ABSTRACT
John Trevor, the founder of the Labour Church movement, left his Unitarian pulpit for the same reason that William Booth had left the Methodists: because he could not reach poor people in the chapel. The social relief work of the Salvation Army impressed Trevor, although the Army's theology and economics seemed to him wrong. ‘They taught me,’ he said of Booth's people,
that God can do nothing without love and self-sacrifice, and the witnessing spirit which may lead to martyrdom; that the ‘Truth’ taught comfortably, however reasonable it may appear, will never redeem society; indeed that, truth without self-sacrifice is not truth but a sham. . . . 793
In this way the Army helped Trevor towards his decision in 1891 to leave the Upper Brook Street Free Church in Manchester and form the first Labour Church. The name was suggested by William Bailie, an anarchist, atheist and friend of Trevor's in Manchester, who described the enterprise as a Socialist Salvation Army. 794