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The Romance of the slum: Gender and Cross-Class Communication of Religious Belief, 1880–1920*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

M. C. H. Martin
M. C. H. Martin*
Affiliation:
School of Education and Training, University of Greenwich
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Extract

Despite relatively low working-class church attendance over the nineteenth century, evidence of religious practice in working-class households and a more diffuse religious mentality have been identified by historians, even until the mid or late twentieth century. Yet little analysis has been undertaken into how such a mentality was created. While Cox noted of late nineteenth- century Lambeth that the most successful churches were those which contained vast philanthropic networks, elsewhere he claimed that ‘philanthropy … did little to promote definite Christian belief. Indeed, both he and Williams regarded schools as the primary agency for conveying religious teaching: Cox claiming that Board schools were more effective than Sunday schools, Williams, that Sunday schools provided not only a means of instilling religious belief in children but a form of ‘religion by deputy’ for their parents.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 42: Elite and Popular Religion , 2006 , pp. 394 - 405
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2006

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Footnotes

*

Previous versions of this paper were presented at trie Women’s History Network Tenth Annual Conference, The Women’s Library, London Guildhall University, September 2001, and to the WHN Midlands Region Annual Conference, November 2001. I am grateful to the organizers and participants for their comments and questions, and to Angela John for subsequent comments on the text.

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