- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Preface
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- Introductory Note
- 1 ‘The God of the hills’
- 2 ‘Destructive of the authority of divine revelation’
- 3 ‘The ground on which Rational Christianity may firmly take its stand’
- 4 ‘An inspired communication from the Deity … Or … Nothing’
- 5 ‘The seal and servant of Christianity’
- 6 ‘An easy good-natured God’
- 7 ‘The hateful mystery’
- 8 ‘The sceptical tendencies of modern times’
- 9 ‘The heresies of the Baptist Union’
- 10 A ‘conspiracy to undermine our holy faith’
- 1 Church Membership and Chapel Attendance
- 2 ‘Conversion is not necessary to regeneration’
- 3 Nonconformity’s Shrinking Consituency
- 4 ‘Influential families … lost to nonconformity’
- 5 The Failure of Success
- 6 The ‘most spiritually destitute and degraded’
- 7 ‘Diversity of opinion … no bar to Christian communion’
- 8 ‘We must not leave Satan … to provide the recreations of life’
- 9 The ‘social and intellectual well-being of our members’
- 10 ‘A liberal education’
- 11 ‘Winning souls’ or ‘unlimited speculation’?
- 12 Frugality and Overwork
- 13 ‘The future rests with the Free Churches’
- 1 ‘The largest and widest Church ever established’
- 2 ‘Once bit, twice shy’
- 3 ‘A torrent of gin and beer’
- 4 ‘The right of the people to judge for themselves’
- 5 ‘A mutual benefit association’
- 6 Making ‘men moral by act of parliament’
- 7 ‘To reconstruct the existing organization of society’
- 8 ‘A most astonishing opening, furnished by the providence of God’
- 9 ‘The thunder of British guns’
- 10 ‘The descendants of men like Oliver Cromwell’
- Appendix
- Index
‘The future rests with the Free Churches’
‘The future rests with the Free Churches’
Free Church Union and the Welsh Revival
- Chapter:
- (p.214) 13 ‘The future rests with the Free Churches’
- Source:
- The Dissenters Volume III
- Author(s):
Michael R. Watts
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
This chapter discusses how faltering church growth led to church union and the successful revival movement in Wales in the early twentieth century. Between 1900 and 1906, the combined membership of the five main Methodist denominations — Wesleyans, New Connexion, Primitive Methodist, Bible Christian, and United Free Methodist — and of the Baptists and Congregationalists rose by 10.6 per cent or 129,475. Total Free Church membership in England and Wales rose by 13.17 per cent from 1,911,924 in 1899 to 2,201,848 in 1906. By that latter date, Free Church membership in England and Wales exceeded the number of Anglican Easter communicants by nearly 100,000.
Keywords: church unity, church membership, Methodists, revival movement, revivalism, Dissent, Wales, England, Baptists, Congregationalists
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Preface
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- Introductory Note
- 1 ‘The God of the hills’
- 2 ‘Destructive of the authority of divine revelation’
- 3 ‘The ground on which Rational Christianity may firmly take its stand’
- 4 ‘An inspired communication from the Deity … Or … Nothing’
- 5 ‘The seal and servant of Christianity’
- 6 ‘An easy good-natured God’
- 7 ‘The hateful mystery’
- 8 ‘The sceptical tendencies of modern times’
- 9 ‘The heresies of the Baptist Union’
- 10 A ‘conspiracy to undermine our holy faith’
- 1 Church Membership and Chapel Attendance
- 2 ‘Conversion is not necessary to regeneration’
- 3 Nonconformity’s Shrinking Consituency
- 4 ‘Influential families … lost to nonconformity’
- 5 The Failure of Success
- 6 The ‘most spiritually destitute and degraded’
- 7 ‘Diversity of opinion … no bar to Christian communion’
- 8 ‘We must not leave Satan … to provide the recreations of life’
- 9 The ‘social and intellectual well-being of our members’
- 10 ‘A liberal education’
- 11 ‘Winning souls’ or ‘unlimited speculation’?
- 12 Frugality and Overwork
- 13 ‘The future rests with the Free Churches’
- 1 ‘The largest and widest Church ever established’
- 2 ‘Once bit, twice shy’
- 3 ‘A torrent of gin and beer’
- 4 ‘The right of the people to judge for themselves’
- 5 ‘A mutual benefit association’
- 6 Making ‘men moral by act of parliament’
- 7 ‘To reconstruct the existing organization of society’
- 8 ‘A most astonishing opening, furnished by the providence of God’
- 9 ‘The thunder of British guns’
- 10 ‘The descendants of men like Oliver Cromwell’
- Appendix
- Index
