Forward Movement

Forward Movement is the name taken by a number of Christian Protestant movements in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and other countries.

United Kingdom

The term "Forward Movement" is said to have been used for the first time in the mid-1880s, at an informal gathering, by Mrs Maria McArthur, the wife of Alexander McArthur, an Irish-born Methodist businessman and politician who at the time lived in Brixton, London.[1] The expression was quickly adopted more widely, with the encouragement of the Methodist leader, William Fiddian Moulton, and in 1891 a Welsh minister, John Pugh, and his friend Seth Joshua took the initiative in Wales by erecting a tent in Splott, Cardiff, as a way of starting a new Calvinistic Methodist church.[2] It was acknowledged, however, that the origins of the movement went back as far as the 1870s. It was also closely associated with the"Holiness movement" and the work of American evangelical leader Robert Pearsall Smith.[1]

Another Welsh minister, Hugh Price Hughes, became the unofficial leader of the "Forward Movement" in the British Methodist denominations.[3] The movement encouraged the building of Methodist Central Halls as social work centres as well as meeting-places. Hughes founded the Methodist Times in 1885, and the movement became closely associated with Liberal politics in the UK.[4]

The movement continued into the 20th century, with Martyn Lloyd-Jones becoming a notable leader in Wales. Abandoning his Harley Street medical practice in 1927, Dr Lloyd-Jones became minister of Bethlehem Evangelical Church in Port Talbot, originally built as an outlying mission of a Calvinistic Methodist Church in the town centre. This church remains open.[5]

United States

The current Forward Movement in the United States is a ministry of the Episcopal Church in the United States, whose mission is to reinvigorate the life of the church. Since 1935, Forward Movement has published the quarterly devotional Forward Day by Day, as well as books and pamphlets that foster spiritual growth and encourage discipleship. As a self-sustaining agency of the church, Forward Movement relies on sales and donations to carry out its work.

History

Forward Movement was created during a time when the Episcopal Church seemed weary and divided. The 51st General Convention in 1934 charged the newly chartered Forward Movement to “reinvigorate the life of the church and to rehabilitate its general, diocesan and parochial work.” Bishop Henry Hobson of Southern Ohio chaired the Forward Movement Commission, which consisted of five bishops, five priests, and ten laymen. Although the National Council gave a small subsidy during its first three years, Forward Movement soon became a self-supporting ministry, largely through literature sales.

By the 1937 General Convention, Forward Movement had produced twenty-five tracts and booklets in addition to Forward Day by Day. All this was achieved through mostly volunteer labor, with the Diocese of Southern Ohio providing office space and support staff. The 1937 General Convention sought to integrate Forward Movement into the larger church by naming the new presiding bishop, Rt. Rev. Henry St. George Tucker of Virginia, as chair of the Forward Movement Commission, although Bishop Hobson continued to oversee operations in Cincinnati until 1976 (even after his retirement as bishop in 1969).

Gilbert Symons became the Forward Movement's first editor and held the post until 1950. He wrote many of the early issues of Forward Day by Day, in addition to dozens of other titles. The Diocese of Southern Ohio paid Symons's salary, though he devoted nearly all his time to Forward Movement. The diocese also provided rent-free office space (though expenses were shared) in downtown Cincinnati (although for a time circa 2004 the Forward Movement's ministries used space outside downtown, it again has offices within diocesan headquarters).

By 1940, Bishops Tucker and Hobson felt the National Council could assume many of Forward Movement's ministries. At the General Convention of that year, therefore, the Forward Movement Commission was not discharged. But Forward Movement's success as a publisher led Tucker to ask that the executive committee continue publishing literature for the church. To indicate the ministry's nature more clearly, the name was changed in 1949 to Forward Movement Publications.

Day by Day

Forward Movement's first publication was Forward Day by Day, a quarterly devotional magazine which has been published continuously since 1935. Circulation is now 300,000 printed copies per quarter, 84 percent of which is within The Episcopal Church, the rest going to other provinces of the Anglican Communion, primarily to the Anglican Church of Canada. In total, Forward Movement has subscribers in 68 nations. More than 100,000 copies of Forward Day by Day are distributed each year, at no charge, to prisons, jails, hospitals, convalescent homes, juvenile detention centers, and overseas military bases.

Forward Movement today

Forward Movement publishes more than one hundred other titles, mostly pamphlets and booklets, on prayer, discipleship, worship, sacraments, Anglican history and spirituality, and pastoral concerns. Roughly thirty new print titles are issued each year. Distribution is through an online bookstore, parish churches, and an annual catalog. Several titles are published in Spanish. Some current titles are available on the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Book stores, as well as other popular locations.

Forward Movement's offices are located in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, and have been since the company's inception. Executive Director Scott Gunn[6] oversees a staff of eight full-time and eight part-time employees.

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References
  1. Roger Standing (1 April 2015). The Forward Movement: Evangelical Pioneers of 'Social Christianity'. Authentic Publishers. ISBN 978-1-84227-890-1.
  2. "The Forward Movement". Bethel Evangelical Church, Clydach. Retrieved 18 June 2018.
  3. Christopher Oldstone-Moore (1999). Hugh Price Hughes: Founder of a New Methodism, Conscience of a New Nonconformity. University of Wales Press. ISBN 978-0-7083-1468-5.
  4. Kenneth Cracknell; Susan J. White (5 May 2005). An Introduction to World Methodism. Cambridge University Press. pp. 43–. ISBN 978-0-521-81849-0.
  5. "History". Bethlehem Evangelical Church. Retrieved 18 June 2018.
  6. http://www.lentmadness.org/tim-and-scott/
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