Church Congresses were annual autumn gatherings of laity, clergy and bishops, between 1861 and 1913, and 1919 and 1928, and then again in 1930, 1935 and 1938. They attracted large attendances to a different city or town every year. Annual reports were published, including transcripts of papers given by all the platform speakers, and there was wide national and local press coverage. Surprisingly, they have attracted little attention from historians of Anglicanism, for the reports and press coverage provide ample evidence of the views of, if not grass-roots members of the Church of England, then of many articulate middle-class laity and clergy who could afford to travel to and stay for a week at a city or resort. Archbishop Sumner in 1861 hoped the first Congress would strengthen the Church at a time of social change, of developments in education, and in the context of ‘contested authority in matters of religion’. The distinguished Broad Church theologian, Charles Raven, in 1926, hoped that year’s congress would foster relations between clergy and laity, ‘educate the populace in Church views’, and, in so doing, promote Anglican unity and social cohesion. Lay people as well as clergy read papers. Congresses were clearly successful in promoting the Church as part of England’s national social and political fabric. There were processions in the cities and towns where they were held and services with distinguished preachers, civic receptions, fringe meetings and exhibitions. Large numbers of people attended, usually 2,000–3,000, but over 4,000 in Birmingham and Manchester, and, in 1899, 8,000 in London. Members of local congregations offered hospitality to visitors. Topics covered at Congresses were broad-ranging, including the engagement of church people with issues of the day, such as poverty, education, industrial relations, philanthropy, and the position of women in society and the Church.

The authors of this book, probably the first about Church congresses since their demise in 1938, have provided a very helpful guide to how Congresses worked, and to the range of evidence, gathering dust on library shelves, about views of a wide range of Church people about the Church and society over seventy or so years of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their particular interest, following their introductory chapter, is to explore the opportunities congresses offered to women to achieve a place and to exercise agency in congresses and so in the Church. The first women attenders were at the second Congress in Oxford in 1862, when they crowded the gallery of the Sheldonian Theatre for a paper and discussion about ‘women’s work’. From 1863, women routinely attended and were clearly eager attenders. The first paper by a woman was in 1875 by Charlotte Mary Yonge, the popular novelist, on ‘Women’s work in the Church’, but it was read by a clergyman. Church Congresses lagged behind other bodies: the eminent Anglican social reformer, Louisa Twining, had read a paper in 1857 to the first Social Science Association meeting. The 1881 Newcastle Congress included women on the platform, and the first woman speaker was the high-profile purity campaigner, Mrs Ellice Hopkins. There was also a meeting dedicated to an audience of women. From the 1880s, women’s meetings featured as a regular part of Congresses, including fringe meetings for local mothers, working women and schoolgirls. A women-only meeting during the 1885 Congress at Portsmouth was crowded out with 1,400 women.

Subsequent chapters are thematic, covering congresses’ discussions of women’s involvement in the Church as deaconesses, religious sisters and missionaries, and as laity, through the newly founded Mothers’ Union and Girls’ Friendly Society. Topics covered included philanthropy and promoting social and moral welfare work, women’s suffrage, promoting secondary and higher education for girls, and physical recreation and public service, and middle-class women’s participation in the world of work. In all, 294 speeches were given by women at forty-five Congresses. Of course, most women speakers were upper-middle class, often being wives, sisters or daughters of bishops, peers or government ministers. They could operate through powerful networks. Many were involved with the National Union of Women Workers and were pioneers in secondary and higher education for girls. It would have been interesting to know whether women pioneers in medicine and law were also involved. They were not revolutionaries, but Congresses offered opportunities to encourage other women to work to alleviate social problems and to raise their voices in public spaces at local, national and transnational levels. Very large numbers of women attended Congresses, including working-class women. There, they could encounter leaders of opinion in the Church and public life, including prime ministers.

The authors have helpfully opened a new range of evidence about Anglicanism in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and especially the increasing engagement of ‘churchwomen’ in public life in bringing about social change. While in the mid-Victorian years some upper-class Anglican women, for example, Mrs Tait’s London Diocesan Ladies Association, were exercising ‘soft-power’ behind the scenes, by the 1880s, via Church Congresses, well-connected Anglican women were providing well-informed, professional views in public, especially about current social and moral issues.