The Emergence of the Nonconformist Social Gospel in England

Abstract

Anyone who sets out to examine the theology behind Nonconformist social thought and action in the late nineteenth century has to answer two questions: Did such a theology exist? and Was it important? The second question is more fundamental. Twenty years ago John Kent argued that the realities of politics put an increasing strain on the late Victorian claim to a Christian conscience in public affairs, and that in any case Nonconformists did not enjoy a monopoly of moral concern in politics. Like other Liberals, they ‘found themselves trying to reconcile the older Cobden-type ideals of liberty, peace, arbitration and anti-militarism with a new belief in the positive values of an allegedly Christian British Empire’. The result was that ‘the struggle for political power coarsened their moral sensibility’. In such an analysis the emphasis falls on action rather than thought, and in domestic affairs particularly on the political campaigns for social purity, temperance, or against gambling, where they are easily dismissed as the result of evangelical pietism, class moralism, or social reaction. David Bebbington deliberately eschewed theology in his study of the Nonconformist Conscience. ‘Because the focus is on political issues that concerned Nonconformistsen masse’, he wrote, ‘the theological views of their leaders, and even their versions of the social gospel, do not loom large.’ In his thesis he also commented that ‘theology was largely unfashionable, even in sermons’, citing Charles Berry, a leading Congregationalist, as an example. Nevertheless, he did not deny that there was a theology.