Upper Chapel, Sheffield

Upper Chapel in Sheffield is a fine dissenting meeting house built in 1700 by Timothy Jollie. He was born at Altham in Lancashire, son of the great Thomas Jollie, about whom I gave a talk a couple of summers ago. Before 1700, the church had been founded by the Anglican Vicar of Sheffield, James Fisher, who was ejected in 1662 because of his puritanism. A tenth of his parishioners went with him and the congregation was a thousand by the time this new chapel was built. Sadly, this great temple to reformed Christianity drifted into Unitarianism (which denies the basic tenets of the gospel, and was essentially a proto-liberalism), though the sources seem reticent in dating its departure from orthodoxy. Thanks to various property investments and endowments, and an apparently active leadership, the chapel remains a going concern. I was unable to gain entry, but the website is unusually helpful, showing good pictures of the internals. Indeed, there are several detailed sections on what Unitarians ‘believe’ and stand for. This is in sharp contrast to many orthodox churches’ and chapels’ websites, in which they seem rather muffled and quiet regarding their theology. It is a sorry state when those who deny the gospel wax lyrical, while those who are meant to promote it stand with heads hanging down, hands wrung, mouths closed.

With respect to the current occupants of the chapel who are welcome to believe what they wish and whose Unitarian title to that place is possibly now longer than orthodoxy’s, Upper Chapel provides us with a warning. An evangelical church with a great minister, a thousand-strong congregation and a smart, city-centre base: it seemed to have everything going for it. Yet it succumbed; it allowed doubt and unbelief to assail its hold on the truth. Now, that great pulpit will doubtless deliver finely crafted homilies on the evils of war, the virtues of ‘equal marriage’ and the inspirational diversity of religious truth found across all religions…but of Christ crucified in sinners’ stead, of His rising for their justification, of His coming again to receive His people…of that, one shall hear little, if anything at all.