Joseph Rayner Stephens

Joseph Rayner Stephens (1805–1879) was a Methodist minister who offended the Wesleyan Conference by his support for separating the Church of England from the State. Resigning from the Wesleyan Connection, he became free to campaign for factory reform, and against the New Poor Law. He became associated with 'physical force' Chartism (although he later denied he had ever been a Chartist) and spent eighteen months in jail for his presence at an unlawful assembly and his use there of seditious language. Born in Edinburgh in 1805, he moved to Manchester when his minister father was posted there in 1819. During his religious career, he worked in a variety of places (including and Newcastle-upon-Tyne) before arriving in Ashton-under-Lyne in 1832. He was the brother of the philologist George Stephens.; three of his other brothers (John, Edward and Samuel) emigrated to Southern Australia and played their parts in the early years of that colony.

Stephens gave a number of talks in favour of disestablishment and became secretary of the Ashton branch of a society arguing for disestablishment. His district conference attempted to discipline him for engaging in controversial political activity, and for taking a view on Church Establishment contrary to that of Wesleyans and of John Wesley. Stephens was willing to accept a temporary suspension on most points, but not on deviation from the views of Wesley, in whose writings he found views matching his own. The national conference nonetheless asserted that true Wesleyans were in favour of the existence of an Established Church and lengthened his suspension: Stephens resigned and set up his own "Stephenite" churches in Ashton-under-Lyne and Stalybridge.

He became active in the movement for factory reform and in the anti-Poor Law movement. In both sermons and speeches he denounced the practices of millowners and the intentions of the new Poor Law as un-Christian and hence doomed to end in social upheaval and bloodshed. Like Richard Oastler he held Tory views on most issues; like Oastler he advised his followers that it was legal to arm themselves and that governmenment would pay more attention to their views if they did. He and Oastler (who saw the younger man as his natural successor) became associated with the Chartists, who also saw the new Poor Law, the rapacity and inhumanity of employers and the poverty of workers as issues requiring urgent attention, but sought to remedy them by fundamental political change. Whereas Oastler openly opposed the constitutional aspirations of the Chartists, and did not become involved in Chartism, Stephens addressed Chartist meetings and was elected a delegate to the National Conference. However, as he later told his congregation, he was never a Radical, let alone a 'five-point man' : "I would rather walk to London on my bare knees, on sharp flint stones to attend an Anti-poor Law meeting, than be carried to London in a coach and six, pillowed with down to present that petition - the "national petition" to the House of Commons" Nor did his advice to followers to arm themselves indicate any support for 'physical force' Chartism or the overthrow of the existing order by violence or by general strike: "My friends, never put your trust in, and never follow after, men who pretend to be able to manufacture a revolution. A revolution, a rolling away of the whole from evil to good, from wrong to right, from injustice and oppression to righteousness and equal rule, never yet was manufactured, and never will be manufactured. God, who teaches you what your rights are, what the blessings He has endowed you withal, will, in his own good time, if that time should come - God will teach your hands to war, and your fingers to fight"

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