Organised religion played such a central part in Victorian life that it is impossible to understand this era without some reference to it. Yet the question, which worried the Victorians, still remains, how religious was the mass of Victorian society? Recent scholarship has challenged the orthodoxy that the working classes, and the working classes of large urban centres in particular, were irreligious. Yet Liverpool, with its large migratory population, including Roman Catholics from Ireland and Nonconformists from Wales and Scotland, appeared to offer unpromising ground for the Anglican Church to sow its seed. Within the city, Liverpool’s notorious slums seemed to offer the most barren ground of all. What strategies did the Anglican clergy employ to make their churches work at a grassroots level? How could they overcome the problems they faced, which ranged from the hostility of the local community to severe financial constraints? How helpful was the advice dispensed by Church handbooks in dealing with these challenges? More important, is it now possible to estimate the success in gaining not only worshippers, but a wider penumbra of working class adherents to church-based activities? Some of Liverpool’s more aristocratic churches were overwhelmed by the encroaching city slums, and the reaction of at least one clergyman was to retreat within his vicarage, and ‘shut up shop’. However, other clergy set about energetically working the slums. Largely Oxbridge men, with a very different background in social and educational terms to their flock, they made surprising progress. By drawing upon a variety of local sources, including many hitherto unused, this book contends that it is possible to evaluate the success of the Anglican Church in the slums. The Church had successes not only to be judged solely by the number of working class worshippers, but also by the uses the local community made of rites of passage, philanthropic activities and the clubs and societies offered by the Anglican Church in Liverpool. This book is aimed at readers interested in researching family and local history as well as those following wider national trends in religious history.

Did advocates of the social gospel carry the burden of humanitarian aid during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Were evangelicals content merely to maintain the status quo and avoid ameliorating the plight of the needy? Focusing upon the period from the Civil War to about 1920, this study attempts to portray the sizeable body of Christians whose extensive welfare activities and concern sprang similarly from their passion for evangelism and personal holiness, writes the author. He meticulously traces the urban welfare activities of the Salvation Army, the Volunteers of America, the Christian Missionary and Alliance, multiple rescue missions and homes, and the religious journal 'Christian Herald'.

Did advocates of the social gospel carry the burden of humanitarian aid during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Were evangelicals content merely to maintain the status quo and avoid ameliorating the plight of the needy? Focusing upon the period from the Civil War to about 1920, this study attempts to portray the sizeable body of Christians whose extensive welfare activities and concern sprang similarly from their passion for evangelism and personal holiness, writes the author. He meticulously traces the urban welfare activities of the Salvation Army, the Volunteers of America, the Christian Missionary and Alliance, multiple rescue missions and homes, and the religious journal 'Christian Herald'.

When he entered the Manila squatter settlement of Tatalon in 1979, Grigg knew what he wanted to do but not how to do it. The need was obvious - to establish a Christian church among Asia's forgotten people, the impoverished slum dwellers of its vast megalopolises. The challenge was to find a way that did not treat people's spiritual needs in isolation from their poverty, without simply becoming another economic or social relief program with no evangelistic component. This book is the enthralling story of how the author met and solved this problem. But in a sense, it is an unfinished story. What has begun is but the beginning of the founding of a Christian community in a dark place. This is not Viv Grigg's story alone, but God's story. For it is God who is working in Tatalon and urban slums like it, and giving people a hope that affects all of life. Viv Grigg challenges us to reexamine our strategies and design new approaches that will build Christ's kingdom among the poor "who comprise nearly half the world."

An inspiring exploration of how happiness and holiness can exist in the midst of poverty and illness. Two lay women who have chosen to live among the poor in East Africa, one a Maryknoll lay mission, and the other, a New York attorney who left her law practice to become a lay mission with the Franciscans minister to the poor in Kenya. Slavin first met Salvador when she was volunteering as a lawyer working in a justice and peace program in Kenya. Slavin was intrigued by the well-known phrase "Blessed are the poor." After approaching this seeming paradox through unrewarding library research, she decided that she would join Salvador in her ministry to AIDS orphans to try to understand how the poor can be "blessed." This account tells of their experiences as they worked together with the poor, primarily AIDS orphans, in the slums of Kenya. Photos will be included.