The Decline of Welsh Nonconformity 1:

As the year 1900 dawned, nonconformist leaders in Wales could be forgiven if they surveyed the landscape with an air of satisfaction. The preceding century had seen great advances for nonconformity. Wales had cast off the established church and embraced democratic nonconformity with astonishing vigour. No wonder Thomas Rees, Principal of the Congregationalists' Brecon Memorial College was moved to declare:

"No children of any century will be prouder of their flag nor louder in their praise to Him who ordains the times and seasons than those of the nineteenth century [...] but the twentieth century will be yet more privileged.’[1]

Others sounded a more cautious note, but it would have taken a very great pessimist to have forecast that by the year 2000 Wales would be a nation of closed chapels and dwindling congregations, Christianity reduced to no more than a private hobby. Looking back, many have declared that by 1900 the nonconformist citadel was already crumbling, its foundations undermined from within and without. A recent popular (2002) history of Welsh Christianity declared:

‘[…] while the [nineteenth] century had begun full of hope, and the Golden Age in the first half of the century had seen that hope increasingly realised, the true situation in 1900 was very different. The outward shell seemed in good condition, but in reality there were serious problems at the heart of the faith in Wales.’[2]

Yet the years leading up to 1914 can hardly be described as barren. In the Calvinistic Methodist Church, the Forward Movement of John Pugh and the Joshua brothers was reaching English speakers in South Wales to an astonishing extent.[3] In 1904, there was a great revival which swept Wales from end to end. How, then, is it possible to speak of nonconformity being in decline in the years prior to 1914?

Congregational historian R. Tudur Jones, in his book Faith and the Crisis of a Nation makes just this assertion. In Jones’ work, this decline is described as an attack upon the foundations of nonconformity which left it unable to cope with the storm of 1914 and the years that followed.[4] The factors behind this decline may be grouped into three areas; Church Life, Doctrine and Politics.

[1] Quoted in: R. Tudur Jones: Faith and the Crisis of a Nation: Wales 1890-1914 (Cardiff, 2004) p.2.
[2] Gwyn Davies: A Light in the Land: Christianity in Wales 200-2000 (Bryntirion, 2002) p.94.
[3] See Geraint Fielder: Grit, Grace and Gumption (Fearn and Bryntirion, 2000).
[4] R. Tudur Jones: Congregationalism in Wales (Cardiff, 2004) pp.219.