This book draws together the biographies of 150 women of note in the sphere of modern British religious history in an age in which the Christian laity was far greater in number and more ubiquitous and influential in the life of society itself. Between 1880 and 1960 all of the British churches experienced extraordinary levels of popular participation, in public worship, social, educational and charitable enterprises and international work across the world. Social and cultural historians have widely observed that this rich and creative realm often represented a culture in which numbers of women and children often far outweighed those of men, and not only in statistical terms. In fact, in the great age of British mass democracy the worlds of Church and Chapel yielded opportunities for women that far exceeded those of conventional politics or trades unionism. This volume seeks to shine a light on how those women could be found at work at the grass roots level in local congregations across towns and villages, as well as in national and international bodies, be they charitable, Religious, missionary, social or ecumenical in character. It also strives to offer an inclusive history, highlighting the impact of non-white women from a range of social and ethnic backgrounds who were active in various roles in British churches during this period.

A History of Women in the British Churches shows how it was often women who provided the organizational force behind church life up and down the land, as well as producing much of the essential literature and culture of British Christianity at large. It recovers vital individual life histories and re-creates the local, national, organisational, and literary networks within which those individuals worked to give us a far more sophisticated appreciation of the contribution made by women to life in modern Britain.

Andrew Chandler is Professor in Modern History at the University of Chichester, UK. He is the author of several books, including The Church of England in the Twentieth Century: The Church Commissioners and the Politics of Reform (2005) and George Bell, Bishop of Chichester: Church, State and Resistance in the Age of Dictatorship (2016).

Sarah Edwards is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at University of Strathclyde, UK. Her major publications include Writing the Modern City: Literature, Architecture, Modernity (2011, with Jonathan Charley), Nostalgia in the Twenty-First Century (special issue of Consumption, Markets and Culture, 2014, with Kathy Hamilton, Faye Hammill, Juliette Wilson and Beverly Wagner) and recent articles in Women's Writing, Women's History Review and The Routledge Research Companion on Architecture, Literature and the City.


Editorial Advisory Board:

Dr Carmen Mangion, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK
Professor Emeritus Sue Morgan, University of Chichester, UK
Dr Cordelia Moyse, Franklin and Marshall College, USA
Professor Susan Mumm, Brescia University College, Western University, Ontario, Canada