THE BIRTH OF CHURCH MAGAZINES

On New Year’s Day, the church magazine celebrated its 150th birthday. On January 1, 1859, the vicar of St. Michael’s church, Derby, the Rev J Erskine Clarke, launched his new initiative, a local parish magazine. Before that date religious publications galore had been produced by denominations, sectional groups and other Christian organisations.

Methodists had been prominent in this ever since John Wesley started ‘The Arminian Magazine’ in 1778. But, so the evidence tells us, there was nothing, or almost nothing, put out by individual churches.

The earliest Methodist venture I know of in this direction dates from 1871. This was the ‘Cross Hills Circuit Magazine’ from Keighley.

The Rev Colin Short of Porthleven kindly told me about it in response to my request in the Methodist Recorder last July.

It was a local magazine, but incorporating a national ‘inset’, the Wesleyan Book Rooms ‘Methodist Messenger’. Publication

New year 1859 saw the publication of ‘St. Michael’s, Derby Parish Magazine’. But another 53 local parish magazines were also born that day. They all shared the 16 pages of Erskine Clarke’s core material. But they dressed this in their own local cover and marketed it under their own local name.

A simple idea and one that caught on. Competitors sprang up. By the 1890s, Croft calculates (‘The Parish Magazine Inset’) that half the homes in the land took a church magazine. I suspect it was considerably more across all the denominations.

And that’s apart from the growing number of 100 per cent local magazines springing up in this period. The earliest Methodist example I’ve seen is the ‘Holdforth Street Monthly Messenger’ from Leeds, which started in 1889. Judith Argerson of Bristol owns a presentation volume for 1893-1899 marking her grandfather the Rev Arthur Jubb’s editorship.

Lionel Madden tells me of a Welsh language circuit magazine produced in Mold in 1875.

Anyone with any further information about the rise of the church magazine can contact Gordon Neal at 60 Addison Road, Worcester WR3 SEA or by e-mail