 74–5.
80 Ibid., 76.
81 Ibid., 77. Compare Rev. 21:15–27.
82 Howard, E., Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform (London, 1898)Google Scholar.
83 Ibid., 8.
84 Lidgett, J. Scott, My Guided Life (London, 1936), 102Google Scholar.
85 Malina, New Jerusalem, 40.
86 Hunt, Building Jerusalem, 86–95.