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