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‘Missionary Regiments for Immanuel’s Service’: Juvenile Missionary Organization in English Sunday Schools, 1841-1865

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Brian Stanley
Brian Stanley*
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Bristol
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Extract

Juvenile associations in aid of foreign missions made their appearance both in the Church of England and in the Nonconformist churches in the wake of the successful campaign in 1813 to modify the East India Company charter in order to open British India to evangelical missionary work. The fervour which the campaign engendered led to the formation of numerous local associations in support of the missionary societies. In some cases these associations had juvenile branches attached. However, until the 1840s children’s activity in aid of foreign missions was relatively sporadic. Children’s missionary literature was almost non-existent. Such children’s missionary activity as did take place was confined largely to the children of church and chapel congregations; before the 1840s there was little perception of the vast potential for missionary purposes of the Sunday-school movement.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 31: The Church and Childhood , 1994 , pp. 391 - 403
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1994

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References

1 Stanley, Brian, ‘Home support for overseas missions in early Victorian England, c. 1838-1873’ (Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, 1979), pp. 261–6 Google Scholar. I owe thanks to the Methodist Church Overseas Division (Methodist Missionary Society) and the Council for World Mission for permission to cite from their archives.

2 The significance of the 1840s is not noted by F. K. Prochaska in his study of juvenile missionary organization in Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1980), pp. 73-94.

3 [Luke, Brian], Early Years of My Life (London, 1900), p. 134.Google Scholar

4 Stanley, , ‘Home support for overseas missions’, pp. 29–32.Google Scholar

5 Laqueur, T. W., Religion and Respectability. Sunday Schools and Working-Class Culture 1780-1850 (New Haven and London, 1976)Google Scholar; Cliff, Philip B., The Rise and Development of the Sunday School Movement in England 1780-1050 (Nutfield, 1986), pp. 150–2 Google Scholar; Dick, Malcolm, ‘The myth of the working-class Sunday School’, History of Education, 9 (1980), pp. 27–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 For Thompson see Luke, Jemima, Sketches of the Life and Character of Thomas Thompson (London, 1868)Google Scholar.

7 The letters (which first appeared in denominational or Sunday-school periodicals) were reprinted in T. and Thompson, J., Sunday-schools and Missions. Or, Outlines of Correspondence with Sunday-school Teachers, During the Years 1841, 1842 (London, 1843)Google ScholarPubMed.

8 London, School of Oriental and African Studies, Council for World Mission archives [hereafter CWMA], LMS Board minutes, box 27, p. 336.

9 Luke, Sketches, pp. 90-100.

10 CWMA, LMS Home Office Incoming Letters, Thompson to J. J. Freeman, 16 Aug. 1841.

11 Thompson, Sunday-schools and Missions, p. 7.

12 Ibid., pp. 10-11.

13 The letters are reprinted in ibid., pp. 13-16.

14 CWMA, LMS Home Office Incoming Letters, Thompson to J. J. Freeman, 13 Nov. 1841. It is claimed that Sunday-school banners were the parent of banners in trade union marches; see Cliff, Rise and Development, p. 91.

15 Thompson repeated the project in 1842, and succeeded in gaining the support of the Sunday School Teachers’ Magazine; see new ser. 13 (1842), p. 847.

16 CWMA, LMS Committee Minutes, Home Occasional, box 1, book 1, pp. 23–4.

17 CWMA, LMS Home Office Incoming Letters, J. Thompson to J. Arundel, 26 Feb. 1842; LMS Board Minutes, box 27, p. 516. The threatened letter to the Wesleyans was written; see London, School of Oriental and African Studies, Methodist Church Overseas Division archives [hereafter MCODA], WMMS Home Correspondence, T. Thompson to WMMS secretaries, 1 March 1842.

18 CWMA, LMS Committee Minutes, Home Occasional, box 1, book 1, pp. 24-7.

19 Thompson, Sunday-schools and Missions, p. 29.

20 CWMA, LMS Board Minutes, box 27, p. 544, and box 28, pp. 103-4; cf. Evangelical Magazine, 21 (1843), p. 151.

21 Thompson, Sunday-schools and Missions, pp. 20-1.

22 Walters, William, Life and Labours of Robert Moffat, D.D., Missionary in South Africa (Derby, nd), pp. 151–2.Google Scholar

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24 Stanley, ‘Home support for overseas missions’, pp. 219-20.

25 Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy, pp. 91-2.

26 Armstrong, E., ‘A.J.M.A. History’, The Kingdom Overseas (April, 1952), p. 67.Google Scholar

27 MCODA, WMMS Home Correspondence, J. Blake to E. Hoole, 16 Jan. 1838, and box ‘Joseph Blake’, Blake to [Hoole], 5 June 1838. This box, formerly located at the headquarters of the Methodist Church Overseas Division, has unfortunately been lost.

28 Blake, Joseph, The Day of Small Things or a Plain Guide to the Formation of Juvenile Home and Foreign Missionary Associations in Sunday and Day Schools and Private Families, revised edn (Sheffield, 1868), p. 10.Google Scholar

29 Manchester, John Rylands University Library, Methodist Church archives [hereafter MCA], Blake to [J. Bunting], 1 July 1841; MCODA, box ‘Joseph Blake’, Blake to Bunting, 22, 26 and 30 July 1841.

30 Wesleyan Methodist Magazine (hereafter WMM], ser. 3, 20 (1841), pp. 790-1; Blake, The Day of Small Things, pp. 10-11.

31 MCODA, WMMS General Committee Minutes, Box 549, p. 173; WMM, ser. 3, 20 (1841), pp. 1054-5.

32 WMM, ser. 3, 21 (1842), p. 260.

33 MCODA, box ‘Joseph Blake’, Blake to WMMS Secretaries, 11 March 1842; MCA, Blake to Bunting, 14 Oct. 1842.

34 MCODA, WMMS Home Correspondence, Thompson to WMMS Secretaries, n Feb. 1842; see also his letter of 1 March 1842.

35 MCODA, WMMS General Committee Minutes, Box 549, p. 216.

36 WMM, ser. 3, 22 (1843), pp. 501, 524.

37 Minutes of Several Conversations between the Methodist Ministers … (1843), p. 93.

38 MCODA, Circulars 1819-1904, circular dated 7 Dec. 1843.

39 MCODA, WMMS Home Correspondence, Jan.-May 1845, letters 28-82.

40 Report of the Wesleyan-Methodist Missionary Society for the year ending April 1860, pp. 2-4; cf. Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy, p. 82.

41 MCODA, box ‘Joseph Blake’, Blake to (WMMS), 24 July 1858.

42 MCODA, WMMS General Committee Minutes, Box 549, pp. 395-6.

43 WMM, ser. 5, 6 (1860), pp. 1041-3.

44 Minutes of Several Conversations between the Methodist Ministers … (1865), p. 171.

45 Blake, , The Day of Small Things, 1st edn (London, 1849), pp. 68, 71 Google Scholar; Ward, W.R., Religion and Society in England 1790-1850 (London, 1972), pp. 135–40 Google Scholar; Laqueur, , Religion and Respectability, pp. 124–46.Google Scholar

46 MCA, Blake to [Bunting], 6 May 1844.

47 MCA, Blake to Bunting, 10 Feb. 1844; cf.Ward, W.R., ed., Early Victorian Methodism. The Correspondence of Jabez Bunting 1830-1858 (Oxford, 1976), p. 175.Google Scholar

48 MCODA, WMMS Home Correspondence, Blake to [WMMS Secretaries], 4 July 1863; cf. M. Cranswick to W. Arthur, 18 Jan. 1862.

49 Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy, pp. 82-3.

50 Constance Padwick, E., ‘Children and missionary societies in Great Britain’, International Review of Missions (Oct. 1917), p. 566.Google Scholar

51 Allen, Roland,The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes which Hinder it, 4th edn (London, 1960), p. 102.Google Scholar