A Complete Parish Priest Peter Green (1871-1961)

1871-1919

CHAPTER ONE: EARLY YEARS AND INFLUENCES

Peter Green was born on 17th January 1871, the fourth child of Henry George and Elizabeth Sophia Green (née Saintsbury). His father was a lawyer in Southampton, a member of the High Anglican Clapton Set, whilst his mother belonged to the Evangelical Clapham Set, which included William Wilberforce, but she was also influenced by the Oxford Movement. Green was devoted to his mother, and owed his combination of Tractarian and Evangelical traits to her.

As a boy he worshipped with his family at the Anglo-Catholic St Michael’s Church in Southampton in the morning, but went with his aunt Josephine to St Peter’s in the evening where Evangelical preaching was the priority. This combination of the Catholic and Evangelical traditions was to be shown in Green’s attitudes after ordination and indeed throughout his ministry and is reflected in his writings. He did, however, break away from the family’s politics when he converted to Liberalism from Toryism at an early age as he thought it to be old fashioned. He remained a liberal in politics, but not in theology, throughout his life.

Another great influence, demonstrated in his writings, was his uncle George Saintsbury, Professor of English Literature at Reading and Edinburgh Universities. His uncle gave him a love of literature, especially Dickens and Thackeray, and Green used illustrations from literature throughout his books. A further influence was another uncle, Edward Peter Green, after whom he was named, who was a vicar in Bethnal Green, and from whom he learned of slum conditions. It was said that he inherited his father’s quick temper but although he has some sharp things to say in his writings those who still remember him today do so as someone who was full of fun.²

However, he would not regard his upbringing as crucial as he held the belief in the self-creating character by personal decisions and acts of will as will be seen later in the section on Christian ethics.

At the age of thirteen Green went to Cranleigh School after receiving private lessons including Greek and Latin at home. He appreciated his time there and recorded the help he received from the masters, especially one house master. He dedicated his Teaching for Lads³ to his house master, the Revd T. Layng, to whom he attributed the pleasure he had in engaging in work with his lads. However, he was hard in his attitudes to ex-public schoolboys and the professional classes concerning their Christian commitment. In his The Christian Man he stated, The average middle class Englishman’s idol is good form and his old house master is his prophet⁴ and he is highly critical of the poor standard of religious education and the teaching of the Bible in public schools.

Green left Cranleigh for St John’s College Cambridge as a Scholar to read mathematics. Whilst there he rowed for his college and undertook boxing. He was elected to be the President of the Cambridge Union, and his power of oratory, his debating ability and his love of controversy stem from that time. He had a keen wit as Sheen illustrated through an incident when he rounded on a businessman who tried to make a butt of Green. Later the man wrote to Green complaining he had made a fool of him. Green replied: Dear Sir, You are mistaken. I merely drew attention to the fact.⁵

He had a precise mind and hoped for intellectual success, but as he explained later he worked too hard up to the examinations and as a result was put in the 3rd class in his first Tripos. Subsequently, he transferred to the moral sciences and was awarded a 1st class in his second Tripos.⁶

He went straight from Cambridge to be ordained deacon on St Thomas’ Day 1894 to serve in the chapel of Lady Margaret in Walworth, his college’s mission to the South London slums with a strongly Anglo-Catholic ethos, then in the Diocese of Rochester, now in Southwark .There he exercised a ministry to the poor, and he recalled personalities and incidents in his writings including those saved from excessive drinking by conversion to the Christian faith. He fell out with his eccentric vicar, who on one occasion preached a sermon in the morning, which Green himself had submitted to preach in the evening!

After four years of this unhappy relationship the Bishop of Rochester, Dr E.S. Talbot, arranged for him to serve a further curacy at Leeds Parish Church, where he had been the vicar. In 1898 in central Leeds, Green experienced the miseries caused to families by drunkenness and street betting and this led him to despise drinking and gambling in all forms. As a result he published Betting and Gambling⁷ in 1924. He would be horrified by the excesses of today.

He left Leeds for Salford early in 1902. He was to stay for sixty years. H.E. Sheen, his biographer and one-time curate, quoted him as saying, It had been snowing, it was foggy and it was going to rain – I loved Salford from that moment.⁸ Green put his sentiments for Salford in an introduction to Charles P. Hampson’s Salford through the Ages when he wrote: The first thing a visitor from the South has to learn is how beautiful even Blake’s dark satanic mills can look on a winter’s morning early or late on a winter’s afternoon – when lit up, the long rows of windows make the adjective dark the least appropriate one possible. Fine judges of beauty have spoken to me of the grace of full factory chimneys, slender columns of darkness against the pale lemon sky of early dawn or the richer tints of sunset. And even by the prosaic light of day there are many nooks and corners in old Salford for the man with an eye for beauty.⁹

Green was instituted as rector of the Church of the Sacred Trinity on 20th January 1902. Sacred Trinity had been a chapel of ease to Manchester Cathedral and was Anglo-Catholic in character. The parish consisted of narrow streets of back to back houses. It was a generally depressed area. Martin Palmer in Sacred Trinity Salford 1635-1985 pointed out that Engels used notes about Trinity Ward in his book The Conditions of the Working Class. It was an area of poverty and high unemployment where food-money was often spent on drink. Cottages near Chapel Street housed a family in each room.¹⁰

However, through endowments of the Booth family, Sacred Trinity had a living worth £1,400 a year from which Green was able to pay two curates and a lady worker.

Sheen said Green maintained three guiding principles during his sixty years’ ministry in Salford. One, as he was a Tractarian, he was determined to teach sound Catholic doctrine; two, as he was converted and so a convinced evangelical, he would strive for conversions; and three, as he believed in the priesthood of all believers, he would train lay Christians to set to work for, and witness to the Christian faith.¹¹ These proved to be strands in his Christian faith and life which he integrated into his writings, emphasising that God can be known, that the Fall included the universe as well as humanity, and that human actions are not wholly determined by heredity or the environment but by the self governing ego, the thing that in me chooses.¹²

He was pleased to have in his congregation Nurse Edith Cavell and Ronald Knox, the son of the Bishop of Manchester. It was here at Sacred Trinity he commenced his work with boys and men which was to gain him a national reputation, renting a railway arch and adapting it into a club, giving priority to Bible classes, and founding a Temperance Society. He contested the prevailing Lancashire custom that Sunday schools with Bible classes should be independent of the Church and its services. Green took the Bible classes himself, and integrated them into the life of the church as preparation for young people to be confirmed and adults to become regular worshipping members.

In 1904 Green opposed the proposal, supported by the Bishop, that Sacred Trinity should be demolished to allow the London and North Western Railway to extend its line. Peter Green and others protested to Parliament that such a move would be detrimental to the spiritual welfare of the congregation,¹³ and it was dropped.

In the same year Green went to South Africa on the Mission of Help where he conducted evangelistic missions in established Christian stations as he held in parishes in England, and on Blackpool sands in the summers. The vicar of Leeds had recommended him as a missioner in South Africa and later proposed him for the vacant bishopric of New Guinea in 1910. It was offered to Green at the age of thirty-nine by the Archbishop of Canterbury by letter now deposited in the Manchester Cathedral archives,¹⁴ but he was advised after a medical examination to refuse. The medical report is extant in the same archive.¹⁵

Clergy Mission to South Africa. Green is 3rd right in the top row.

In 1910 Green succeeded Canon E.L. Hicks in writing a weekly column for the Manchester Guardian. Hicks had been rector of the neighbouring parish of St Philip, Salford, until his translation to be Bishop of Lincoln. Green wrote the Manchester Guardian column under the pseudonym of Artifex weekly from May 1910 to February 1918 and then fortnightly until September 1954 on a wide range of topics including book reviews. From these columns, each of about 2000 words, it is possible to glean fascinating insights into Green the man at different stages of his life. His Artifex column gave him a platform for his views to a public much wider than the church. He is quoted as saying that he had printers’ ink in his veins.¹⁶ He had commenced his writing career in 1904 with articles written in The Treasury magazine. These were later published in 1913 as Studies in Popular Theology.¹⁷

During his time at Sacred Trinity, Green gave lectures on pastoral theology to students at Scholae Episcopi, a college founded by Bishop Knox of Manchester for men who were unable to go to university or a residential college. The men studied there for two days a week. Generally, incumbents were unwilling to offer these students titles as deacons but Green was the exception and he gained a reputation as a trainer of curates. Scholae Episcopi closed during the First World War but Green had had experience of lecturing to ordination candidates on the pastoral nature of ministry. At that time he taught church history at Manchester University.

In 1911, at the age of forty, he was appointed to the living of St Philip, Salford, by Bishop Knox. Earlier that year he had been appointed to be a residentiary canon of Manchester Cathedral, which he held in plurality with Sacred Trinity, and he continued this arrangement at St Philip’s. It was a Waterloo Church built in 1825 as a garrison church after the Peterloo riots. Originally the parish was mainly open fields and the parishioners few and well-todo. By 1911 the area had become industrialised with Islington Square, once prosperous, a back–to-back slum to which he gave personal attention. The 1915 Ordnance Survey map bears out the description of the area as displaying the characteristics of the Industrial Revolution; narrow streets, closely built sub-standard dwelling houses interspersed with factories and workshops, with little open space and schools on cramped and sunless sights.¹⁸ It is told anecdotally that parishioners were mainly artisans and labourers with poor families and a few clerks.

Sacred Trinity with memorial to Edith Cavell and railway arches where Green founded his clubs.

St Philips, Salford.

It was the custom in those days for the incumbent to delegate the care of such areas to the curates but Green threw himself into parochial work, which had been started amongst the very poor by Edward Hicks, with the help of the two curates he took with him from Sacred Trinity. The parish had two church schools and a hospital within its boundaries. Green was interested in education of which he said: For me education has always meant not the mere accumulation of facts, but the attainment of a coherent theory.¹⁹ This was the foundation of his thinking on all subjects. At St Philip’s he did not wear Eucharistic vestments except for the stole as it was not the custom there, but he taught Catholic doctrines in simple terms in his preaching. He aimed to give logical and clear expositions in tune with his congregations and audiences. He illustrated what he said with appropriate anecdotes often personal ones. Nevertheless, amongst his varied abilities his art of preaching was recognised as he was the select preacher to the University of Cambridge five times and Oxford four times. He was a priest with great potential.

Parish Outing, Blackpool.

² H.E. Sheen Canon Peter Green (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1965), p14.

³ PG: Teaching for Lads (Edward Arnold, London, 1917).

⁴ PG: The Christian Man (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1937), p19 reprinted from Artifex 23.11.1927.

⁵ Sheen, op. cit., p51.

⁶ PG: Parochial Missions Today (Longmans Green and Co., London, 1928), p111.

⁷ PG: Betting and Gambling (SCM Press, London, 1924).

⁸ Sheen, op. cit., p33.

⁹ Charles P. Hampson: Salford through the Ages (E.J. Morton, Didsbury, 1930), Introduction.

¹⁰ Martin Palmer, Sacred Trinity Salford 1635-1985 (Sacred Trinity Centre, Salford, 1985), pp29, 30.

¹¹ Sheen, op. cit., pp35-6.

¹² P.G., (Artifex) Good and Evil (Manchester Guardian, Manchester) 19th October 1953.

¹³ Martin Palmer: Sacred Trinity Salford 1635-1985 (Sacred Trinity Centre, Salford, 1985)

¹⁴ Mancath Ref 3/3/1/5

¹⁵ Mancath Ref 3/3/1/4

¹⁶ Sheen, op. cit., p45.

¹⁷ PG: Studies in Popular Theology (Wells, Gardner, Darton & Co. Ltd., London, 1913).

¹⁸ The British Association, Manchester and its Region (Manchester University Press, 1962) p262.

¹⁹ Sheen, op. cit., p49.

CHAPTER TWO: WORK WITH LADS AND MEN

At St Philip’s, Green developed his work with men and boys in the Barrow Street Mission which had been established by Hicks, his predecessor. Here he housed the mission work and the Temperance Society which held a concert every Tuesday evening, which he attended as a priority whenever possible, on the first floor. The Scouts occupied the second floor, and a permanent boys’ club the third floor. He converted his rectory into a centre for women and girls. Donald Coggan in a Prideau lecture on Peter Green at Exeter University said that Green had no interest in women.²⁰ He was wrong. For one thing Green expressed the view that women were more spiritual than men. It is true that he regarded work with lads and men to be a challenge. As far as the lads were concerned, Lloyd in The Church and People 1900-1914 stated: Given the juvenile problem, nearly all the experienced parish priests of the day agreed that the boys’ club was the best solution. He went on: "Canon Peter Green for instance argued for it at some length in The Town Parson and How to deal with lads. The chief difficulty was that of discipline. Better no club at all than a club which was a bear pit. Canon Peter Green was full of suggestions for the nervous curate who was told to go to the club and keep order."²¹

The fact Lloyd quoted Green as an example and his books on the subject were accepted as written by an expert indicate he had a genuine reputation in these fields with both boys and men.

In his earliest published book How to Deal with Lads²² Green demonstrated attitudes and themes which were to reappear throughout his writings which extended from 1910 to 1953 and so there is good reason to examine his work with lads and men.

Lloyd’s analysis of the work of a parish priest at the beginning of the Twentieth Century indicated that the priorities were visiting the homes of the parish, helping to relieve poverty, and running clubs mainly for boys and men.²³ In a speech reported verbatim at the diamond jubilee of the Salford Adelphi Boys Club in 1948 Green stated: I have had six clubs, one at Cambridge, one in the Old Kent Road, one at Poplar and three in Salford. Nothing has had a more beautiful effect on building up of citizens and the formation of character than our great lads’ clubs. That is the absolute truth. It is the personal touch that does it. To turn lads into citizens is the glory of the club and the rewards of its workers.²⁴ However, for Green himself the club provided the opportunity to teach Christian doctrine and evangelise for personal conversions. He devoted himself to running clubs for working class lads because he considered them to be a worthwhile challenge. He had an optimistic attitude towards them as his experience was that the boy is naturally a most religious creature.²⁵ This indicated his optimistic approach generally to human beings on the one hand and the importance of first hand experience on the other. Combining these important aspects of his mind-set he wrote: Human beings are interesting and loveable just in proportion as one knows them.²⁶

Throughout his books he wrote as a philosopher emphasizing what to accept and what to reject in decision-making. Hence, in the practical running of clubs for lads he included only working-class boys, excluding the clerical and the destructively rough ones as he was looking for results. He included only those who had reached the upper class of Sunday School and ran the club as a benevolent despot. Although the club was held on every week night to keep