United Society for Christian Literature (Religious Tract Society)

The Religious Tract Society (RTS) was founded in 1799 to print and distribute religious tracts among those who with, in the words of the Proceedings of the first twenty years, 'little leisure and less inclination to peruse entire volumes might thus be furnished with agreeable and useful employment and eventually be led to an acquaintance with the state of their own hearts and a knowledge of Salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ'. The founders of the Society were drawn from the same group of evangelicals who had earlier set up the London Missionary Society and were later to found the British and Foreign Bible Society, in the realization that more might be achieved through co-operation between denominations than by individual denominational efforts. From its earliest years the Society concerned itself not only with the distribution of tracts in Britain but with similar work in continental Europe, in the British colonies, and in the many countries of the world where British missionary societies were active. By 1848 the RTS was operating, directly or indirectly, in China, Singapore, Borneo, Thailand, Burma, India, Sri Lanka, Australia and New Zealand, the South Pacific islands, Africa, Madagascar, the West Indies, the United States, Canada, most European countries, and the countries of the Near and Middle East.

Towards the end of 1857 representatives of four British missionary societies working in India - the Baptist Missionary Society, the Church Missionary Society, the London Missionary Society and the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society - put forward proposals for a new society, to be named the Christian Vernacular Education Society for India. The proposers did not, according to its First Annual Report, intend the new society to compete with 'existing educational establishments which employ the English language and literature and which are chiefly attractive to the higher classes of Hindu youth ... but rather to reach the village populations, and the masses of the lower orders in towns throughout the country, exclusively through the vernacular of each district'. The new society was formally instituted in May 1858 as a memorial to the Indian Mutiny. John Murdoch was appointed 'Representative and Travelling Secretary in India'. In 1891 the name of the Society was changed to the Christian Literature Society for India and in 1923 the words 'and Africa' were added when the Society extended its work to that continent.

The Christian Literature Society for China had a complex genesis. It originated as a School and Text Book Committee of the China Missionary Conference in 1877, developing into the Chinese Book and Tract Society in Glasgow in 1884 and forming the Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge (SDCGK) among the Chinese in 1887. It was supported by the Christian Literature Society for China, organised in 1892 to succeed the Chinese Book and Tract Society. In 1906 the SDCGK changed its name to the Christian Literature Society for China.

The United Society for Christian Literature (USCL) was formed in 1935 when the Religious Tract Society and the Christian Literature Society for India and Africa merged. The RTS China kept its old title in China, with USCL as a sub-title. In 1941 the London Committee and in 1942 the Scottish Committee organising support for the Christian Literature Society for China were incorporated. Also, in 1941, there was a change of imprint to Lutterworth Press for all RTS publications intended for the home market. The change of name was intended to honour John Wycliffe who was Rector of Lutterworth from 1374 to 1384.

For further information see William Jones, The Jubilee Memorial of the Religious Tract Society (London, 1850); S G Green, The Story of the Religious Tract Society (London, 1899); G Hewitt, Let the People Read (London, 1949), the last of which surveys the work of all three societies.

From the guide to the United Society for Christian Literature (Religious Tract Society), 1799-1986, (School of Oriental and African Studies)