While press-inflected evangelical priorities of conversion and activism shaped Stead’s crusading mission, the Nonconformist conception of freedom of conscience found political expression in Liberal ideas of civic equality. In line with this conscious engagement of religious drives in the socio-political sphere, emphases in Nonconformist theological doctrine changed. As the nineteenth century witnessed greater importance being accorded to the Incarnation of Christ and a reduced place to the doctrine of the Atonement, attention was increasingly directed at the need to bring about material improvement for the poorer sections of society. What mattered most was a respectable Christian-inspired moral existence supported by decent living conditions in the here and now rather than an exclusive focus on the promise of a better life for the soul in God’s kingdom in the hereafter.