‘A church whose structure is mapped out in a wholly territorial and geographical shape cannot impinge effectively on the functional structures and social projections of a highly industrialized urbanized society.’ (Wickham, p.243)
2024 marks the eightieth anniversary of the founding of Sheffield Industrial Mission. There are many accounts of industrial mission’s history, and also some very good work appraising its impact. The model was replicated not just in other cities across England but also around the world, including countries like South Korea. At its pinnacle Industrial Mission was ecumenical, committed to partnership with employers and workers, grounded in a spirituality that took incarnation seriously, and challenged injustice in the workplace and within the churches.
2024 also marks the centenary of COPEC, the Conference on Politics, Economics, and Citizenship, convened by William Temple to equip churches to address the social and economic hardships experienced by most people in Britain in the years following the First World War.
My aim here is not so much to revisit the history of industrial mission, although a summary seems appropriate, as to look at how the Sheffield Mission had a rippling effect that can be traced through to the work of social responsibility and industrial mission across churches in England. Even over recent years engagement with wider society was characterised by methods and a theological understanding of the place of the church in the world that is clearly derived from the work of Ted Wickham, and the inspiration of Bishop Leslie Hunter all those years ago.
The influence and inspiration of Sheffield Industrial Mission can be traced through a web of church networks, with points of connection found across other areas of activity including youthwork, a wide range of chaplaincies, civic engagement, and
social action. This web extended to include ecumenical partners,
and other expressions of faith including the Taizé and Iona
communities, as well as inspiring industrial mission projects
around the world. In 1966 a conference brought together people
engaged in industrial mission across 11 European nations, while a
more recent conference showed that, while industrial mission may
be now be weaker in the UK, it continues to resonate with churches
around the world with a strong representation in countries as far
away as South Korea.
Eighty years of industrial mission
In 1944 Bishop Leslie Hunter of Sheffield invited Ted Wickham to
take on the founding role of industrial missioner. Moved by the
need of people in a heavily industrialised diocese who had little
or no contact with the church, Wickham would be released to try
new ways, primarily factory visiting, to engage working people in
conversation about faith, life, justice, and hope. Clearly influenced
by the work of William Temple, and of worker priests on the
continent, industrial mission would in turn inspire missionary
activity in other cities and other countries. Eighty years on there
is little remaining of the structures that once formed a thriving
network of engagement by churches with wider society, but is it
possible to detect lingering traces of that work in the activity of
sector or pioneer ministries?
Sheffield was the base, and possibly inspiration, for other
creative initiatives in mission – industrial mission itself, the parish
discussions led by Alan Ecclestone the ‘Red Vicar’ of Darnall, and
the Sheffield Council of Churches. This led to the employment of
the first full-time ecumenical officer, and a house in one of the least
affluent parts of the city that was home to brothers of the Taizé
community. There was the Urban Theology Unit founded by John
Vincent and committed to exploring liberation theology within the
context of an industrial British city. All these initiatives spoke of
a Church seeking ways to engage creatively and usefully with the
reality of life in its communities.
As a case study, having worked across the South West of England
over the past 30 years, we can trace the Sheffield mission’s influence
in several strands of church life and mission-related activity. The key individual link between the Sheffield mission and work in the
South West must be Oliver Tomkins, who was Bishop of Bristol
between 1959 and 1975. Prior to Bristol, Tomkins had been Warden
of Lincoln Theological College, noted for training socially-engaged
clergy. His earlier career included time as secretary of the World
Council of Churches (where some of his early writings appeared
alongside contributions by Karl Barth and Richard Niebuhr). His
parish experience included an incumbency in Sheffield during the
Second World War through the founding days of the industrial
mission.
Tomkins was mission-focused, with an appreciation that
mission could be much more than just about Church and faith.
Around 1965 he invited Leonard Dryden, a priest with experience
of engaging with industry and commerce in Luton, to become his
senior adviser in social responsibility. Dryden went on to become
team leader of the industrial mission in London, developing new
ways of engaging with society through times of unrest and change,
and shaping the methodology embraced by industrial mission
teams around the country.
In 1968 Bishop Tomkins also invited John Ware, who himself
had been ordained in Sheffield and worked part-time for the
Industrial Mission, to take on the role of Social and Industrial
Chaplain in Swindon – allied, of course, to the incumbency of a
nearby parish. Ware established an ecumenical chaplaincy team
working in the railway works and in the car and tobacco factories.
In 1974 he moved into Bristol itself, succeeding Dryden in the
leadership of social and industrial ministry work across the diocese.
Again, the team was ecumenical and worked in the major industries
of the city as well as organising conferences on topical issues, and
sessions for young people who were entering the world of work.
Key to the activity of the ministry was engagement with civic
partners including local politicians, the Council for Social Services,
the Council on Alcoholism, and the Council for Racial Equality.
Tomkins appointed others to forms of sectoral ministry and
freed them from the obligations of parish work. Paul Wheatley
became youth chaplain in Bristol, a role that included a successful
national campaign to save the night-time economy and major
pop festivals from Government restrictions. Also serving in the
Bristol Diocese as a young priest under Bishop Tomkins was David Stancliffe who, as Bishop of Salisbury, would appoint Wheatley
to be an archdeacon taking on particular responsibility for social
responsibility and ecumenical relations in the Diocese of Salisbury.
Their early experiences would shape how churches in Wiltshire and
Dorset engaged with key issues in society and wider human need
for over three decades from the 1990s through to the 2020s.
Within 25 years the influence and inspiration of the Sheffield
model had been felt across the churches all over the country,
with the material and spiritual needs of people being addressed
through youth chaplaincy, social responsibility, and industrial
mission; moving beyond traditional church settings into the wider
community with ministers and church workers freed from concerns
about affiliation to the institutional Church.
Industrial mission took root beyond Swindon, with chaplains
going into workplaces in Plymouth, Bristol, and Southampton. In
Bristol, The Churches’ Council for Industry and Social Responsibility,
later known as ISR, and the Southampton chaplaincy which
became IBEX (the churches working in industry, business, and the
economy) were particularly strong teams maintaining effective
working relations with businesses and with local political leaders.
In addition to workplace visiting, including retail and airports as
the economy changed, ISR and IBEX took on wider roles in civic
engagement, work with other faith communities, advice to churchrelated
social action projects, and eventually promoting faith-based
links with regional government.
An industrial missioner, the chaplain to Bristol airport took on
the executive leadership of Faithnet Southwest, a partnership that
included the South West Council of Faiths, the South West Churches
Regional Forum, the Bristol Churches’ Council for Industry
and Social Responsibility (ISR), and Exeter Diocesan Council
for Churches and Society. Providing a clear structure for faith
organisations to relate to government bodies, its output included
an audit of faith-based contributions to community development
and to the economy, a report on sustainable transport solutions,
advice on funding projects, and a conference on welcoming asylumseekers
and refugees.
From the IBEX team a Methodist industrial missioner was able
to form links with the Trades Union Congress, taking on a role
that linked faith concerns for social justice with issues of justice in the workplace, and also undertaking a coordinating role for the
Tolpuddle Rally, the festival of trades unions and solidarity with
oppressed and exploited people, that takes place each summer in
Dorset.
Industrial mission had become a respected partner that could
work with confidence and professionalism alongside organisations
that might traditionally have been suspicious of the motivations
and aims of churches. By engaging with secular society without an
underlying concern for proselytising and increasing membership
of churches, the Missions were freed to work on issues of common
concern in ways that reflected other traditional priorities for faith
groups – advocacy and attentiveness to the signs of the times,
alleviation of the needs of people and communities, and action
that enhanced dignity and well-being for many.
This partnership activity reflects something of the analysis
by Helen Cameron for the Church Urban Fund which pointed to
historical challenges for the Church of England in engaging with
people living in deprived urban communities. Cameron suggested
that there were three approaches to mission in urban communities:
one where church leaders are alongside people, listening to and
sharing in their concerns, one where church leaders set up projects
to tackle social needs, and a third way ‘represented by the industrial
mission model, in which trained and committed clergy immersed
themselves in the moral (and therefore theological) issues of the
world of work, and at times also in its politics’.
The model of ministry that saw local churches become key
agents for the delivery of social projects like foodbanks, pandemic
responses, accommodation for refugees, undoubtedly makes a
real difference for beneficiaries but can lead to diffidence and
uncertainty about political engagement that might critique poverty,
isolation, community fragmentation, and forced migration. By
combining ‘action’ with the ‘alongside’, industrial mission created
a distinctively Christian response to human needs that enabled
other participants, whether church members or people who might
ordinarily be suspicious of church engagement, to work together to
address both immediate need and long-term solutions.
Wisdom suggests that one should be diffident about describing
individual church leaders or expressions of missionary engagement
as prophetic, but the industrial mission model, freed from parochial concerns and the prioritisation of geography, as had
been envisaged by Ted Wickham, enabled local churches to express
a certain self-confidence in a fast-changing society. Wickham was
also a leader in the Church of England’s Moral Welfare activity, a
way of working that was the dominant approach for parishes on
issues of poverty and family concerns throughout the middle of
the twentieth century. The mingling of insights from industrial
mission and the very real impact of moral welfare on the needs of
beneficiaries, shaped a new strand of engagement through diocesan
boards of social responsibility or church and society. Action became
intertwined with analysis and advocacy.
A lasting legacy?
Eighty years on, most of the industrial mission projects across
England have been wound up and come to an end. Has this ending
arisen from a sense of a mission fulfilled, or is this a mission that
remains incomplete?
Perhaps we have entered a time of flux as churches in England
negotiate new approaches to engagement with wider society, and
the needs of people and communities beyond the walls of our
church buildings. In the late 1960s the moral welfare committee
of the Diocese of Salisbury had a presentation from the Church
of England’s national officer for moral welfare work who advised
them not to be overly concerned about the transfer of family
support and social welfare work to local government bodies which
have been undertaken by churches for decades. There was no need
to worry about the State taking on these functions as after all, ‘we
are the State’.
Moral Welfare has long been committed to the archives now,
the minutes of its committee meetings betraying attitudes of
paternalism and moral judgement that were no longer useful and
neglected developments in understanding of the human person, of
family life, and community systems. Social responsibility, fleet of
foot and able to adapt to changing priorities for churches relating to
wider society, has given way to an increase in specialist ministries
and advisory roles, especially around environment, stewardship,
racial justice, and community development.
New forms of mission have emerged with renewed emphasis
on non-parochial chaplaincy and ‘pioneer ministry’. But questions about the Church’s relevance to, and relationship with, people in
urban communities are possibly even more pertinent now than they
were 80 years ago. Migration over this time has changed the profile
of faith adherence especially in larger urban areas, with many of
the least affluent people holding a strong sense of commitment to
new churches and other faith communities.
The issues of urban alienation from the Church of England that
prompted Hunter and Wickham to establish Sheffield Industrial
Mission in 1944 have not necessarily gone away, but they have
changed in character. Ecumenical relations strengthened over the
intervening decades with strong participation by other churches
in the work of industrial mission, and in related work like social
responsibility. But as many free church congregations have grown
older and started to work towards the completion of their mission,
and independent congregations have emerged, the possibility
of maintaining strong working relationships is clearly more
challenging.
For a time a strong network of industrial mission, social
responsibility, and church leaders, enabled the churches in England
to hold a strong and informed place in debates on the most
significant challenges facing society. Reports like Faith in the City
and Unemployment and the Future of Work, shaped political as well
as theological debate, and were carefully analysed in newspapers
and journals, demonstrating an influence that spread well beyond
church concerns.
Were these reports reflective of a strength in social engagement
that we lack today? Perhaps even the height of industrial mission’s
influence just before the structures that supported industrial
mission began to give way? And have the churches in Britain
produced anything with the influence and impact of that 1997
report on working life and unemployment?
There should be no nostalgic hankering for structures and
ideas that belong firmly in the past, but the questions that led
to Industrial Mission as a possible answer still linger. Canon
Anderson Jeremiah, recently nominated as Bishop of Edmonton in
the Church of England, addressed this issue in his analysis of ideas
of a mixed economy or ecology of mission, ‘In the context of such
profound division in society along racial, political, and economic
lines, if the Church adopts a fragmentary approach, it will only 33
exacerbate underlying problems. If, however, it pursues a truly
inclusive ecological model, then hope may be found. The Church
will be questioning its relevance if it sacrifices the sacramentality
of interdependence rooted in “love, justice, and mercy” on the altar
of numerical growth.’
Today the answer to such questions might not look like
industrial mission, but the question of how churches engage with
the most alienated parts of society, and the most deprived people
in our communities, is a question that must be worth tackling.