Follow us on facebook

The Religious History of Manchester

Next tour is on Zoom: 11am, Good Friday, 2nd April 2021.
Meet: on your computer.
Booking: Please press here to book with eventbrite.

Is God a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew or none of these? Probably not an atheist and by definition can’t be an agnostic. If He or She or It is, say, a Protestant (having changed from something else thanks to Martin Luther, whom God surely influenced, if you don’t believe in Deism; you see how complicated this is getting?) then God could be an Anglican, a Methodist, Baptist, Thraskite, Muggletonian, Antinomian, Anti-Sabbatarian, Quaker or Shaker.

The religious history of Manchester is one of sects and schisms; attacks on houses of worship and on peoples of different worship. The Jacobites, supporting the Catholic Stuarts, attacked the Cross Street Chapel, where the congregation wanted a Protestant king. Orange Order marches would end in violence as people from the same country, worshipping the same religion (sort of) clashed.

Later came tolerance, and now the city’s worshippers, either Christians, Jews, Muslims or Hindus, mostly, get on. Thank God it’s all calm right now.