THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND CONGRESS, 1860’S-1880’S: "Occasions of mutual counsel” (Hard Cover)

The Church Congress had modest beginnings. It was the project of a small group of activists who were looking for ways to defend the status, influence, teachings, and property of the Church, to win for it more self-government, to boost clerical-lay cooperation, and to manage the consequences of unwelcome state policies, social and cultural changes, and intellectual trends. They wanted to give the Church a representative voice, or at least something that in the right circumstances could be exerted as such, and to prove that the Church was still relevant. The first Congress was held in 1861.