Last Gasps: Welsh Disestablishment 8

After the Conservatives beat the Liberal Party in 1895, Disestablishment retreated into the realm of controversy. With the landslide Liberal victory of 1906, which saw the defeat of every Conservative candidate in Wales, Disestablishment came back on the agenda. By this time, however, Lloyd George (pictured), once the most vocal Parliamentary advocate of Disestablishment, and one who had resigned the Liberal whip in 1894 in protest at the lack of Government action of Disestablishment, was far more interested in Old Age Pensions. Mass protest meeting were held when it became clear that the Government was in no hurry to introduce a Disestablishment Bill, and in 1906, Lloyd George had to mollify a very rowdy gathering at (the now vanished) Wood Street Congregational Church, the largest place of worship in Cardiff, telling them that the time was not yet ripe. It was not until 1910, when the Liberals fought two elections on the platform of abolishing the power of the House of Lords to block legislation Until this was done, Disestablishment stood no chance of passing.

And the rhetoric of the Bishops became even more extreme. Bishop Owen of St. David's (pictured), in two addresses given during the election year, came close to accusing the promoters of Disestablishment of promoting a plan for national apostasy. Since these men were Godly nonconformists almost to a man, such a charge was patently absurd, and could only hurt the Church in Wales.

Worse, such rhetoric covered up a very good point that the Bishop made. Speaking at Newport, Owen declared:

"There have been great changes in Wales during the past forty years [of the Disestablishment controversy]. Neither Church nor Chapel nor yet indifference stands now where it stood. The main religious issue in Wales for many years to come is whether the Christian faith as hitherto understood from the first beginning, can hold its own against new theologies, but thinly divided from what used to be called Unitarianism. [...] It is my conviction that if the truth of the Gospel is to retain its power over the next generation in Wales, those who believe in it, Churchmen and Nonconformists alike, will have to stand, shoulder to shoulder, against our common enemy."

And Owen was not wrong. By 1910, the fight over Disestablishment was a luxury that neither church nor chapel could afford. Made from a partisan platform at election time, however, this call was bound to be ignored, while the rhetoric surrounding the point seemed to suggest that Owen was simply trying to make trouble.

And it was not only the Church in Wales that mixed partisan politics with the word of God. The insistence of nonconformists that the Church in Wales should be deprived of many of its endowments seemed to a number of English Nonconformists, most notably J. Fovargue Bradley, to be little short of a thirst for robbery, while the comments of Lord St. Davids that a disendowed Church would be more effective because it would be closer to apostolic poverty seemed to be arrant humbug, given the peer's immense wealth.

When Disestablishment was achieved in 1920, it was to widepread indifference. The First World War had shaken Welsh Nonconformity to its very foundations, and Welsh society was secularising, the war having dealt a death-blow to old Welsh-language culture. Indeed, had a Disestablishment Bill not been introduced in 1912, it is probable that Disestablishment in Wales would have gone the same way as Scottish Disestablishment.

What were the effects of the controversy? The first was that the chapels were weakened spiritually, as a great deal of energy was spent in political campaigning on an issue which had nothing to do with the Gospel. The Chapels gave themselves over to the Liberal Party as unofficial committee rooms. With the rise of Labour, the Chapels found themselves in danger of becoming politically outmoded, and the experience of sectarian infighting prepared the way for Socialist or even communist preachers, more concerned with the interests of one class over the other than the welfare of souls..

The Church in Wales was pulled the other way, into becoming a campaigning arm of the Conservative Party. Alfred George Edwards of St. Asaph proved a man able to navigate those shoals better than the Nonconformists, but a bitter taste was left in the mouth of the Church. More, a church which had been largely evangelical at the commencement of the controversy was left more Anglo-Catholic, as men were appointed for their ability to -take the fight to the Nonconformists' than their ability to reach out to Nonconformity. The way of Bishop Edwards was not the way of his wise elder brother. Nor, I fear, was it the way of the Lord.

The Church in Wales cleaned its stables before the Disestablishment controversy. The abuses of non-residence and pluralism were dealt with, while churches were rebuilt. The endowments that the Disestablishmentarians wanted confiscated were not being misappropriated, and only a few on the fringes alleged this. Looking in, I must end this rather disjointed series on Welsh Disestablishment with a comment on Scottish Disestablishment:

"In the proposal to disestablish the Church of Scotland I see nothing but an ignoble sectarian temper." (Donald Fraser, D.D)

The chief effect of Disestablishment on the Church of Jesus Christ was to create hatred between brothers and an unhealthy reliance upon political means, rather than spiritual means. The people of God trusted in the Chariots and Horsemen of Egypt, and were rewarded accordingly.

The 'St. Asaph Policy': Welsh Disestablishment 7

The 1890s saw Welsh Disestablishment move into its final and most divisive phase. The appointment of Alfred George Edwards to St. Asaph by Lord Salisbury in 1889, chiefly on the grounds of his work in attacking Nonconformist pretensions, saw one of the North Wales sees placed in the hands of a skillful ecclesiastical politician. Bishop Edwards, formerly the Warden (Headmaster) of Llandovery College, gathered around him a group of similarly-minded men, including John Owen, his successor as Warden at Llandovery College, who soon became Dean of St. Asaph, and would later be appointed to St. David's, the largest Welsh Diocese.

Unlike his brother, Dean Edwards of Bangor, whose suicide in 1884 after a lengthy battle with depression, robbed Wales of a man of truly heroic stature, Alfred George Edwards did not believe in conciliating Nonconformity. He attacked the numerical statistics given by Nonconformists, as well as challenging other alleged facts. However, in this action, Edwards was known to step over the bounds of Christian charity, as well as appearing to attack the Welsh language itself. For example, while his call for a religious census to establish the exact position of the Church in Wales vis-a-vis Nonconformity was not in itslf unfair, when coupled with remarks on the language census that appeared to belittle the Welsh language, it appeared to be an attack on Wales itself. Similarly, some of his statements on Nonconformity seemed to ignore the fact that, whatever the issue of the struggle, Dissenters and Churchmen were brothers in Christ.

This approach was enough to cause friction between the Bishop and his most senior parochial clergyman, David Howell (Llawdden), former Vicar of Cardiff and Wrexham, at that time in semi-retirement at Gresford. Howell was a powerful preacher whose ministry at Wrexham had been greatly owned of God. Like Dean Edwards, Howell preferred a less confrontational approach, believing that the only way to prevent Disestablishment was through a return to God, and a vigorous espousal of the interests of Welsh speakers everywhere. When comments made by Howell turned up in pro-Disestablishment pamphlets, Bishop Edwards' reaction was to so blacken Howell's name as to ensure that he would never receive a bishopric.

Edwards' reputation and actions led to harsh words in Parliament, while his open support for the Conservative Party strengthened the impression that the Church in Wales was little more than 'The Tory Party at Prayer.' His actions in ecclesiastical politics led to a split between his supporters and those who felt that an all-out policy of Church Defence would be counter-productive in the long run.

However, like Bonar Law, the Conservative leader from 1911, Edwards was able to establish a working relationship with Lloyd George, the most powerful Liberal in Wales, and Prime Minister from 1916. The result was a final settlement which was as generous as could have been expected. And a grateful Church in Wales chose Edwards to be its first Archbishop. Undoubtedly, Edwards was a politician and his politicking obscured the spiritual aims of the church. However, he was just as much a product of the age as the Nonconformist leaders who clamoured for the endowments of the Church, and to set all the blame for the unedifying spectacle of the last decades of the controversy at his door, as Roger L. Brown does in his biography of Howell is to obscure the equal role played by politicised dissent. The St. Asaph policy was a political policy, framed for a time when the major religious controversy in Wales was not about the preservation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but whether the state should support a particular denomination or not.

On the rights and wrongs of that, more later.

David Davies Penarth: Welsh Disestablishment 6

In the arguments that swirled around the Disestablishment Question in Wales, the most potent weapon in the hands of the Church in Wales was history. While in Ireland the Established Church had been demonstrably alien, having never claimed the loyalty of the majority of the Irish people, the Church in Wales had contained the majority of the people in Wales for most of the eighteenth century. Church apologists like Alfred George Edwards, brother of Dean Edwards and Bishop of St. Asaph, pointed out that: '... until the rise of Methodism in Wales the other nonconforming bodies were numerically and numerically insignificant.' And, Edwards, added '... the early Welsh Methodists were deeply attached to the Church, and that Welsh Calvinistic Methodism only dates from the year 1811.' (Alfred George Edwards, A Hand Book on Welsh Church Defence (Denbigh, 1894), p.24 & pp.26-7.) More, they could point back to the days of St. David, for they had the buildings and the tradition (the Bishop of Llandaff in the Reformation era served Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth I).

David Davies, minister of Tabernacle Baptist Church, Penarth (pictured), and a writer of popular books on Welsh Church history, was not one to take such things lying down, however. In his book The Ancient Celtic Church of Wales: Where is it? Davies presented a very different picture of early Welsh Christianity, a picture of a church free of hierarchy and closer to the Congregational, nonconformist model than the Episcopal model. He argued that the Welsh Church had never known an Archbishop, except possibly as primus inter pares, selected from among the ranks of the Welsh Bishops. According to David Davies, the early welsh Churches were independent of one another, except in the case of church-plants (Ancient Celtic Church, p.19), while Celtic Bishops were said to be merely officials attached to monasteries and varying according to the dictates of abbots, perhaps as many as 138 existing at one time! Indeed, relying on a quotation from Basil Jones, Bishop of St. David's, he suggested that the lists of Welsh Bishops might have been '"faked up," and even invented, by ecclesiasts in the interest of traditional clericalism and episcopacy!' (Ancient Celtic Church, p.20).

This ancient and democratic church, Davies asserted, had been extinguished whem Wales was conquered by England. More, the history of the Church in Wales after the English conquest revealed that church as the enemy of all things Welsh. In conclusion, he declared:

'I repeat that the spirit of the Celtic Church still lives in the Nonconformists of Wales. It is the self-reliant spirit of that grand old Church, which was essentially democratic in constitution and politity, which was essentially democratic in constitution and polity, and which never would brook interference on the part ofPope, Archbishop, or State, in matters of religious creed and practice, that reasserts itself to-day in the Free Churches and institutions of our land, and demands that the possessions which have been diverted to utterly alien purposes shall be restored to the people. It demands that they shall be devoted to the best interests of the whole Welsh nation, without regard to narrow prejudices or irritating bigotries, whether religious, social, or political, devoted to those purposes of philanthropy, truth, and justice, which shall unitedly lead up to the highest ends and noblest issues of our corporate life, and ultimately find their consummation in that "righteousness that exalteth a nation."' (Ancient Celtic Church, p.109.)

While Davies' account was not allowed to stand for long, with two Church Defence books, each more than twice the size of Deavies' work, its arguments served to give Nonconformists greater confidence in their cause. Whatever the justice of these treatments, it must be admitted that Davies' picture of the ancient Welsh Church was not accurate, owing more to Davies' belief that Nonconformity was closer to scriptural Christianity, and thus closer to ancient Welsh Christianity. In fact, while the Christianity of Acts shows no evidence of the Episcopal model, Celtic Christianity, which had fellowship with the Coptic Church, was at least as sacramental as the Churches on the Continent. And it was certainly monastic. Having assumed his conclusion, David Davies went on to select evidence and interpret that evidence in such a way as to support his conclusions.

In arguing with those who hold to tradition, evangelicals should go back to the Scriptures, rather than trying to invent their own accounts of history. By all means, let falsehoods be corrected, but Davies went further, creating his own past and exposing himself to the charge of deliberately twisting the facts.

Thomas Gee: Welsh Disestablishment 5

The struggle over Welsh Disestablishment became intense after the 1880s, as a new generation of Welsh politicians entered the fray. Supporting these were radicalised political journalists. Most prominent among these was Thomas Gee (1815-1898), a Calvinistic Methodist Preacher and publisher, whose premises are illustrated opposite. His scheme for the disestablishment of the Church in Wales, while never adopted, gives a good idea of what the pro-disestablishment nonconformists wanted. I have reproduced a some of the provisions of the scheme to give an impression:

• The compensation of clergy should not be the same as the Irish scheme (which had been considered too generous).
• Those who lost revenue should receive a part of this as salary, no more.
• Rectories, deaneries and Bishops' palaces should remain the property of the church only so long as the incumbents remain in them, and should be sold afterwards, the proceeds to go to a general tithe fund for the county, not to the church.
• Tithes were to be handed over to the county in which the parish was situated, with a portion going to the parish for education and development purposes.
• All private rights to seats in churches to cease, subject to the approval of the congregation. All denominations were to be allowed to use the church buildings for funerals, provided this did not disturb services, and reasonable notice was given.
• Burial grounds to pass to the control of parish councils.
• Church congregations were to remain in charge of maintaining the church buildings, but if these were neglected, the council was to step in.
• The people of the parish were to be allowed to take the church away in cases where: '... Doctrines are taught or ceremonies introduced which they consider inconsistent with the Protestant character of the Church."
• If the cathedrals were unused or allowed to deteriorate, they were to be taken into the ownership of the County Councils.
• Parish endowments, such as legacies or charities were to be handed over for the use of the entire parish.
• All endowments and churches or parsonages erected by public subscription since 1820 should be considered the property of the disestablished church, as should all furniture and plate.
• Parish records should be handed over to the county councils.
• Religious equality in the appointment of chaplains to public institutions such as hospitals, workhouses and lunatic asylums.
• The disestablished church was to be treated in exactly the same way as the nonconformist churches.

The defenders of the established church described this as '[...] a clear case of injustice [...].' Whatever the truth of their claims, it would have left the Church in Wales in a strange position. While Nonconformist chapels might change their doctrine (and, indeed were moving away from Calvinism already), the Church in Wales would have had her doctrines subject to external review, and would have held her buildings on sufferance. The late date given before which all endowments would be considered national property was another thorny subject. Indeed, it would become the issue as the disestablishment struggle came to an end.

But next time, God willing, we shall look at the arguments over the continuity of the Church in Wales.

Thomas Gee's scheme is summarised from the account given in J. H. Slater, The Established Church in Wales, being a short account of its Origin, its development, and its maturity (London, 1893).

Dean Henry T. Edwards : Welsh Disestablishment 4

The attacks on the Church in Wales by Nonconformists like Henry Richard, alleging that the Church in Wales was no more than an Anglicising influence, alien to the spirit of the Welsh people, stung some in the Church in Wales into action. These men recognised that there was a spark of truth in the accusations. Most notable among these was Henry T. Edwards. Born in 1837, the third son of the Rev. William Edwards, Vicar of Llanymawddwy. Like his four brothers, H. T. Edwards entered the Ministry, being ordained deacon by Connop Thirlwall, Bishop of St. Davids in 1861, and received into full orders by Bishop John Vowler Short of St. Asaph in 1862 as Curate of Llangollen, assisting his father, who was by this time in poor health.

Ironically, Bishop Short was just the sort of Bishop H. T. Edwards would later attack. Formerly Bishop of Sodor and Man, and an evangelical, Short had been an interim appointment to the Diocese of St. Asaph under an abortive plan to amalgamate that diocese with neighbouring Bangor. He was not Welsh, he did not speak Welsh, and he did not like the Welsh, although he was an effective administrator.

Himself an energetic, bilingual preacher, whose ministry at Llangollen was blessed with conversions, and Henry Edwards' next concern, at a time when the Church in Wales was being attacked by Henry Richard for its poor provision of seatings, was the enlargement of the Parish church to accommodate the new converts. David Jones, his disciple and biographer, writes:

"In what he successfully did for the outward structure of his father's church at Llangollen, may be recognised his ideal conception of what should be universally effected in the Church of his fathers, not only in material, but also in intellectual and spiritual, reform."

In 1866, Edwards was appointed to the living of Aberdare in the South Wales Valleys. Aberdare, a centre of industry, was a very different place from Llangollen. With the aid of wealthy churchmen, Edwards set up a church extension society, to provide churches of the growing population of the region. When it came to Disestablishment, Edwards' policy could be summed up in the phrase 'reform and defence.'

In 1869, the same year in which he was appointed to Caernarvon, he wrote to Gladstone, then Prime Minister. His letter, later published as a pamphlet, The Church of the Cymry. He began by conceding the numerical case:

"Now there are but few, I think, who, knowing Wales well, can venture to doubt that accurate statistics would show that seven-tenths of the native Cymric population of Wales are alienated from the Church of their forefathers. At the same time, the Church, as existing in Wales, inherits in a large measure the spiritual forces that have been found in all ages to exercise the most authoritative influence over the souls of men. She is strong in the undoubted inheritance of the spiritual authority of original mission to the ancient people who for more than two thousand years [...] have inhabited the valleys of Wales [...]."

In the view of Edwards, who was later appointed Dean of Bangor for his work, the Church had alienated the people, but not fatally. Appoint Welsh-speakers, attend to the work of teaching and evangelism, and the Church in Wales would not be ashamed. As for the claim made by the Liberation Society that Wales was 'A Nation of Nonconformists,' who would not accept the doctrine of the established church:

"Can it be said that the Nonconformity of the Cymric people is attributable to their unwillingness to accept the dogmatic teaching of the Church? It cannot. There prevails among the Nonconformist societies of Wales the utmost indifference, and, I may add, ignorance concerning systems of dogmatic teaching."

He believed that the Chapels were sincere but superficial in the presentation of Christianity and lacked the authority possessed by the Church in Wales, being regarded by the people as 'merely rival religious seminaries.' Once the Church in Wales reformed herself, she would be again the natural home of Welsh Christianity. Dissent, he explained, was due more to the practical than the doctrinal failings of the Church in Wales. Correct those, and the reasons for Dissent, and therefore Disestablishment, would vanish.

However historically correct he may have been, and there is no doubt that, from John Penry onwards, Welsh dissenters had left the Church because of her very real shortcomings, Edwards' programme was out of date. Besides, there were strong political pressures that would be brought to bear on the Church. Next time, we shall examine the scheme of Thomas Gee, Denbigh, for the Disestablishment of the Church.

I shall treat Dean Edwards in more depth at some other time. Suffice it to say, this little glimpse at a man who was called home before his three score and ten years were done has proved more interesting than I thought it would.

All quotations and the picture of Henry Edwards are taken from: David Jones (ed), Wales and the Welsh Church: Papers by Henry T. Richards, MA, Late Dean of Bangor (London 1888). Additional information is from P.M.H Bell, Disestablishment in Ireland and Wales, Roger L. Brown, In Pursuit of a Welsh Episcopate (Wales, 2005).

Henry Richard: Welsh Disestablishment 3

The town of Tregaron in Ceredigion (formerly Cardiganshire) is one of the most beautiful old places in the world. And I ought to know. I've seen the pyramids, St. Petersburg, Victoria Falls. A little old town nestling in the hills, it is grouped, like many towns in Ceredigion, around a central square. And, in the middle of that lovely square is a mighty statue of a bearded man, apparently in the act of delivering a speech. This is Henry Richard, 'The Apostle of Peace.'

Born in Tregaron in 1812, son of Ebeneser Richard, a nonconformist Minister, he was ordained and spent much of his life ministering in London. It was there, in 1848, that he was appointed secretary to the Peace Society. It was in this period that he first became involved in the movement to disestablish the Anglican Church, organised under the banner of the Anti-State Church Association (later the Society for the Liberation of the Church from State Control).

In 1868, he was elected Liberal MP for Merthyr Tydfil, at that time the largest town in Wales, defeating Cabinet Minister Henry Austin Bruce (also a Liberal). An activist, a Nonconformist and a Liberationist, Henry Richard had actively condemned the Church in Wales, as well as establishments in general.[1]

Such was his activity as MP, he became known as 'the Member for Wales.' At the same time, he published a little book of Letters on the Social and Political Condition of Wales. In this, he attacked the Church in Wales fiercely, declaring that it was unrepresentative and largely anglicised.[2] The balance of Anglicans to nonconformists was 20 to 1 against the established church. Indeed, so low was the condition of the Church in Wales that there was not even sufficient provision of seats in Churches for all Welshmen.[3] On this basis, the Church should thank the Chapels for saving them the embarrassment of having to turn people away!

However, when, in 1869, following the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of Ireland, Watkin Williams, the member for Denbigh, introduced a motion advocating the disestablishment of the Church in Wales, Henry Richard opposed it, both as coming too soon, and as lessening the case for general disestablishment. [4] Despite the use of arguments appealing to Welsh nationality, Henry Richard was not about to see the Welsh situation remedied if that meant that the Church remained established in England.

[1] Henry Richard, Letters on the Social and Political Condition of the Principality of Wales (London, 1866), p.2.
[2] Bell, Disestablishment, p.228.
[3] Richard, Letters, pp.15-23.
[4] Jones, Congregationalism, p.207-8; Kenneth Morgan, Freedom, pp.10-11.
(Apologies are offered for the lack of direct quotations of Richard. Sadly my copies of his letters are both currently not in my possession. From the next post on, I shall be using books that are currently in my shelves)

The Old Mother: Welsh Disestablishment 2

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the established church in Wales (henceforth Church in Wales), no longer represented the majority of Christians in Wales.

The leadership of the Church in Wales, or what had passed for it in the Eighteenth Centur,yhad rejected the Calvinistic Methodists. The fathers of Methodism were either refused ordination (Howell Harris), or refused preferment (Daniel Rowland, Williams Pantycelyn), and by 1801, the Calvinistic Methodist societies had been forced to organise as an independent church. In addition, the church leadership, in the form of the bishops, were English, and possessed no sympathy with the aspirations of Wales as a nation. Put simply, the Church in Wales could not have done a better job of appearing to be an English body if they'd tried.

The religious census of 1851 established that, in Wales, the Anglican Church, ‘by law established’ was no longer the church of the majority. Eighty percent of Welsh churchgoers preferred to draw their water from a different spring, and although it could be argued that this figure had been exaggerated, it remained clear that the established church only catered for a minority of the population.[1] While the Church in Wales had been losing members to nonconformity for at least a century, calls for disestablishment had at first been muted. The first generation of leaders of the independent Calvinistic Methodist Church were more concerned with spiritual than temporal matters.[2] Although the older dissenting denominations, such as the Independents and the Baptists had historically been committed to the separation of Church and State,[3] it was only after the Calvinistic Methodists abandoned their conservative political stance following the death of John Elias in 1841 that the campaign for disestablishment in Wales really gathered speed.[4]

Next time, we shall look at the arguments of Henry Richard, one of the earliest proponents of Disestablishment.


[1] Kenneth Morgan, Freedom, or Sacrilege? (Penarth, 1966) p.4; P.M.H Bell, Disestablishment in Ireland and Wales (London, 1969), p.17; R. Tudur Jones, Congregationalism in Wales (Cardiff, 2004), p.207.
[2]In the 1834 Bala Association of the Calvinistic Methodist Church, a resolution was passed disassociating the Calvinistic Methodists from the agitation for disestablishment (Jones, Congregationalism, p.163; Kenneth Morgan, Freedom, p.7).
[3] Kenneth Morgan, Freedom, p.6. The independent minister Samuel Roberts (1800-1885) spent much of his time after his ordination in 1827 in airing nonconformist grievances. Methodist leader, John Elias was careful to disassociate himself from ‘radical’ sentiments in the eyes of churchmen (Jones, Congregationalism, pp.161-4).
[4] Edward Morgan, John Elias: Life, Letters and Essays (1844 and 1847, reprinted Edinburgh, 1973), pp.181; Jones, Congregationalism, p.167.

The Folly and the Fury: Welsh Disestablishment 1.

As I walk along the path from my home behind Heath Evangelical Church to Canton, a large spire is visible from behind the trees. This is the spire of one of the two towers of Llandaff Cathedral, the closest thing Cardiff has to a metropolitan cathedral. Its location, in the tiny settlement of Llandaff, which was not joined to Cardiff until the construction of the Gabalfa Housing Estate in the last century. Even so, this building housed the 'multi-faith' service that marked the opening of the National Assembly in 1999. Just a century ago, when the Church in Wales was the Welsh Branch of the Established Church, this would have been impossible, such was the bad feeling between Church and Chapel.

The story of Disestablishment has been told several times, and I do not propose to tell that story again, but address the spiritual aspect of this particular episode.

The Disestablishment controversy lasted from the 1860s to 1920, when the Church in Wales was separated from the See of Canterbury and constituted as a separate Province of the Anglican Communion. By that time, however, the force had gone out of the argument and if a Bill to Disestablish the Church in Wales had not been introduced before the outbreak of war in 1914, there is every chance that disestablishment would never have taken place, as ecumenism replaced confrontation.

The debates were often heated and sometimes foolish. In fighting Anglicanism, the representatives of Welsh Nonconformity took their eyes off the spiritual declension within their own ranks, while the Anglican Church seemed often to be more interested in political power than holiness. Nevertheless, this episode is instructive as far more than tragedy.