SPCK Tracts and Rites of Passage in the Long Nineteenth Century

Abstract

This article investigates how the SPCK, the Church of England's major nineteenth-century publishing house, encouraged what it saw as correct participation in church-administered rites of passage, by the mass production of tracts. SPCK's elaborate editorial policy meant that the tracts provide a rare glimpse into what can be assumed to be the Church of England's officially sanctioned voice, giving the tracts a significance beyond their survival as ephemeral religious literature. The article discusses tracts relating to marriage, baptism, churching and confirmation, the audience for which was mainly, although not exclusively, working-class adherents of the Church of England. It highlights the tangle between theological ideas and social expectations, as well as the echoes of some other theorists – from Malthus to Freud – which found their way into the Church of England's thinking at different times during this period.