ABSTRACT
The metropolitan borough of Lewisham, which came into existence in 1900, was formed of the ancient parishes of Lee and Lewisham, which had been gradually suburbanised in the course of the nineteenth century. In Lewisham found a platform in the Municipal Association, whose leading members included the Vicar of Lewisham, the minister of Lewisham High Street Congregational Church, and the Roman Catholic priest, and which tried to encourage voting on non-party lines for men of high character. The churches in Lewisham were generally parts of larger organisations with their leaders, their officials, their conferences, their attempts to influence national policy. Among Nonconformist ministers in Lewisham the point most nearly common to those at different points on a wide theological spectrum was a tendency to present the issues of the day in high-charged rhetoric and to see their solution as a matter of ethical imperatives.
