The Decline of Welsh Nonconformity 3: Church Life - Preaching & Preachers

R. Tudur Jones writes of ‘the Great Preacher’, a character admired almost universally. Yet the greatest were dead by 1890 and many sermons could be flippant, bordering on entertainment rather than instruction. Thomas Charles Edwards, educational leader and preacher, went on record attacking the affectation of many preachers.[1] Indeed, there was a danger of preachers looking to their own popularity, rather than the word of God. Tudur Jones cites the case of a meeting at Ffynnonhenri, Carmarthenshire, where one of two guest preachers went home after the morning service as the man who came after him had been better than him.[2] There were popularity contests held in religious papers,[3] and some men made their names imitating preachers. All this celebrity was not enough, however, to keep young men and students from embracing secular and rationalistic ideas. The content of the message, Francis Jones of Abergele complained, had become less important than its style.[4]


[1] Jones: Faith, pp.123.
[2] Jones: Faith, pp.124-5.
[3] Y Cymro (1897) and The British Weekly (1907).
[4] Jones: Faith, pp.128.