Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge

SPCK's early publications were distributed through a network of supporters who received books and tracts to sell or give away in their own localities. Large quantities of Christian literature were provided for the Navy, and the Society actively encouraged the formation of parish libraries, to help both clergy and laity. By the 19th century, members had organized local district committees, many of which established small book depots—which at one time numbered over four hundred. These were overseen by central committees such as the Committee of General Literature and Education. In 1899 the addresses of their 'depositories' in London were given as Northumberland Avenue, W.C.; Charing Cross, W.C. and 43 Queen Victoria Street, E.C.[10] Six years later in edition 331 the depository was closed at Charing Cross, but a new one added Brighton: 129, North Street.

In the 1930s a centrally co-ordinated network of SPCK Bookshops was established, offering a wide range of books from many different publishers. At its peak, the SPCK bookshop chain consisted of 40 shops in the UK and 20 overseas. The latter were gradually passed into local ownership during the 1960s and 1970s.

Holy Trinity Church, Marylebone, Westminster, London is a former Anglican church, built in 1828 by Sir John Soane. By the 1930s, it had fallen into disuse and in 1936 was used by the newly founded Penguin Books company to store books. A children's slide was used to deliver books from the street into the large crypt.

In 1937 Penguin moved out to Harmondsworth, and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) moved in. It was their headquarters until 2004, when they relocated to London Diocesan House in Causton Street, Pimlico. The bookshop relocated to Tufton St in 2003.

On 1 November 2006, St. Stephen The Great Charitable Trust [SSG] took over the Bookshops but continued to trade under the SPCK name, under licence from SPCK. That licence was withdrawn in October 2007. However, some shops continued trading as SPCK Bookshops without licence until the SSG operation was closed down in 2009.

Thomas Bray believed passionately in the power of the printed word. From its earliest days, the SPCK commissioned tracts and pamphlets, making it the third-oldest publishing house in England. (Only the Oxford and Cambridge University Presses have existed longer.)

Throughout the 18th century SPCK was by far the largest producer of Christian literature in Britain. The range of its output was considerable—from pamphlets aimed at specific groups such as farmers, prisoners, soldiers, seamen, servants and slave-owners, to more general works on subjects such as baptism, confirmation, Holy Communion, the Prayer Book, and private devotion. Increasingly, more substantial books were also published, both on Christian subjects and, from the 1830s onwards, on general educational topics as well.

Now, the SPCK's publishing team produces around 80 titles per year, for audiences from a wide range of Christian traditions and none. The SPCK publishes under three main imprints:

As the state increasingly took control of providing primary education throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the SPCK looked for new ways in which it could promote Christian knowledge amongst the youth of Britain.

In 1999, the SPCK created the assemblies website. Schools in England and Wales are legally obliged to provide daily collective worship for all of their pupils and this should be of a broadly Christian nature.[14] The aim of the assemblies website is to provide teachers with easy access to free resources, empowering them to deliver high-quality assemblies that give all their pupils to explore faith and their own beliefs.

Over the 20 years since it was created, the assemblies website has become a web community, on which experienced teachers and youth leaders can share their ideas, assembly scripts and tips and tricks for delivering engaging assemblies.[15]

There are now over 1500 assembly scripts on the website and these are added to every month. Each month, SPCK commissions 16 new assemblies; 8 for primary schools and 8 for secondary schools. In addition to these, 'rapid response' assemblies may be added within 24 hours of momentous world events.[16] Many assemblies focus on Christian themes, but many simply address pastoral issues that come up time and time again within schools. The Festivals of World Religions section also encourages awareness of other religions and enables teachers to celebrate children of other faiths.[17]

Every month, the assemblies website attracts over 50,000 unique visitors and the most popular assemblies are viewed over 10,000 times.[16]

In 2018, the SPCK also redeveloped its Welsh language offering. There is now a bank of 600 Welsh language assembly scripts that can be easily accessed, viewed and used within Welsh language schools.

SPCK also owns the imprint Diffusion, which has published 12 titles which were especially commissioned for adults who struggle to read. These titles are divided into two series, Star and Diamond. Star books are written for adults who are new to reading and need to improve their very basic skills, whilst the Diamond series is more appropriate for learners who want to develop their reading confidence further.[18] All of the books are written with engaging plots, suitable for adults, but in a style and typeface that is accessible to people with very basic literacy skills.

SPCK provides these books for free to prisons including to individual prisoners, prison libraries and prison reading groups. This is done with the aim of addressing two major causes of re-offending: lack of employment on release and lack of support from family and friends.[19]

At the end of each chapter, the Diffusion books contain questions which can be discussed in a reading group, thereby developing verbal communication and social skills. These questions focus on developing empathy by asking questions like "what would it feel like to be in that character's position?" and encourage self-reflection by asking "how does this example apply to my own life?". Each book fosters a sense of personal responsibility, and demonstrates that every action has consequences.[19]

In these ways, the Diffusion prison fiction programme not only develops hard skills, such as literacy, but also soft skills such as the ability to develop positive personal relationships with others.[20]

By the end of 2018, the SPCK had sent Diffusion books to 70% of prisons in the UK. In 2018 alone, it sent out over 6500 books.

It is now looking at ways of expanding the programme to reach more vulnerable adults, including refugees and members of the homeless community.

Together with the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture, the Jesuit Historical Institute in Africa and Missio Africanus, the SPCK has founded the African Theological Network Press (the ATNP).

The aim of the ATNP is to be "an ecumenical press serving the church in Africa and the Diaspora through affordable, high-quality, scholarly publications accessible on the continent and globally"[21] The ATNP is a centralised commissioning and editorial unit, based in Nairobi. The material will then be distributed across Africa to be printed locally. In this way, the ATNP will overcome the problems of localised publishing, which has the unfortunate consequence that books rarely make it outside of the country in which they are published.

The ATNP will also address the dependence of African theological study and teaching on publications from the Global North. Too often, African theology is published in the global North and never returned to Africa, or if it is, it's returned at prices that few African Christians can afford.[22]

The ATNP will publish theology, written by Africans on topics that matter to African Christians.

The SPCK has always been actively engaged in worldwide mission, but this innovative approach reflects the extraordinary growth of Christianity in Africa. No longer is mission an asymmetrical process of giving and receiving, but a mutually beneficial experience. There is much that Christians in the UK can learn from joyful expression of African Christianity. The SPCK hopes that, by supporting the sustainable development of the ATNP, they will "unlock the treasure trove of African Christian thought for Africa and the whole world"[22]

• James Catford, Chair of Trustees
• Sam Richardson, CEO
• Bishop John Pritchard, former Chair of Trustees

The Scottish sister society,[23] the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (SSPCK), was formed by royal charter in 1709[23] as a separate organisation with the purpose of founding schools "where religion and virtue might be taught to young and old" in the Scottish Highlands and other "uncivilised" areas of the country. It was intended to counter the threat of Catholic missionaries achieving "a serious landslide to Rome" and of growing Highland Jacobitism.[24] Their schools were a valuable addition to the Church of Scotland programme of education in Scotland, which was based on a tax on landowners to provide a school in every parish. Some—but by no means all—Society schoolmasters were inferior in comparison to burgh and parish schools, however, "particularly in [their] acquaintance with the Evangelical System" rather than more pragmatic literacy, numeracy and teaching ability.[25] The SSPCK had five schools by 1711, 25 by 1715, 176 by 1758 and 189 by 1808, by then with 13,000 pupils attending.[26]

At first the SSPCK avoided using the Gaelic language, with the result that pupils ended up learning by rote without understanding what they were reading.[27] SSPCK rules from 1720 required the teaching of literacy and numeracy "but not any Latin or Irish"[23] (then a common term for Gaelic on both sides of the Irish Sea), and the Society boasted "that barbarity and the Irish language ... are almost rooted out" by their teaching.[28] In 1753 an act of the Society forbade students "either in the schoolhouse or when playing about the doors thereof to speak Erse, under pain of being chastised".[25]

In 1741 the SSPCK introduced a Gaelic–English vocabulary, then in 1767 introduced a New Testament designed with facing pages of Gaelic and English texts for both languages to be read alongside one another,[29] with more success. In 1766 they allowed their Highland schools to use Gaelic alongside English as languages of instruction.[25] In 1790, a Society preacher still insisted that English monolingualism was a Society goal[30] and a decade later Society schools continued to use corporal punishment against students speaking Gaelic.[23] In the early 19th century the Society's activity declined. Its educational work was taken over by the Gaelic Societies of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness.

Books

• Allen, William Osborne Bird & McClure, Edmund (1898) Two Hundred Years: the History of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1698–1898 online
• Clarke, W. K. Lowther (1959) A History of the SPCK. London: SPCK
• Smout, T. C. (1985), A History of the Scottish People, Fontana Press, ISBN 0-00-686027-3

Articles

• Grigg, John A., "'How This Shall Be Brought About': The Development of the SSPCK's American Policy," Itinerario (Leiden), 32 (no. 3, 2008), 43–60.
• Nishikawa, Sugiko. "The SPCK in defence of protestant minorities in Early Eighteenth-Century Europe." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 56.04 (2005): 730–748.
• Simon, Joan. "From charity school to workhouse in the 1720s: The SPCK and Mr Marriott's solution." History of education 17#2 (1988): 113–129.
• Threinen, Norman J. (1988) Friedrich Michael Ziegenhagen (1694–1776). German Lutheran Pietist in the English court. In: Lutheran Theological Review 12, pp. 56–94.
• Withrington, D. J. "The SPCK and Highland Schools in Mid-Eighteenth Century." Scottish Historical Review 41.132 (1962): 89–99. in JSTOR

Journals

• Theology
• Readings In Indian Christian Theology

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Websites

• SPCK Publishing official website for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
• The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge/USA official website
• Education and Anglicisation: The Policy of the SSPCK toward the education of The Highlander, 1709–1825 by Charles W. J. Withers
• SPCK SSG: News, Notes & Info
• Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge official website of the SSPCK