This thesis explores the relationship between
Evangelicalism and the Socialist Revival by way of a study
of religion, community and culture in the Scottish town of
Airdrie, 1790-1914. Chapter One presents an overview of
Evangelicalism in the nineteenth century. The links
between Evangelicalism and the Socialist Revival are
discussed in Chapter Two where it is argued that Socialist
Revivalism, especially as manifest by the Independent
Labour Party, was a product of Evangelical-mission culture.
Chapter Three looks at the development of Airdrie as a
weaving community from the 1790s to 1820s, and Chapter Four
examines the role of Evangelicalism and dissent in the
construction of community and culture in weaving Airdrie.
Chapters Five and Six outline the transformation of Airdrie
from a weaving to an industrial town. As in introductory
survey of the space that religion occupied in Airdrie from
the 1820s, Chapter Seven paves the way for detailed
examination, in Chapters Eight and Nine, of the continuing
importance of Evangelicalism and dissent in shaping
community and culture at Airdrie during the 1830s and
1840s. Chapter Ten considers the impact of the Disruption
and of the 1859 revival in Airdrie, and suggests that these
events consolidated the burgh's Evangelical Protestant and
dissenting identity. Chapter Eleven outlines the
development of Airdrie during the late nineteenth-early
twentieth centuries and examines the efforts of the ILP to
establish a foothold in the town. It is argued that the
failure of the ILP in Airdrie was as much a
consequence of
the embeddedness of Evangelicalism and dissent in local
culture as of party political or organisational weakness.
Chapter Twelve brings this argument to a conclusion through
a consideration of the diffusion of Evangelicalism
throughout Airdrie's rich associational culture. It is
suggested that because the ILP was competing in Airdrie as
just one more Evangelical-revivalist organisation against
other, older, better-established Evangelical organisations,
its progress was hindered. There was no room for it in
Airdrie's Evangelical-mission culture
