DALE, ROBERT WILLIAM (1829-1895), English Con gregationalist divine and educational reformer, born in London on Dec. 1, 1829, was educated at Spring Hill college, Birmingham. In 1853 he was invited to Carr's Lane chapel, Birmingham, as co pastor with John Angell James, on whose death in 1859 he became sole pastor.
Dale took a keen interest in national and municipal politics, and was a great force on the progressive side. In 1886 he sup ported Chamberlain in opposition to Irish Home Rule, but this difference did not destroy his influence among Gladstonian Non conformists. In the education controversy of 187o he championed the Nonconformist position. When Forster's bill appeared, Dale attacked it on the grounds that the schools would in many cases be purely denominational institutions, that the conscience clause gave inadequate protection, and that school boards were em powered by it to make grants out of the rates to maintain secta rian schools. He claimed that secular education was the only logical solution and the only legitimate outcome of Noncon formist principles. In Birmingham the controversy ended in 1879 in a compromise, from which, however, Dale stood aloof. He sat on the Birmingham school board, served on the royal com mission of education, and was one of the founders of Mansfield college, Oxford. He was a strong advocate of disestablishment, holding that any vestige of political authority impaired the spirit ual work of the Church. At his death on March 13, 1895, he left an unfinished ms. of the history of Congregationalism, which was completed and edited (19o7) by his son, A. W. W. Dale, principal of Liverpool university. Of his other works the chief ones are On the Atonement and The Living Christ and the Four Gospels.
See Life of R. W. Dale, by his son, A. W. W. Dale (1898).