I

In its first phase vegetarianism was linked to northern artisan and lower middle-class radicalism; sectarian Protestantism in particular was crucial to the development of the vegetarian movement. On Sunday 29 January 1809 the Revd William Cowherd of Christ Church, Salford, preached a sermon based on Genesis ix.3. With this sermon began Cowherd's vegetarian ministry that eventually led to the co-founding, in 1847, with members of the Concordium,Footnote ⁴ of the secular Vegetarian Society, one of the earliest such organisations in the world.Footnote ⁵

William Cowherd was born on 16 December 1762 and ordained by the archbishop of York at Bishopthorpe on 5 July 1787. He was a teacher of classics at Beverley College in Yorkshire, and afterwards became curate at St John's church, Manchester. The incumbent of St John's was John Clowes (pronounced ‘Klooz’ by Clowes and his friends), a disciple and renowned scholar of the Swedish mystic Swedenborg. Clowes, however, contrived to remain within the established Church,Footnote ⁶ and it was Cowherd who was to lead the establishment of a Swedenborgian church, the New Jerusalem chapel, in Peter Street, Manchester, in 1793. An ‘inveterate schismatic’,Footnote ⁷ Cowherd left this church in 1800 to build Christ Church in King Street, Salford, for his Bible Christian sect. Whilst the evidence is somewhat confused, it appears that this church was known locally as ‘the Beefsteak Chapel’.Footnote ⁸ The Cowherdite Bible Christians, who have no connection with the better known Bryanite Bible Christians of Methodism, held their final service at their Cross Lane chapel, Salford, on Sunday 11 December 1932, by which time the Church could no longer be considered truly ‘vegetarian’.

Cowherd's Bible Christians were influenced by his background in both the established and the Swedenborgian New Church, but Cowherd's sect brought something distinctive to the mix. Julia Twigg suggests that the Bible Christians belong to an ‘older, non-orthodox tradition’, part of an ‘enduring, though submerged, religious strand that can be traced from at least the seventeenth century, and that is most clearly associated with the influence of Jacob Boehme’.Footnote ⁹

Cowherd's search for rationalism had much in common with the Deists. P. J. Lineham notes how Cowherd ‘sought an explanation of how Christ would visibly return to earth and decided that it was best explained by the effects of refracted light’.Footnote ¹⁰ Cowherd's Facts authentic in science and religion,Footnote ¹¹ which was published posthumously in 1818, interpreted Scripture using a variety of sources from his wide reading but his ‘new translation of the Bible’ was far from literal.

‘Gnosticism was implicit in much of Swedenborgianism’, according to Lineham,Footnote ¹² who concludes that the concept that ‘the flesh was evil was fully developed’ in Cowherdite theology.Footnote ¹³ He notes that the Bible Christians ‘saw the death of Jesus as a symbol of the destruction of man's body so that his spirit could be set free’.Footnote ¹⁴ These beliefs influenced Cowherd's teachings on vegetarianism and temperance. Lineham considers that Cowherd ‘thought that meat eating and the drinking of intoxicating liquor excited man's animal nature and prevented him from recovering his infinite nature’.Footnote ¹⁵ Dietary reform was primarily for man's spiritual development. He also notes that Cowherd criticised other Swedenborgians for believing that ‘so long as a sinful brutal nature continues within us, it is still permitted’.Footnote ¹⁶

In addition to these Gnostic elements, Cowherd clearly had a reverence for life, whether human or animal. This is perhaps best demonstrated by his verses, Humanity and religion pleading against flesh-eating, which appeared in Cowdroy's Manchester Gazette of 17 February 1810, and which were adapted for singing in the earlier editions of the Bible Christian hymnbook. Here he describes the taking of the life of a lamb as a crime against God's wishes: ‘You smite at God, when flesh is slain, /Can crime like this be small?’

Lineham discusses how Cowherd explained the principles of dietary reform to his congregation for the first time in January 1809. He

Lineham suggests that the practice of vegetarianism, whilst the distinguishing feature of the Bible Christian Church, was in fact widespread in the New Church.Footnote ¹⁸ However, Francis Marcellus Hodson, a member and for a time a minister of the Peter Street chapel, submitted to Wheeler's Manchester Chronicle a satirical response, in verse, to Cowherd's vegetarian verse/hymn. Hodson's final couplet states that Cowherd ‘“smites against his God”/Who feeds domestic strife’.Footnote ¹⁹ This refers to the disputes that raged within the congregation when vegetarianism was expounded in Salford and Keighley. In Keighley dissension led to control of the minister's vestry being forcibly taken from Joseph Wright who was replaced by Thomas Wallworth. Wright died a month later. The Hulme congregation were also unhappy about the vegetarian and temperate discipline and tried to evade it. Rebellion at Hulme was led by Samuel Rogerson, whom Cowherd accused of having a ‘carnivorous and tippling spirit’. Rogerson left for the mainstream Peter Street church. Robert Hindmarsh, a Swedenborgian minister whom Cowherd had employed, led the rebellion at Salford and then intended to return to London only three months into his contract.Footnote ²⁰ In the event he stayed in Manchester and became minister of the new Swedenborgian temple in Bolton Street where flesh and alcohol were permitted. Hindmarsh became a key figure in the history of the New Jerusalem Church and also shaped how Cowherd is remembered owing to his attack on Cowherd's character in his Rise and progress of the New Jerusalem Church. Footnote ²¹

Bible Christian hymnbooks offer an insight into the practices of Cowherd's schismatic church. Surprisingly, there are perhaps only two or three hymns in each edition of the hymnal which make specific reference to vegetarian and temperate strands of thought, including Cowherd's poem Humanity and religion pleading against flesh-eating which is adapted for song in earlier editions, but not later ones. An excerpt from Goldsmith's The hermit, which is often quoted in Bible Christian and Vegetarian Society literature is also adapted for song, as is an extract from Coleridge's The rime of the ancient mariner. A later hymnal includes a hymn by W. E. A. Axon, a member of the Church and a historian of both the Church and the Vegetarian Society: ‘Ours is the food that Eden knew/Ere our first parents fell.’Footnote ²²

The Bible Christian hymnals also give an insight into the form of worship in the Church as they contain orders of service for worship, the administration of the holy supper, litanies and services for children. They additionally provide forms of service for such rites of passage as the baptism of infants and adults, matrimony, the thanksgiving of women after childbirth and burial of the dead. It is evident from the service for the burial of the dead that the Bible Christian Church, unlike later vegetarian sects which were influenced by eastern religious traditions, did not believe in reincarnation. The service includes the following prayer: ‘May we thus “die unto sin and live unto righteousness,” whilst we have time and opportunity here, that we may hereafter, when we shall depart this life, rise to the life immortal in Thy eternal kingdom.’Footnote ²³

It is the litanies, however, that perhaps offer the greatest insight into the moral and social teaching of the Church. These prayers demonstrate its commitment to equality,Footnote ²⁴ to education and learning,Footnote ²⁵ to the poor and disenfranchised in society Footnote ²⁶ and to animals.Footnote ²⁷ Cowherd's Church took as its basis the liturgy of the Swedenborgian Church, and added to it Cowherd's revelation of emancipation for the poor, the dispossessed, the oppressed and the creatures. His chapel was initially accepted into the Swedenborgian New Church; schism only became pronounced when he started to preach vegetarianism and teetotalism from his pulpit.

Cowherd died of a heart attack on 29 March 1816 and Joseph Brotherton, Salford's first MP after the Reform Act of 1832, eventually succeeded him as minister, remaining at the church until his own death in 1857.Footnote ²⁸ In 1847 Brotherton chaired a meeting which established the Vegetarian Society. Derek Antrobus claims that Brotherton was but one member of ‘a radical Liberal elite, tied by family connections and membership of the Bible Christian Church, which not only dominated political life in Salford but influenced national opinion in a variety of social and political spheres’.Footnote ²⁹ This group included Brotherton's cousin, William Harvey (1787–1870), mayor of Salford and a president of the Vegetarian Society, Harvey's sister Martha (1783–1861) who was to marry Brotherton, and James Simpson (1812–59), Harvey's son-in-law and fellow Bible Christian, who was the society's first president. Antrobus believes that the history of Salford in the first half of the nineteenth century is ‘the history of Brotherton and his circle taking over the reins of local power and shaping it into an effective instrument for transforming local society’.Footnote ³⁰

Vegetarianism was but one area of the public sphere to which Bible Christians contributed. A group of Bible Christians that included Brotherton and Harvey, was fully involved in local politics and held office in the newly incorporated borough: Harvey as a Liberal alderman and William Lockett as the first mayor. Brotherton was especially concerned to improve popular taste in matters of art and education. He was prominent in securing the passage of the 1850 Museums Act and the 1850 Libraries Act which gave local authorities the power to provide these services: Salford had taken the step of providing one of the very first free municipal libraries a year before the act was passed. Brotherton had encouraged this and presided over the official opening, where the praise he received indicates that the scheme was his initiative. Brotherton was appointed as an overseer of the poor in Salford in 1812, using this position to expose the abuse, by the wealthy, of charities intended for the relief of poverty.

The Bible Christians were also committed to improving the education of the working classes. Brotherton was elected to the small committee which produced proposals to set up the Manchester Mechanics' Institute. Bible Christians were also prominent in the peace movement: reverence for all life was the basis of their vegetarianism and also informed their pacifism. Brotherton claimed to have been the first MP to speak in the House of Commons against capital punishment.

Free trade was seen by Bible Christians as a way to secure peace among nations and led to their involvement in the Anti-Corn Law League. Brotherton became chairman of the Manchester and Salford Peace Society, which had been established in 1833. He was very concerned about child labour and, during the 1820s, when the Tories resisted any legislation on this matter he was at the forefront of the campaign for factory legislation. He also wrote and published the First teetotal tract in 1821 in which he concludes:

William Harvey was prominent in the UK Alliance, a temperance organisation, as well as being president of the Manchester and Salford Temperance Union for several years. He was also vice-president of the Anti-Tobacco Society for many years and a key figure in the history of the Vegetarian Society. James Simpson set up an allotment scheme, the Foxhill Temperance Garden Allotments, for the benefit of the poor, and was a major figure in the Anti-Corn Law League, the Alliance and the Peace Society.

Brotherton's friend, and fellow Bible Christian minister, James Gaskill, was a member of the Chorlton Board of Guardians and a director of the Manchester Mechanics' Institute. The Bible Christian chapel at Queen Street, Hulme, in which he served, launched a public appeal to build a schoolroom to accommodate the children of the supporters of Henry Hunt who were excluded from the other Sunday schools in the area following the Peterloo Massacre. It eventually became the Hulme Institute, claimed by its founder James Scholefield,Footnote ³² minister at the Ancoats chapel, to be the country's first scientific institution for the working classes. Scholefield, a friend of Cobden and a Chartist, was called the ‘chaplain of the Chartists’ by the Chartist leader Feargus O'Connor. There was a Bible Christian chapel on one of O'Connor's land settlements, Lowbands, near Tewkesbury.Footnote ³³ According to Axon's History of the Bible Christian Church a soup kitchen was opened by the Bible Christians in 1845 ‘during a period of distress in Manchester’. This experience encouraged James Simpson to write a pamphlet during the Irish famine entitled A letter to the right hon Henry Labouchere, chief secretary for Ireland, on the more effective application of the system of relief by means of soup kitchens.

Axon suggests that in James Simpson's mind grew ‘a strong conviction that an organised propaganda of vegetarianism was greatly to be desired’.Footnote ³⁴ A suggestion for ‘co-operation among vegetarians’ appeared in the Truth Tester on 1 April 1847 in a letter signed ‘A vegetarian’, written by W. B. Withers, of Whitchurch, Hants. This led William Oldham to hold a ‘physiological conference’, at Alcott House, Ham Common, on 8 July 1847, at which the main speaker was James Simpson. A meeting was then arranged at Northwood Villa, Ramsgate:Footnote ³⁵ Joseph Brotherton presided at its opening session on 30 September 1847. At this session Simpson proposed, and William Horsell seconded, a motion ‘that a society be formed called the Vegetarian Society’.

Rules were adopted, and Simpson was elected president, with William Horsell as secretary and William Oldham as treasurer. After dinner there was a second gathering, with addresses by a number of participants. Axon notes that among those speaking were Brotherton, Scholefield, Simpson, Gaskill and Wright, all on the roll of the Bible Christian Church; he clearly feels that this demonstrates the early active role that the Church took in the fledgling society.Footnote ³⁶

Although there was clearly a large and vocal enough band of vegetarians to form a society in 1847, its role was not only to promote the idea of vegetarianism to the general public but also to provide a mutual support structure for vegetarians. Colin Spencer notes that vegetarianism and teetotalism were viewed by the general public as dangerous experiments: ‘Ale and wine, after all, had been a vital part of the daily diet ever since people could remember. It was also thought that meat was essential; beef tea, for example, would be regularly prescribed by doctors for any illness.’Footnote ³⁷

A good example of the popular reaction to vegetarianism can be seen in an article published in the satirical magazine Punch following the first annual meeting of the society held at Hayward's Hotel, Manchester, in July 1848:

One might well ask why Bible Christians chose to reach out to the wider community to develop the vegetarian movement through an ostensibly secular organisation, rather than try to bring the nation to Bible Christianity and its abstemious ways. P. J. Lineham thinks that their commitment to education may hold the key. He notes that many Bible Christians had no background in the New Church so they rarely referred to Swedenborg, but Swedenborgian ideas continued to pervade the sect. One major difference between the mainstream New Church and the Bible Christians was that the latter exalted ‘reason’ which was seen as more authoritative than revelation. This can be seen in Cowherd's own attempts to explain the return of Christ scientifically. The sect had much in common with popular Deism.Footnote ³⁹ Science and education were important to many artisans in nineteenth-century England but Bible Christians believed that they held ‘the secrets of life and the spirit’.Footnote ⁴⁰ ‘Good government was a way of bringing the New Jerusalem to earth’Footnote ⁴¹ and education was ‘a way of transforming the flesh into spirit’.Footnote ⁴² This motivated not only the educational institutes that the Bible Christians founded in Salford and Hulme,Footnote ⁴³ but also James Scholefield's scientific lectures to the working classes in Ancoats. Lineham suggests that ‘Thus Swedenborgian principles were desacralised, and coupled with the social movements of the age. The New Jerusalem inaugurated in 1757 was to become the experience of all who would discipline the flesh … Bible Christians embraced with equal conviction any secular goals which seemed to fulfil their beliefs.’Footnote ⁴⁴

Lineham further suggests that mainstream Swedenborgians ‘shared many of these beliefs about the virtues of education’Footnote ⁴⁵ but Bible Christians secularised Swedenborgian ideas and became more active in social issues. Vegetarianism became a popular campaign through the efforts of the Bible Christians. It was often referred to by its advocates as ‘the higher form of temperance’Footnote ⁴⁶ and the two were seen as intrinsically linked. It was a common belief in the nineteenth century that abstinence from flesh would lead to a more temperate life. This can be seen expressed in Mrs Humphry Ward's novel The history of David Grieve when Dora Lomax reflects that since her father had taken up vegetarianism he had ceased his drinking, which she notes is often the case.Footnote ⁴⁷ Vegetarian journals in the nineteenth century always advocated temperance and the Vegetarian Society's banquets to mark the anniversary of its foundation were toasted in ‘plain water’.

The link between the Bible Christian Church and the Vegetarian Society in the UK is ably demonstrated by Derek Antrobus who in an appendix to A guiltless feast lists all the officers of the Vegetarian Society during the lifetime of the Bible Christian Church, highlighting those who were members of the Church: between 1847 and 1932 three of the seven presidents, four of the nine treasurers and four of the ten honorary secretaries were Bible Christians. Antrobus also notes that from 1871 the society employed a full-time secretary who worked under the direction of the executive committee: this was chaired for two decades by Peter Foxcroft, another Bible Christian. In a separate appendix Antrobus lists all the ministers of the Bible Christian Church officiating at Christ Church, Salford, and their connections with vegetarianism and the Vegetarian Society.

In the nineteenth century only the Revd John Booth Strettles, who was minister from 1832 to 1855, and Robert Milner, one of the deacons during the interregnum of 1853–5, did not have specific roles within the Vegetarian Society. Both would have been vegetarians and Axon notes that Strettles's speech to the first annual meeting of the Vegetarian Society, in which ‘he argues for the non-flesh diet on the grounds familiar to Bible Christians' was the most widely circulated of his speeches’.Footnote ⁴⁸

In the twentieth century the last Bible Christian minister to have close links with the Vegetarian Society was the Revd Alfred Broadley, who was employed by the Vegetarian Society as a lecturer and was ordained in 1905.Footnote ⁴⁹ His successors Mr Murray (minister, 1919), the Revd Victor Callow, who ended his ministry in 1930, and the Revd P. C. Whiteman (minister, 1931–2) had no official role in the society. Other ministers of the Church closely involved with the Vegetarian Society included the Revd James Scholefield, Joseph Brotherton, Peter Foxcroft, the Revd William Metcalfe, who emigrated to America 1817 with a group of Bible Christians, founded a Bible Christian church in Philadelphia and subsequently chaired the founding meeting of the American Vegetarian Society in 1850, and the Revd James Clark, a joint secretary of the society.

This evidence would seem to suggest that there was a continuing Bible Christian influence in the Vegetarian Society into the early twentieth century. The Revd Alfred Broadley was reported to be still active on the society's executive, finance and editorial committees in 1905. As late as 1922 Ernest Axon, the son of W. E. A. Axon, a prominent member of the Church and the society, was honorary secretary of the society. After the turn of the twentieth century, however, ministers of the Church no longer had an active role in the Vegetarian Society, nor were any of its members officers.

The leaders of the Vegetarian Society were not typical of the membership as a whole. Each month the Vegetarian Messenger published a breakdown of membership according to ‘position in society’. From this it is clear that although professionals such as medical men and educationalists were well represented, the bulk of the membership was drawn from ‘tradesmen and agents’ and ‘artisans’. The society's records also demonstrate that it drew most of its members from the new industrial cities of the north, in particular from towns such as Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds. London saw some vegetarian activity but the focus of the society was predominantly northern and working-class. Julia Twigg has argued that the working classes were attracted to vegetarianism by the emphasis on a cheap means to a healthy diet, beliefs that a meatless diet improved one's alertness and that vegetarians were less prone to stress (the working classes were more likely to suffer workplace stress).Footnote ⁵⁰ Simpson, the society's first president, noted that ‘We have members who belong to all classes and all occupations; every sort of hard vocation is followed by vegetarians and their experience is, that they can live cheaper and work harder upon a reformed diet than a mixed.’Footnote ⁵¹

In the early years the association of the Vegetarian Society with the Bible Christians was such that some of its early executive meetings were held in the library of the King Street chapel. One report makes it clear that the premises were the society's headquarters: in November 1849 ‘a supper was given by the members of the Vegetarian Society at their rooms on King Street, Salford’.Footnote ⁵² The Vegetarian Society's magazines also indicate the strength of Bible Christian influence. Even in later years the relationship between the two organisations, and the active role that the pastors of the Church took in the society, was such that its eighteenth annual meeting was held in the schoolroom, 10 King Street, Salford (Christ Church), on Thursday 26 October 1865.Footnote ⁵³ The link with the Church was strong enough for the society still to hold social events on church premises as late as 1927.Footnote ⁵⁴ In 1920, when the society was given notice to quit its offices in Deansgate, it successfully applied to the trustees of the Church to be given the tenancy of a house and shop which the Church owned in Cross Lane.Footnote ⁵⁵

The society's connection with the Bible Christian Church continued to the end of the Church's days. Each year the society's annual general meeting would involve a church service at the Bible Christian Church, Salford, on the Sabbath, with a vegetarian-themed sermon which was often described at length in its journal. Even after the demise of the Bible Christian Church this tradition continued with the services taking place until 1936 at the Free Christian church in Longsight, Manchester, conducted by the Revd P. C. Whiteman, the last Bible Christian minister, who had become the resident minister there. In 1935 the service was taken by the Revd Mr Callow at Longsight. Callow was another ex-minister of the Bible Christian Church. It is not clear what happened in 1937, but it seems likely that Whiteman's ministry at the Free church ended rather than that there was a sudden cessation of this long-established tradition.

Bible Christians helped to found the Vegetarian Society in 1847 and were integral to its development (its first president, James Simpson, a Bible Christian, was a generous benefactor and funded lavish annual banquets to celebrate its anniversary each year). Their commitment to the society and their active involvement in it is perhaps the reason why the society has an unbroken history. The organisation the Church helped to found continues to this day as the oldest, largest and most successful vegetarian society in the world; it still has its headquarters in Altrincham, in Cheshire, a legacy of the geographical link to the Bible Christians.

Briefly coexisting with the Bible Christian Church, and sharing its roots in the teachings of Swedenborg, was the Order of the Cross, an organisation which was similarly to play a part, though of much less significance, in the developing vegetarian movement.There is, however, no direct evidence of contact between them. Both are listed in the society's annual reports as ‘kindred organisations’Footnote ⁵⁶ and there is a record of at least one talk, ‘Diet and true culture’, given in Manchester by the founder of the Order of the Cross, the Revd John Todd Ferrier, on 13 November 1906. This was presumably given at the Vegetarian Society's rooms (at that time in Deansgate) but this is not made clear. As a number of Bible Christians would have been members of the society at that time, it seems likely that they were aware of each other's ministry.Footnote ⁵⁷

II

As the development of Christian vegetarian ideas moved into its second phase, vegetarianism retained its established artisan radical constituency, but also reached out to middle-class progressives and advocates of ‘new thought’ such as the theosophists. The role of Christianity was reduced, although it remained significant.

Many members of the Order of the Cross were, and are, members of vegetarian and vegan societies as well as animal welfare groups and vegetarian relief organisations, but the order is essentially a Gnostic sect and typically is concerned with the inner religious experience of its membership rather than with any wish to convert others or even to take its message to the wider world. Members are free to support vegetarian organisations, or not, as they see fit, as long as their support is only ever of a peaceful nature: the order, like the Bible Christian Church, is pacifist. However, over the years a number of members of the order have also been members of the Vegetarian Society. At least one, Brindley Flower, was a trustee, while another, Dr Conrad Latto, a prominent member of the society, did much to promote the health benefits of the vegetarian diet. His brother, Dr Gordon Latto, was involved in similar work and was also president of the International Vegetarian Union from 1971 to 1990.

The Order of the Cross today has a membership of around 400 people worldwide with the largest group of around thirty or so people meeting for worship at its headquarters in London each Sunday, and a smaller group meeting on Wednesdays. It was founded in October 1904 by the Revd John Todd Ferrier (1855–1943). Little is known about Ferrier's life other than that he was born in Greenock, in Scotland, and was a Congregational minister for a total of twenty years, the last twelve of which were spent as pastor of the Park Green Congregational church in Macclesfield in Cheshire.Footnote ⁵⁸ There is no autobiography, biography or ‘Life’, and no further information can be gleaned from obituaries which appeared in both the Vegetarian News Footnote ⁵⁹ and the Vegetarian Messenger and Health Review.Footnote ⁶⁰ Neither makes any of the usual references to his background, family or personal interests. This is surprising at first but further enquiries show that it would be both typical and deliberate: members of the order comment that Ferrier did not wish anyone to focus upon him, or his life, and that he would not wish anyone to make enquiries about him.

Ferrier left his congregation in Macclesfield to join the Order of the Golden Age, a group very similar to the Order of the Cross and which both the first number of the Herald of the Cross, the order's journal, and announcements in the vegetarian press, suggest was its predecessor. However it transpires that this was not the case; the Order of the Golden Age later put some distance between itself and the Order of the Cross.Footnote ⁶¹ According to the teachings of the Order of the Cross, Ferrier ‘so strongly felt the urge to do something to help the afflicted creatures who are the victims of man's ill-treatment that he laid down his pastorate and devoted himself to a work that was more radical and far-reaching than any denominational pastorate could be’.Footnote ⁶²

The Herald of the Cross began publication in 1905. In these early years the works of Anna Bonus Kingsford and Edward Maitland, Christian mystics and theosophists, took a prominent place, but later the writings of Ferrier took centre stage and numbers published posthumously contain only his work.Footnote ⁶³ In later years the order was very much centred on Ferrier himself; it is his teaching that remains at its core. Members of the Order of the Cross believe that Jesus has been reincarnated forty times since his death, which they believe took place in ce 49. The order has a cyclic view of time, in common with other vegetarian religions.

Ferrier was a prolific writer and his work extends to some forty volumes as well as a number of smaller pamphlets. Key works include The Master: his life and teachings and The logia or sayings of the Master. Through these works, it is held, one can learn the inner meaning, ‘the spiritual truth’, of the teachings of Jesus, whom Ferrier calls ‘the Master’ and who is depicted by Ferrier as a strict vegetarian. According to Ferrier, Jesus was born into a Jewish anti-sacrificial sect, the Essenes:

Ferrier felt that the Church has been misled and failed to follow the true teachings of ‘the Master’ because it relied on the testimony of evangelists and early church figures, such as Paul, who did not know the true teaching of ‘the Master’. Through a process of ‘recovery’ or ‘illumination’ Ferrier ‘has pieced together what he considers to be the original, uncorrupted sayings of the Master’.Footnote ⁶⁵ Ferrier treated the Old and New Testaments as ‘repositories of esoteric wisdom’.Footnote ⁶⁶ He believed that Old Testament and New Testament stories could be seen as allegories and that a correct understanding of their important messages would depend upon one's spiritual attainment.

Born in 1855, Ferrier, in common with many Christians of his generation, would have felt the effects of a period when many people questioned the established truths of Christianity. He would have experienced the growth of many interconnected religious movements which were outside orthodox Christianity. These were not necessarily established denominations but often strands of thought that were popular amongst certain groups of people. Twigg notes that during the late nineteenth century religious influences such as the religion of nature, liberal Christianity, American transcendentalism and the religion of socialism were becoming increasingly popular.Footnote ⁶⁷ Many of those who supported these ideas would move from the influence of one strand of thought to another or take up several at once. Twigg remarks that ‘Evangelical childhoods and a reaction to them’ is a strong theme in the biographies of vegetarians of this period. She considers that

From the 1880s the popular impact of Indian religion established itself in England and enthusiasm for eastern religions was widespread. One of the most well-known groups influenced by eastern thought was the Theosophical Society founded in 1875 by Madame Blavatski. Although Madame Blavatski was not a vegetarian, many of her followers were, including Annie Besant and Kingsford and Maitland, who greatly influenced Ferrier's spirituality.Footnote ⁶⁹ Kingsford and Maitland were in turn influenced by the writings of Swedenborg: the Order of the Cross and the Cowherdite Bible Christians thus share a common spiritual heritage.

Ferrier's earlier published writings on vegetarianism can be found in the Herald of the Golden Age, the journal of the Order of the Golden Age, for which he wrote regularly from 1902 until the establishment of the Order of the Cross. In an article entitled ‘The heavenly vision: an open letter to Christian ministers, by one of them’, Ferrier writes of the evils of the time –  drunkenness, gambling and the insatiable desire for luxury in foods and pleasure. Ferrier believed that the Christian Church concentrated its efforts on the effects rather than the cause of this evil. The Churches, said Ferrier, pursue temperance societies, Bands of Hope, purity leagues, refuges and shelters when they need to ‘become obedient unto the heavenly vision, then shall it be possible for them to realise within themselves that Divine Power which makes for victory’.Footnote ⁷⁰

Ferrier describes a vision of Jesus in the manger surrounded by beasts of burden.

Ferrier first rehearsed in print the arguments which were to form the basis of his main text on vegetarianism when he produced a series of articles on the subject in 1903 for the Herald of the Golden Age. The articles covered the historical, scientific, humane and spiritual arguments for vegetarianism, and together formed the almost verbatim text of his book, On human carnivorism, also published in 1903.Footnote ⁷²

There are few differences between On human carnivorism and On behalf of the creatures, published in 1926: essentially it is the same text. Ferrier begins by examining the ‘records of history’. From Aristotle he works his way through a distinguished cast of characters including Tertullian, Marcion, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Chrysostom of Constantinople and the Buddha. In the second chapter Ferrier turns to the ‘testimony of science’ (against flesh-eating and in favour of fruits and vegetable products as man's natural diet). Evidence here is marshalled from anatomists, chemists, physicians and surgeons.

Ferrier then makes the economic case for vegetarianism. Evidence from William Paley, Francis Newman and Jeremy Bentham among others is gathered to show that land used for grazing produces far less food than that given over to crops. It is also suggested that a vegetable diet is more cost effective for working people and that the increased use of vegetables, nuts, fruits and cereals would ‘rehabilitate the peasantry, and bring back to the country districts their long-lost prosperity’.Footnote ⁷³

In the chapter on ‘The dynamics of natural food’ Ferrier garners more supporters for vegetarianism: the physicians Dr E. Goodell Smith, Dr W. Boyd Carpenter and Dr Alexander Haig, besides John Wesley and the French historian and philosopher Jules Michelet. Ferrier also discusses the failure of the Bands of Hope and temperance societies and leagues to reduce the national drink bill. He considers drunkenness to signal the failure of orthodox religion.Footnote ⁷⁴ The root cause of drunkenness to Ferrier's way of thinking is the eating habits of the people: ‘All historical facts go to show that flesh-eating and drunkenness go hand in hand.’Footnote ⁷⁵

Ferrier's next call on his reader's attention is his ‘plea for humaneness’. He writes that although he feels that he has made a case for what he describes as a ‘fruitarian regimen’ on historical, scientific, social and national economies there is a ‘higher plea’: ‘The moral and humane side of it [natural living] underlies our ascent to the Divine Life or our descent to lower planes of existence, according to our attitude.’

Ferrier concludes with a chapter entitled ‘The voice of religion’. He argues that to localise religion – to confine the good actions that one does to one's own people or nation or kind – is to limit the development of divine proportions. Directions to meat-eating in the Bible are either a result of the fall of man, for example in Genesis and Deuteronomy, or are a misinterpretation of the true teaching of ‘the Master’ in, for example, the letters of Paul.Footnote ⁷⁶ Ferrier sees the Bible as an esoteric book but acknowledges that it can be read at many levels depending upon the spiritual attainments of the reader.

Although both the Bible Christian Church and the Order of the Cross enjoyed moderate success at some point, neither entered the mainstream in any significant way (although their influence may have reached the mainstream through their contributions to secular organisations). The last of Cowherd's Bible Christian churches, the Salford chapel, which moved to newly-built premises in July 1868, closed in 1932 and its remaining congregation joined the nearby Unitarian chapel in Pendleton. Although the Order of the Cross has small groups of adherents worldwide to this day, its numbers are static.

Julia Twigg notes that the Bible Christian Church's ‘baptismal registers of Salford bear testimony (as did the graveyards) to the extent of [Cowherd's] local following. No other Swedenborgian temple ever witnessed the baptism of a hundred babies every year’.Footnote ⁷⁷ Nevertheless she does not believe that many of the parents of these infants would have been members of the Church, whose ‘dietary discipline eliminated all but the most hardy’.Footnote ⁷⁸ At its peak the Bible Christian Church boasted not just Christ Church, Salford, but also chapels called Christ Church in Hulme and Ancoats in the Manchester area. There was, for a time, a chapel in Brinksway in Stockport and Cowherd's influence also extended into Swedenborgian chapels in Yorkshire such as the Keighley New Jerusalem chapel. There was also, of course, the church founded by the Revd Joseph Metcalfe in Philadelphia.

The death of several major figures in the Church was a great blow to the community. The Bible Christian Church would appear to have relied heavily on its pastors for direction and energy. The Church was created through the determination of William Cowherd and the pastors that he ordained kept the Church together: Scholefield, Gaskill, Brotherton and Metcalfe. As a result of their loss, the Church's radical and liberal outlook of its earlier years waned. There were new outlets for the radical concerns of the working poor of Manchester and Salford in the nineteenth century. The Labour movement, for example, took up much of the work that religious groups had previously supported. The practice of the pastor having a secular occupation, something in which Cowherd and the ministers that he ordained believed, had also ceased by the end of the nineteenth century, and this placed a further burden on the congregation. The Salford chapel was affected by changing socio-geographical circumstances: areas which had previously been densely populated were now manufacturing or commercial areas –  there was no longer a local congregation to support the Church. From the early twentieth century, this was a problem for urban churches and chapels of all denominations but the Bible Christians' restrictions on diet and its temperate practices caused additional difficulties. The Bible Christian Church from at least the early twentieth century was admitting non-vegetarians as associate members.Footnote ⁷⁹ Such changes led to the Church losing its ‘vegetarian’ status. The Church's limited and somewhat confused theology might also have played a part in its decline.Footnote ⁸⁰

At the height of its popularity in the 1930s the Order of the Cross had a membership of around 1,000, and its summer schools attracted as many as 400–500 people. As a Gnostic sect, the order does not aim to convert. This applies to children, other family members and ‘enquirers’ (non-members who attend meetings and services), all of whom must ask to become full members in their own time.Footnote ⁸¹ Junior members must reapply for membership as adults if they wish to be full members, and accept the aims and ideals of the order. Nor does the order promote endogamy, so there is naturally a falling-away of numbers over the generations. Reluctance to proselytise, and limited promotion or advertising, means that these are not replaced by new recruits. There is a strong feeling that those who are meant to find their way to teachings of the order will do so without external assistance. Although the order is anxious to stress that it has a varied membership, it is, in fact, a highly literate and intellectual community, as might be expected from the level of literacy and understanding demanded by Ferrier's writings which make up the bulk of the order's teachings. Trustees stress that the teachings are far more about experience than understanding. This is not to say that there is an emphasis on orthopraxy over orthodoxy, but rather that members feel that the soul may respond to the teachings in a way that the intellect does not. Ferrier, however, left the Order of the Cross with a legacy of compassion to animals which is still strong today. Although the order's members may not, on the whole, have much impact on the world of secular vegetarianism they still hold vegetarianism as a central tenet. Unlike the Bible Christians, whose vegetarian practices waned following the deaths of their founder and early leaders, the Order of the Cross's full and junior members, even today, are vegetarians. The aims and ideals of the order, which stipulate their dietary practices, remain of great importance many years after Ferrier's death.

III

By the 1960s vegetarianism had become most commonly associated with youth and counter-culture and with alternative lifestyles. It was now firmly connected with eastern religious traditions (already a significant factor in the 1890s). Christianity was marginalised as orthodox and established religions were rejected in favour of Indian transcendentalism and a whole package of New Age beliefs, values and causes such as alternative medicine, organic gardening, co-operative working practices and communal life-styles. Many members of counter-cultures were vegetarian but they would not necessarily be members of the Vegetarian Society, or be involved in ‘organised vegetarianism’ such as local groups and societies, as creating or joining such groups was not part of the ethos of the counter-culture. The Beatles as huge cultural icons of the period amply demonstrate interest in eastern religious traditions and vegetarianism. They made a well publicised visit to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in February 1968 and, although the evidence is confused, they clearly all spent some time as vegetarians in the 1960s and '70s. Paul McCartney has been a patron of the Vegetarian Society (UK) since 1995. However, vegetarianism, and the other ideas associated with it, did not enter the mainstream as a result. As Colin Spencer notes, ‘the hippy image was again that of the outsider, and the counter-culture again is a graphic example of a group of people criticising the status quo and imposing a form of self-exile upon themselves’.Footnote ⁸²

Today the mainstream Christian Churches have little to say on the subject of vegetarianism. Such is their silence on the matter that those within their ranks who are concerned about vegetarianism and the welfare of animals, have looked outside the churches and established separate groups to campaign for animal welfare and vegetarianism within the mainstream Christian community. Chief among these groups is the Christian Vegetarian Association (CVA) and the Christian Vegetarian Association UK (CVAUK), interdenominational organisations which amongst other activities promote a campaign for mainstream Christian Churches to encourage their parishioners to go ‘Veg4Lent’. This campaign is promoted by the CVAUK website and offers an introduction and study guide, and background information, as well as a pack for each week of Lent to encourage further reading and reflection on such topics as ‘God's Covenant with all Creatures’, and ‘The Golden Age must return’. The Veg4Lent campaign aims to ‘promote a vegetarian diet for Lent as both an experiential opportunity and a transitional period, throughout the whole of Christendom’.Footnote ⁸³ For the CVA Lent may be the beginning of vegetarianism for Christians, in a return to the traditions of Lenten abstinence, but it should not end there: ‘At a time when reasoned and compassionate understanding of animals and their interests is increasing in most areas of society, there are still far too many Christians reaching for the Bible in an attempt to justify needless bloodletting.’Footnote ⁸⁴

Among the denominational Christian societies concerned with animal welfare and vegetarianism are the Anglican Society for the Welfare of Animals (ASWA) and Catholic Concern for Animals (CCA), formerly the Catholic Study Circle for Animal Welfare. These two have in recent years joined with Quaker Concern for Animals to form a new association, the Association of Christian Animal Welfare Societies (ACAWS) in which they will work whilst still maintaining their separate identities.

In an article on the CCA's website entitled ‘Christmas without cruelty’, Deborah Jones calls for Christians to eschew the Christmas turkey in favour of a vegetarian repast: ‘To take part in the deliberate killing of any part of creation, especially for the excuse of simply “liking the taste” of a dead animal or bird, is a sign, not of the Kingdom, but of this fallen, sinful world.’Footnote ⁸⁵ These Christians continue the mission of ministers such as William Cowherd and the Revd John Todd Ferrier to avoid flesh in order to bring men closer to God and to bring about God's kingdom, or as those earlier Christians may have said, to bring about a return to Eden and a new golden age.