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Congregationalism in Wales by R. Tudur Jones, ed. Robert Pope Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Press, 2004 384 pp., $79.95 
Faith and the Crisis of a Nation: Wales, 1890-1914 by R. Tudur Jones, ed. Robert Pope Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Press, 2004 528 pp., $79.95 |
In November 1904, R. B. Jones, a visiting Baptist preacher, held a campaign in Penuel Baptist Chapel, Rhosllanerchrugog, a mining village in northeast Wales. Each night for two weeks he preached to crowded congregations and, according to a contemporary report, "swept the people off their feet with his exhortations." On the final day the meeting, now in the largest chapel in the place, was opened to prayers, testimonies, and hymns from members of the congregation while Jones proclaimed the gospel to those who had been unable to gain entry. Many professed conversion. It was one of the high points of the revival that invigorated Wales during 1904-05.
At the time Rhosllanerchrugog, though of no great size, contained as many as 27 chapels. It was an epitome of Wales, a land studded with places of worship belonging to Evangelical Nonconformity. The success of the movement, however, was to evaporate during the 20th century. In 1905, the Congregationalists, whose history is recounted in the first of the books under review, enjoyed the allegiance of over 175,000 church members; by 2001, the denomination retained only about 33,000 members. The collapse was particularly acute in the last years of the century. R. Tudur Jones' Congregationalism in Wales, originally published in Welsh in 1966, has now been brought up-to-date by the editor, Robert Pope of the University of Wales, Bangor, who points out that between 1962 and 2001, membership in the denomination fell by more than two-thirds. A similar tale could be told for the Presbyterians (originally the Calvinistic Methodists, a body emerging in the 18th century), the Wesleyan Methodists (who also derived from the Evangelical Revival), and the Baptists (who, like the Congregationalists, went back to the 17th century). With the Church of England, then the established church of the land, having only just over a quarter of the worshipping population at the opening of the 20th century, the chapels formed the main Christian presence in Wales. By the end of the century, however, each main branch of Nonconformity had fallen on evil days.
Congregationalism in Wales is an authoritative and unusually illuminating denominational history, showing how the movement contributed both to the triumphs and to the decay of Nonconformity. It explains that Congregationalism began as one of the more extreme forms of Puritanism. The first Welsh Congregational church was established in 1639 "according to the New England way." After a period of persecution in the later 17th century, some of the more Presbyterian-inclined churches adopted broader theological views while the more firmly Independent congregations retained their Calvinistic orthodoxy. These churches managed to slipstream the Evangelical Revival, growing in numbers and turning from a largely cerebral to a more emotional style. Congregationalists then shared in the creation of a flourishing Victorian Nonconformist civilization. They possessed features that distinguished them from their English coreligionists: most of their churches long possessed a plurality of elders, a rarity in England; and they held quarterly meetings and fellowship meetings, both imitated from the Calvinistic Methodists. Perhaps the chief omission in this study is the profound influence of the New England school of theology stemming from Jonathan Edwards on Welsh Congregationalists. The doctrinal synthesis of moderate Calvinism that Edwards and his followers propounded is discussed, but it is presented as an indigenous growth in Wales. Virtually every other aspect of denominational life, however, receives rich and thorough treatment.
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