St. Peter's Anglican Church Château-d'Oex · Serving the English-speaking Community Since 1899

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel

In September 1901 the Pall Mall Gazette explained to holiday-makers who looked after their souls on the Continent. This “widespread care of travelling souls”, it said, was “in the hands of two societies—the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the Colonial and Continental Church Society”. The paper then described how the SPG paid for its summer work. A special fund covered the chaplains, and that fund depended “upon the offertories received at these chaplaincies”. The visitors were “supposed to contribute liberally”. The writer also passed on some of the Society’s impatience with its public. “People are always writing to suggest new chaplaincies, and are often most unreasonable in this respect, considering, apparently, that they ought to have a parson provided for them in places where they are practically the only visitors.”1

Who they were

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, usually called the SPG, was founded in 1701.2 It was the Church of England’s great society for work overseas. A speaker for its rival put the difference simply in 1890. The SPG, he said, “sends its missionaries both to the heathen and to a certain extent to our own countrymen abroad”. His own society, the Colonial and Continental Church Society, concentrated on the British who had left home.3

The two also differed in churchmanship. The Colonial and Continental was openly evangelical, the “low church” wing of the Church of England. In 1884 J. H. Titcomb became the first bishop for the English chaplaincies of Northern and Central Europe, and the Colonial and Continental paid his costs. He was uneasy about it. It was not fitting, he wrote, for the bishop to depend “wholly … on a society which mainly represents one school of Church thought”. He asked instead for a joint fund, with the SPG and the independent chaplaincies sharing the cost.4

The SPG took up work in Europe late. In 1862 it decided, “in accordance with ancient practice”, to extend its work “to English congregations on the Continent”. The Society had first helped an English congregation in Holland as early as 1702. A new committee, the Continental Chaplaincies Committee, ran the work from 1862 until 1884. Its work in Switzerland began in 1863.5

The Colonial and Continental had been in Switzerland for twenty years by then, and it saw the newcomer as a rival.6 The story is told on our page on the Colonial and Continental Church Society.

How it paid for the work

The SPG was careful with its money on the Continent. In 1862 it agreed on a limit. Small grants from its general fund were to be made only “in places where there are large numbers of British sailors, labourers, or other British subjects of poor condition”.5 Its summer and winter chaplaincies had to pay their own way. In 1900 they were “supported by a fund that is chiefly maintained by the offerings of the congregation”.7 The Pall Mall Gazette put it more bluntly in 1901: “The support of chaplaincies at tourists’ resorts and places frequented by wealthy persons would not be a proper charge upon the general fund.”1

Bishop Titcomb thought the Society gave Europe far too little. In 1884 he told the Society that its grants for the whole of Europe came to “but £200, notwithstanding that you possess an annual revenue of about £100,000”.4

Where the SPG did help, it liked to own the building. In 1877 it accepted a church at Mürren “on condition that the building was vested in the Society”. By 1900 about forty English churches on the Continent belonged to it.7

The SPG had fewer chaplaincies than its rival, both across Europe and in Switzerland.8 Its Swiss churches included Axenstein, Bel Alp, Engelberg and Mürren.9 Later it was also patron at Berne and at Montana.10

Vaud

In Vaud the SPG had only three chaplaincies. The reasons seem to be timing and money rather than the taste of the visitors. The Colonial and Continental reached Vevey in 1853 and Bex in 1857, years before the SPG arrived, and took most of the other Vaud resorts in the 1860s.11 The SPG, for its part, would not spend its general funds on resorts for the well-off, and the English chapels of Vaud were at tourist resorts. One letter suggests that where visitors had a choice, they did not always prefer the older society. In 1889 a reader of The Record found the Colonial and Continental’s church at one health resort “not nearly full, whilst the S.P.G. and Presbyterian churches are overflowing”. He did not name the place.12

At Caux, above Montreux, it first appears in the SPG’s minutes on 24 May 1881. Services were held in the hotels’ salons, and the chaplains came up from Territet. Caux was entered on the list of SPG chaplaincies in November 1891.13

At Corbeyrier, above Aigle, services were held each summer before the First World War in a chapel near the Grand Hotel Victoria. When the chaplaincy reopened in 1924, the chaplain wrote: “Alas! only 3 or 4 people here! Perhaps it may be a little isolated.”13

At Aigle the Colonial and Continental had held the chaplaincy before 1868. On 21 June 1888 a chapel for 80 to 100 people was opened in the grounds of the Grand Hotel. It was named St John the Evangelist, and its patron was the SPG. No record says when or why the older society gave it up.13 St John’s was among the churches vested in the SPG in 1901.9

St John’s at Aigle closed in 1914. In the 1920s the Society wrote to the hotel’s owner about reopening it, but there were no longer any English guests, and no more services were held. In 1949 the SPG recommended handing the church to the Swiss Protestant Church, and the sale was completed in 1968.13 By then Crockford’s Clerical Directory was listing the Society’s Swiss chaplaincies under a new name, “U.S.P.G.”10

If you have memories, photographs or papers connected with the SPG’s chaplaincies at Caux, Corbeyrier or Aigle, please write to us at info(a)stpeters.ch. The churches themselves are described in our guide to the English churches in Switzerland.

  1. “Continental chaplaincies” feature, Pall Mall Gazette, 7 September 1901, p. 3 (British Newspaper Archive, BL/0000098/19010907), read on the page image. ↩↩

  2. C. F. Pascoe, Two Hundred Years of the S.P.G.: an historical account of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1701–1900 (London, 1901). ↩

  3. Report of a meeting of the Colonial and Continental Church Society, Guernsey Star, 16 September 1890, p. 2 (British Newspaper Archive, BL/0000184/18900916), read on the page image. ↩

  4. J. H. Titcomb, The Church of England in Northern and Central Europe (1885), transcription at anglicanhistory.org. ↩↩

  5. Pascoe, vol. 2, p. 738 (the resolutions of 1862 and the committee) and p. 742 (the list of countries: “Holland (1702)”, “Switzerland (1863)”). ↩↩

  6. Brian Underwood, The history of the Commonwealth and Continental Church Society (M.A. thesis, University of Durham, 1972), p. 60 (the Colonial and Continental’s first holiday chaplaincy, at Interlaken in 1842) and p. 73 (the warning of the Revd R. Burgess to the Society’s committee, 11 November 1863, to expect rivalry). ↩

  7. Pascoe, vol. 2, pp. 739–740. ↩↩

  8. In 1877 the Colonial and Continental had 48 permanent and 80 seasonal chaplaincies, and the SPG had 14 and 37 (Underwood, note to p. 112, citing the Colonial and Continental’s report to the Archbishop of Canterbury before the 1877 Lambeth Conference committee). By 1885 Bishop Titcomb had set up a committee to pay for his bishopric. It had three members for the SPG chaplaincies and six for the Colonial and Continental’s. Five more stood for the independent chaplaincies. These numbers, he wrote, were “exactly analogous to the various chaplaincies held under each” (Titcomb, 1885). By 1900 the SPG had 32 permanent, 84 summer and 20 winter chaplaincies across Europe (Pascoe, vol. 2, pp. 739–740). Paul Schniewind counts 136 places in Switzerland where seasonal Anglican services were once held. The Colonial and Continental looked after 112 of them, and the SPG 24 (Paul W. Schniewind, Anglicans in Switzerland (Berne, 1992), foreword to Part Three, p. 99). ↩

  9. Pascoe, vol. 2, p. 742a, the list of churches on the Continent vested in the Society. ↩↩

  10. Crockford’s Clerical Directory 1949–50 and 1961–62, “Berne, St. Ursula (S.P.G.)” and “Montana, St. Luke (S.P.G.)”; 1967–68, “(U.S.P.G.)”. ↩↩

  11. Underwood, p. 60 (Vevey, 1853); Schniewind, pp. 100–107 (the dates each Vaud place was put on the Colonial and Continental’s list). ↩

  12. Letter signed “Clericus”, The Record, 29 March 1889, p. 17 (British Newspaper Archive, BL/0006265/18890329), read on the page image. ↩

  13. Schniewind, pp. 100–103, entries for Aigle, Caux and Corbeyrier. The Corbeyrier chaplain’s name is given as Mr Sterling-Wilkinson. Schniewind dates the Aigle chapel 1889; the local papers report its opening on Thursday 21 June 1888 (Le Messager des Alpes, 20 June 1888, p. 3, Scriptorium item 622592; Feuille d’avis de Montreux, 23 June 1888, p. 4, item 503761). ↩↩↩↩

Questions answered

What was the SPG?
The SPG was the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, founded in 1701, the Church of England's great society for work overseas. In 1862 it decided to extend its work to English congregations on the Continent, and its work in Switzerland began in 1863.
What was the difference between the SPG and the Colonial and Continental Church Society?
The SPG sent its missionaries both to the heathen and, to a certain extent, to the British abroad. By contrast, the Colonial and Continental Church Society concentrated on the British who had left home. The Colonial and Continental was also openly evangelical. It was in Switzerland twenty years before the SPG arrived in 1863, and it kept the larger share of the Swiss chaplaincies.
How did the SPG pay for its summer chaplaincies?
The SPG's summer and winter chaplaincies on the Continent had to pay their own way. In 1900 they were supported by a fund kept up chiefly by the offerings of the congregations. The Society gave small grants from its general fund only where there were large numbers of British sailors, labourers or other British subjects of poor condition. It did not give them at resorts for wealthy visitors.
Which Swiss churches belonged to the SPG?
The SPG's churches in Switzerland included Axenstein, Bel Alp, Engelberg and Mürren, where it accepted a church in 1877 on condition that the building was vested in the Society. Later it was also patron at Berne and at Montana. It had fewer Swiss chaplaincies than the Colonial and Continental Church Society.
Which English churches in Vaud belonged to the SPG?
The SPG had only three chaplaincies in Vaud. One was Caux, which it put on its list of chaplaincies in November 1891. Another was Corbeyrier, above Aigle, before the First World War. The third was St John the Evangelist at Aigle, opened in 1888. Most of the other Vaud resorts had been taken by the Colonial and Continental Church Society, which arrived first.