The Renewal of the Union

Abstract

"R.W. Dale, the great Congregationalist leader of the late nineteenth century, said that one of the abiding consequences of the Evangelical Revival for the Dissenting Denominations was a loss of interest in the Church. Once the Baptists and Congregationalists became caught up in the mighty moving of God's Spirit in the opening decades of the nineteenth century, they seemed to lose interest in the ecclesiological principles that had been so important to their forefathers. That is not to say that church reorganisation did not occur. Denominational reform quickened pace throughout the second half of the 1 BOO's. The climax came at the start of the twentieth century, when Baptists raised large central funds for building new churches in suburbia; took steps to improve the effectiveness of the ordained ministry; co-operated in ambitious evangelistic enterprises (in particular the massive Free Church Simultaneous Mission of 1901 ); created new departments of the Union. The watchwords were "organisation", "efficiency" and "aggression". The Union emerged, by the 1920's, as a much expanded and more powerful body than ever before. But little thought seems to have been given to the implications of all this for Baptist ecclesiology"