Revd Dr Thomas Bray, a man of humble origins

February 14, 2020

Today we're celebrating Bray Day, a day when SPCK and USPG come together for a church service and time of thanksgiving in remembrance of our co-founder the Revd Dr Thomas Bray. In this blog post, Duncan Dormor,Chief Executive of our sister society USPG, shares the history of our co-founder and the legacy he left behind.

In February every year we celebrate Bray Day, a day when SPCK and USPG come together for a church service and time of thanksgiving in remembrance of our co-founder the Revd Dr Thomas Bray. To tie in with this tradition, Duncan Dormor, Chief Executive of our sister society USPG, shares the history of our co-founder and the legacy he left behind.

Born seven years after the execution of Charles I and in his early thirties when the ‘bloodless revolution’ saw William and Mary displace James II, Thomas Bray, like his contemporaries, was accustomed to a world in which the very foundations of society were shaken on a regular basis. Yet, in an age when monarchs seemed so transitory, in just a few years Thomas Bray had founded two closely linked societies – SPCK and SPG (now USPG) – that have had a profound impact ‘SPCK and globally and continue to thrive, over 300 years later.

A man of humble origins, the Revd Dr Thomas Bray (1656–1730) clearly had an unusual genius for envisioning and drafting practical schemes to realize his ambitious and far-reaching plans. Beneath this organizational creativity was a deep commitment to the importance of education and, of course, books: their writing and publication; their use in teaching, especially in the schooling of the young; and in making them widely accessible through libraries.

Pre-industrial England of the late seventeenth century, with its five-and-a-half million inhabitants, looked out confidently to the world. And it wasn’t long before Bray’s gifts and his profound desire to deepen understanding of the gospel and promote the common good were enlisted to invigorate life in the colonies, Maryland in particular. Scathing of the English for benefiting from their colonial adventures without ‘giving back’, in just three years Bray had recruited a significant number of clergy and built the capacity of the Church through endowment and investment in schools and libraries.

This prodigious drive and energy led to the creation of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in 1698. In the first year, Bray’s core team met on 60 occasions and a huge investment in schools and education across the British Isles followed. In just five years, 84 schools had been founded and, by 1721, this number had grown to 1,784, including 148 in Ireland. Three years after the birth of SPCK came a sibling, a second ‘Society’, that for the ‘Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts’.

Bray was an unusually practical man of action. He was also deeply committed to a reasoned and undogmatic Christianity. In an uncertain and polarized age of profound political and religious differences, he coaxed High and Low, Tory and Whig within the Church of England to assist him in his cause.

With his practical emphasis on building up the capacity of the Church, especially through education, Bray imbued ‘his’ societies with a certain spirit – a deep respect for reason and an attentiveness to the needs of the age. Both publishing and Christian mission are profoundly strengthened by these spiritual disciplines. They have shaped the historic commitment within both societies to setting up schools, and they continue to shape their current commitments to education. They account for their longevity and fruitfulness – as indeed does the sense of sincere fellowship, mutuality and connection between Bray’s twin overlapping bequests to the world – USPG and its older sister, SPCK.

Image of Thomas Bray taken from The Founders by Charles Knowles Bolton, 1919

This article was originally featured in the 2020 Spring Edition of SPCK Today. Click here to view an online version.