The churches and the iron and steel industry in Middlesbrough 1890-1914

Abstract

This thesis surveys the rapid, growth of Middlesbrough, its basic Industry, and the establishment and growth of the Christian churches in the town between 1830 and 1914; but the work is particularly concerned with the years I89O-I9I4. It aims to discover the church's understanding of its mission in relation to the iron and steel industry and the society which it produced, in order to evaluate the church's successes and failures. The thesis begins with a summary of Christian social teaching in the second half of the nineteenth century to establish what ideas were current at national level (Chapter l). It proceeds to a study of Middlesbrough and its iron industry, as the environment with which the local churches had to contend (Chapter 2). The attitudes and activities of the churches are then examined in two chapters. The first of these (Chapter 3), discusses their institutional response in church extension, schools, hospitals, church life, missionary activity, and the 1904 religious census. The second (Chapter 4), considers the churches’ concern for personal morality, temperance, gambling, Sunday observance, the 1912 Church Congress, and the churches’ reactions to the iron and steel industry as the determining factor in the life of the community. The concluding chapter (Chapter 5), uses Richard Niebuhr's study, Christ and Culture, as a framework for a theological assessment of the church's work in Middlesbrough on the basis of what, in the earlier chapters, has been established historically.