ABSTRACT

In this paper I want to draw out some of the striking parallels and point to some differences by comparing the writing and preaching of three figures. I shall use the work of the Peruvian priest, Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation (1971)2 which has been called the 'best known and most comprehensive presentation of the new theological thought in Latin America'. For Chartist belief, I shall focus on the Rev. William Hill, the Swedenborgian minister who was once a handloom weaver and also active in the Factory Movement, who looked after his congregation in Hull while at the same time editing the main Chartist newspaper, the Northern Star. I will pay special attention to a sermon he preached at the Hyde Working Men's Institution which was reported in the Star on 4 September 1839, not long after the failure of the Chartist General Strike and during a period of widespread arrests and heavy repression. Also, I want to consider the Rev. Joseph Rayner Stephens who seceded from the Wesleyans and established the breakaway Stephensite Methodists, which became a plebeian sect and, by 1839, could boast ten preaching stations and thirty-one preachers in the Ashton circuit alone. He is a more contentious choice because by August 1839 he was repudiating the Charter and saying that all he had ever supported was 'The Bible, the whole Bible and nothing but the Bible'. None the less before this point, Chartists had

revered him as the exemplary minister of religion, who preached that the ministry must stand 'as a moral breakwater against the swelling surge of pride and oppression' and who lived the part. The sermon I particularly want to consider is The Political Preacher, an Appeal from the Pulpit on Behalf of the Poor, which was delivered on 6 January 1839,3 less than a week after he had been arrested and charged with seditious conspiracy.