Industrial mission

Abstract

"The antecedents of industrial mission are to be found in the way care for the working man and his physical and spiritual needs has been developed since the industrial revolution. For example, Sir Morton Peto, one of the great pioneer railway builders and a prominent Baptist, appointed laymen to look after the spiritual and educational welfare of his employees, and refused to have anything to do with 'truck money'. These appointees were not just social workers, they were religious workers, missioners to bring the gospel to the workers, though the boundaries between 'social' and 'religious' were not clearly defined.· Other nineteenth-century employers, in caring for the welfare of their people, built 'model villages' around their factories and mills. Examples are Sir Titus Salt at Saltaire in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Lever at Port Sunlight, and Cadbury at Boumville in Birmingham. "