Domestic Visitation: a Chapter in Early Nineteenth Century Evangelism
Historians in recent years have shown considerable interest in the alienation from conventional church-going revealed by the Religious Census of 1851, as well as in the efforts of the churches to reach the masses in the second half of the nineteenth century. Less attention has been paid to special means of evangelism before 1850, the impression perhaps being given that despite awareness of the problem of the unchurched, the response to this was narrow and conventional—a matter simply of increasing and rationalising the traditional provision of churches, clergy and parish organisation or their Dissenting equivalents. It is true that Sunday Schools have been noted as devices for capturing and controlling the young; but little attention has been paid to what was probably the most characteristic device during the second quarter of the century for extending religious influences to adults outside the Church— the domestic visitation society. The purpose of the present paper is to attempt a limited inquiry into the circumstances in which these societies began; the different models they followed; and the purposes they pursued.