‘Old-Time Religion in a New-Fashioned Way’: The Ministry of ‘Billy’ Richards, 1943–74

Abstract

In 1943 a twenty-six-year-old Pentecostal pastor arrived in Slough, a fast-growing industrial town that many church leaders found spiritually tough. Over the next thirty years Billy Richards built a thriving church with six hundred adult members and a thousand children attending groups across the town. His ministry extended beyond Slough through books, radio broadcasts, correspondence courses and international speaking tours. His methods embraced modern media, new forms of worship, conservative theology and a focus on the active work of the Holy Spirit. One local newspaper characterized it as ‘Old-Time Religion in a New-Fashioned Way’. This article explores the inspirational aspects of Richards's ministry, how these took institutional expression in his lifetime, and why that institution continues to be influential today. His ministry provides one example of how local churches could adapt successfully to the changing social and cultural landscape of late twentieth-century Britain. This has implications for the understanding of urban mission and the contribution made by the agency of organized religious institutions to twentieth-century secularization.