Rev. Thomas Hancock (1832 - 1903)

 This is a call for all information about Rev Thomas Hancock (1832-1903) to be be collected and collated.

I know a limited amount from 'Sermons and Society' Ed Welsby and 'The Victorian Christian Socialists' by Edward Norman, I have two references to him being a young friend of Stewart Headlam.

I also have the text of a sermon preached on 27th February 1887 - 'The banner of Christ in the hands of the socialists'. That you can read on this blog.

There is also the text of a sermon - 'The Church and the public house'

Article - 'What would Jesus do? The "Occupation" of St Paul's Cathedral, February 1887'

Biography from 'Sermons and Society' - Ed by Welsby

Biography – Welsby (1970)

Thomas Hancock was ordained in 1863. He held a succession of curacies but, because of his political and social views, he was overlooked by the Church authorities for most of his life and lived from hand to mouth until 1883, when H. C. Shuttleworth made him lecturer of St Nicholas Cole Abbey in the City. He was a leading figure in the Christian Socialist Movement and was a prominent member of the Guild of St Matthew. He was a brilliant, complex writer, a Church historian and a first-class theologian. He was an uncompromising High Churchman. He preached that the pulpit was the only hope for social salvation because the so-called ‘free-press’ was controlled by Mammon and dared not handle the explosive economic and social issues honestly. Although many of his sermons were complex, they were influential. ‘If every preacher in London could have been compelled to hold his tongue and come and learn from Hancock, say, once a month, it would have been well for them and for the church … The Bishops – what might they have done!’ (Commonwealth)

What I am looking for:

Information for a Wikipedia page

Picture

Any further biographical information

Letters, journals, personal writings - I have 3 books of sermons in PDF from Internet Archive

Please email me - rod.w.white@gmx.com with any information.

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