The Labour Church was founded by John Trevor, a former Unitarian minister. The first service took place in Manchester in October, 1891. Other Labour Churches were soon established in other industrial towns including Barnsley, Birmingham, Bradford, Bolton, Dundee, Halifax, Leeds, London, Nottingham, Oldham, Plymouth and Wolverhampton.

These churches were sometimes formed in response to church ministers supporting Liberal and Conservative candidates in parliamentary elections. For example, the Bradford Labour Church was formed in 1892 after a Nonconformist minister supported the Liberal Party candidate against the socialist, Ben Tillett, in the 1892 General Election. By 1895 there were over fifty of these Labour Churches in Britain.

John Trevor and his followers were Christian Socialists who believed that the labour movement could be the driving force in obtaining "the Kingdom of God on earth". Many of Britain's leading socialists were active in the Labour Church and included Keir Hardie, Ben Tillett, Tom Mann, Fred Jowett, Philip Snowdon and Margaret McMillan.

When a conference was held in Bradford to form the Independent Labour Party, John Trevor organised a church service to accompany the event. It was estimated that over 5,000 people attended the service in the Bradford Labour Church.

"The Independent Labour Party was avowedly and uncompromisingly Socialist, and those of us who were its advocates attacked capitalism in every speech that we made. The Sunday meetings of the I.L.P. held in a thousand halls, suggested religious revival meetings rather than political demonstrations. The fervour of the great audiences that assembled in centres like Glasgow, Bradford, Leeds, Huddersfield, Birmingham, and Bristol, was quite without precedent in British political history. Men who had grown old in years had their youthful enthusiasms renewed under the glow and warmth of a new spiritual fellowship. They were born again; they joyfully walked many miles to listen to a favourite speaker; they sang Labour hymns; and they gave to the new social faith an intensity of devotion which lifted it far above the older political organizations of the day."
- Henry Snell, Men Movements and Myself (1936)

Labour Churches usually attracted congregations of between 300 and 500 people. Dundee averaged 400 but had to close the doors when Keir Hardie spoke at one meeting. The Halifax Labour Church was one of the popular and regularly attracted 500 worshipers. The normal service was (1) Hymn, (2) Reading, (3) Prayer (4) Choir, (5) Notices and Collection, (6) Hymn, (7) Address, (8) Hymn and (9) Benediction. The hymns used were taken from the Labour Church Hymn Book, and although it included some approved traditional hymns, mainly comprised socialist songs and poems written by Edward Carpenter, Charles Kingsley and William Morris. Church readings tended to be taken from the work of socialist writers rather than from the Bible.

Most of the Labour Churches were involved in charity work. The London Labour Church, under the leadership of Paul Campbell, the editor of the Christian Socialist magazine, and Margaret McMillan, established a school, whereas D. B. Foster in Leeds, led a campaign to improve the condition of the slums in the city. John Trevor in Manchester ran a Shelter for the Homeless and provided a Cinderella Club for underprivileged children in Deansgate.

John Trevor began publishing a monthly magazine, The Labour Prophet in January, 1892. The motto on the cover was "God is our King" but later it changed to "Let labour be the basis of civil society'. This resulted in complaints as the word God was not included and eventually Trevor reverted to the original motto. The Labour Prophet continued until 1898 when it was replaced by the smaller, quarterly, Labour Church Record.

John Trevor left the Labour Church in 1900. Without his leadership the church went into decline. There was a brief revival after the 1906 General Election but by the outbreak of the First World War, the Labour Church had ceased to exist.

[However, some form of the Labor Church also existed in the Americas.  A pamphlet by J. S. Woodsworth was published in 1920, called, "The first story of the Labor Church, and some things for which it stands. An address in the Strand Theatre, Winnipeg, April 5th, 1920."  For sale at Bolerium Books, SF.  http://www.bolerium.com/cgi-bin/bol48/80435.html ]

LABOR CHURCH, THE, an organization intended to give expression to the religion of the labor movement. This religion is not theological - it leaves theological questions to private individual conviction but "seeks the realization of universal well-being by the establishment of Socialism, a commonwealth founded upon justice and love." It asserts that "improvement of social conditions and the development of personal character are both essential to emancipation from social and moral bondage, and to that end insists upon the duty of studying the economic and moral forces of society." The first Labor Church was founded at Manchester (England) in October 1891 by a Unitarian minister, John Trevor. This has disappeared, but vigorous successors have been established not only in the neighborhood, but in Bradford, Birmingham, Nottingham, London, Wolverhampton and other centres of industry, about 30 in all, with a membership of 3000. Many branches of the Independent Labor Party and the Social Democratic Federation also hold Sunday gatherings for adults and children, using the Labor Church hymn-book and a similar form of service, the reading being chosen from Dr Stanton Coit's Message of Man. There are special forms for child-naming, marriages and burials. The separate churches are federated in a Labor Church Union, which holds an annual conference and business meeting in March. At the conference of 1909, held in Ashton-under-Lyne, the name "Labor Church" was changed to "Socialist Church."
From the LoveToKnow Encyclopedia, 1911 (see website: http://72.1911encyclopedia.org/L/LA/LABOUR_CHURCH_THE.htm)