Religion, Gender, Industry: Exploring Church and Methodism in a Local Setting
Review of the conference by Dr Carol Blessing
The Religion, Gender, Industry: Exploring Church and Methodism in a Local Setting conference was held 16-18 June, 2009, bookended by a pre-conference sight-seeing tour of the Madeley environs and post-conference program at the Nazarene Theological College, Manchester. The conference gathered together over 55 researchers in the areas of church history, industrial history, theology, literature, and women’s studies. It provided concrete orientation to the physical areas the scholars have grappled with theoretically while enabling the interchange of ideas and information. Through its interplay of location and investigation, the Religion, Gender, and Industry program allowed for deeper contextualization of eighteenth and early nineteenth century Methodist studies.
In May, 2006 Dr Peter Forsaith of Oxford Brookes University had contacted Prof. Charlene Pate and Dr Carol Blessing of the Point Loma Nazarene University literature department, Shropshire historian Dr Barry Trinder, Prof Suzanne Schwarz, Liverpool Hope University, David Wilson, Ph.D. student at the University of Manchester, and Principal Emeritus and Senior Lecturer in Church History and Wesley Studies at Nazarene Theological College, Dr Herbert McGonigle to present their in-process research at an informal colloquium at the Nazarene Theological College in Manchester. The research topics covered the Rev. John Fletcher, his wife Mary Bosanquet Fletcher and the women associated with her work, including Mary Tooth, as well as the Rev. Melvill Horne, who was associated with the Madeley parish prior to his missionary work, and the Sunday School movement connected with Methodism. Forsaith’s vision was to continue the conversation in Madeley, Shropshire, site of Fletcher’s vicarage and the iron-focused industrial revolution, with a much larger group, and he worked together with Dr Geordan Hammond, Manchester Wesley Research Centre Research Fellow and Administrator, to create the conference held in June 2009.
The June 15 to 16 pre-conference programme allowed a group of nine participants to see sites associated with Fletcher and the Industrial Revolution. Peter Forsaith acted as able tour guide, taking the group to Attingham Park (formerly Tern Hall) the country home of the Hill family where John Fletcher was tutor to Noel Hill, 1st Baron Berwick, builder of the present house; the site of the 1773 landslip at ‘The Birches’, occasion of Fletcher’s sermon ‘A Dreadful Phenomenon’, the Ironbridge Gorge Museum; the Madeley Old Vicarage, now a private residence, and the Madeley parish church. The one-and-one-half day tour allowed for reflection upon the once-industrial, polluted and sometimes dangerous environs of the eighteenth century now belied by the peaceful landscape.
Set in three meeting places, the conference itself furthered the immersion into Shropshire, as it set the scene for the ministry of John and Mary Fletcher, Sarah Lawrence, and Mary Tooth, and the Methodist movement in that locale. Most of the conference papers were presented in the eighteenth century Priorslee Hall on the Telford campus of the University of Wolverhampton, while some were held in the Madeley church and at the Ironbridge Institute, allowing also for visitation of the Quaker houses owned by Abraham Darby, founder of the Ironworks, and his family, and other Ironbridge museums. A visit to Ironbridge itself capped off the sightseeing.
Conference participants came from Finland, the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, as well as from multiple disciplines. Keynote speakers included Dr Phyllis Mack, Professor of History at Rutgers University and author of Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment, who expanded the conference coverage into Quaker women associated with the Madeley area; Dr Jeremy Gregory, Senior Lecturer in the History of Christianity, University of Manchester, who opened with a keynote overview of the trifold conference topic; Dr Barrie Trinder, author of Industrial Revolution in Shropshire, and Dr Peter Forsaith, Research Fellow, Oxford Brookes University, author/editor of Unexampled Labours: The Letters of the Revd John Fletcher to Leaders in the Evangelical Revival, whose closing address spun out the implications of the topics and invited continued work connecting more fully gender, religion, and industry of the eighteenth century. Panels also included research on the Trefeca family in Wales, Phoebe Palmer in America, interpretations of John Fletcher’s theology, and more on the women who formed Mary Fletcher’s support group in ministry.
Following the conference, some participants travelled to Manchester to the Nazarene Theological College for a lecture by Prof. Bruce Hindmarsh, entitled ‘Wesley Agonistesand the Calvinist Sublime: The Spiritual Ideals of the Early English Evangelical School.’ Hindmarsh, who is James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College, Vancouver, connected theology, literature, and paintings of the eighteenth century in a unique way to provide a richer look at Wesleyan and Calvinist spiritual ideals. Participants then visited the John Rylands Library, under the guidance of librarian Dr Peter Nockles, to learn more about available materials to assist their own research and writing, and were also free to use the collections at the Manchester Wesleyan Research Centre. The week proved a valuable experience for learning, making connections between disciplines, subjects, and contexts, and allowing scholars to network with each other for future projects.
For further details on the conference visit the Madeley Conference Programme page.
