The Roots of Liberalism among Canadian Baptists

McMaster University, circa 1905 (credit: McMaster University)

In 1927 the Fundamentalist/Modernist controversy, which had been simmering for decades, finally reached boiling point, resulting in two major Baptist splits in Canada.[1] In Vancouver, on the West Coast, thirteen churches left the British Columbia Baptist Convention to form the conservative Convention of Regular Baptists of British Columbia.^[2] Four months later, in October, T.T. Shields led seventy churches out of the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec to form the Union of Regular Baptist Churches of Ontario and Quebec.

These events were seismic and the aftershocks continued for many years. For the Fundamentalists, it was a fight for orthodoxy and for Christ and His gospel. The decision to separate, however, was not made in haste and came after forty-plus years of liberal double-speak and semantic trickery. Even secular observers—like one Chicago “free-thinker”—could see that liberals expressed their “views about God, Christ, the Bible, and the Church, in language of masterly vagueness and ambiguity.” [3]

In this essay, I will trace the roots of Liberalism among Canadian Baptists, especially through the work of the American-born William Newton Clarke and the University of Chicago.[4]

Clarke (1840-1912), graduated from Madison University in 1861 and from its theological seminary in 1863. After serving pastorates in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, he accepted a pastorate at the Olivet Baptist Church in Montreal in 1881.

By 1881 Clarke had already made considerable moves towards the new theology and when he arrived in Montreal, he noted that the nucleus of the congregation was “surprisingly liberal.”[5]

This more liberal congregation was an opportunity for him to find, as he said, “greater liberty in my mental and spiritual movements.” He stated further that his “theology was changing…in the new atmosphere of liberty.”[6] During that same year (1881) Clarke published his first book; a commentary on the gospel of Mark. He was aware that it was not well received, that many considered it suspect and others outrightly condemned it, but he gloried in the feat of getting this published. “The first edition,” he wrote, “was in use before the responsible heads of the society [American Baptist Publication Society] became aware.”[7] Clarke soon earning a reputation as “the Schleiermacher of American theology.”

Despite his Liberal theology (perhaps because of it), Clarke was invited to teach New Testament Interpretation in the Toronto Baptist College (TBC) in the winter of 1883.[8]  Seven years later, in 1890, William McMaster (1811-1887), then principal of the TBC, and a member of the Canadian Senate bequeathed a large sum of money towards the building of a university. George A. Rawlyk argues persuasively that there was a definite commitment on the part of Senator McMaster and his associates in the new university, for the new theology and the “new North American consumer culture.”[9]

With this liberal agenda in place, Clarke was retained in the newly formed institution and his influence was stamped on the fledging McMaster University.[10] Two of his previous students, George Cross and Isaac George Matthews were also invited to teach at the new university. Both Cross and Matthews had done graduate studies at the University of Chicago, which was, as George Marsden said, a well-established “center for aggressive theological liberalism.”[11]

The University of Chicago played a big part in the spreading of Liberalism among Baptist in the northern United States and in Canadian.[13] The university was established in 1891 with money from the oil magnate John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937). Its co-founder and first president, William Rainey Harper (1856–1906), was a theological liberal who gathered around him other liberals like Shailer Mathews (1863–1941), dean and professor of New Testament studies, and George Burman Foster (1858–1918) professor of systematic theology and philosophy of religion—“probably the most extreme liberal on the faculty.”[14]

With Harper’s influence, the bloodstream of the university was well infected with liberal theology. On one occasion, Dr Harper claimed that there were mistakes in the book of Isaiah. Rev. A. C. Dixon, a fundamentalist pastor in Brooklyn (later to pastor The Metropolitan Tabernacle, London) wrote to him for clarification. Harper, at first equivocated and when pressed by a second letter, wrote; “I do not care to put myself in writing on this subject.”[15] It was this man who in May 1903 was invited to speak at the convocation in McMaster University.[16]

Liberalism had taken hold in America and was quickly gaining traction among Canadian Baptists—”the Liberal era in American theology had arrived.”[17] The ties between Canadian Baptists and the University of Chicago were also well established by the early years of the 1900s. Conservatives were becoming increasingly uncomfortable in this new environment. Some, like Dr Calvin Goodspeed, professor of Systematic Theology, resigned.[18] He was replaced by a social gospeller, Dr Isaac George Matthews.

Others, like Dr Elmore Harris, a respected member of the University Senate and pastor of Walmer Road Baptist Church remained to fight from within. For three successive years, Dr Harris brought charges against professor Matthews.[19] In 1908 the charges were said to be “on the strength of rumours” and were not sustained. In 1909 Matthews was acquitted. In October 1910 matters came to a head in what one paper called the “most remarkable [debate] in the history of the Baptist Church.”[20] Dr Elmore Harris again brought charges against Matthews with a written complaint from a former student; Rev. John Linton. The Senate committee had met for two weeks’ deliberations and found that the charges were unsubstantiated. The debate, however, came to the floor of the convention on 24th October 1910, and lasted all day and into the early hours of the next day.

Chancellor McKay set the tone for the debate by giving the extended history of the charges. Matthews’ defence continued for nearly two hours. The chancellor concluded; “is it not a perilous task that some have undertaken to divide the denomination on this question of theological teaching.”[21] Dr Harris made no reply to Matthew’s defence, but simply stated throughout his remarks that he could never believe the same as professor Matthews.

In the evening session Dr Trotter, one of the professors of theology brought a conciliatory presentation which impressed the whole gathering. He stated that his attitude towards the whole affair was one of “intelligent conversation” and moved a resolution to accept the senate’s report. Rev. T. T. Shields, a young Baptist pastor who had recently begun his ministry in Jarvis Street Baptist Church in Toronto, endorsed the Senate. Shields was clearly being manipulated by the Senate and was willing to back the senate because he said, it did not approve any of the views put forward by Professor Matthew. Shields stated, according to the newspaper reporter, that he “did not object to a man going fishing so long as he did not insist on someone else eating all his fish.”[22] Shields then seconded and it was adopted.

Shields later came to regret that motion and his part in it. He did it, however, because, he said he was “unsophisticated or gullible in the matter and wished to avoid a split in the convention.”[23] But a split was inevitable although it would be after seventeen years, and ironically, Shields seventeen years older and wiser would be at the vanguard of the new fundamentalist denomination.

[1] 1927 was a significant year for fundamentalism world-wide. In that year, Rev.’s John Grier and James Hunter led a split in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland to form what would become the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. The Convention of Regular Baptist in British Columbia split in July 1927 and later in the year T. T. Shields led the Baptist split in Ontario. Also, in 1927 a number of fundamentalist educational institution were established, including Bob Jones University and Los Angeles Theological Seminary, now The Master’s University in Santa Clarita, California.

[2] BC Baptist, July 1927, 1.

[3] “A Free Thinker on the Fundamentalists,” The King’s Business, Vol. 14, No. 8

(August 1923): 823.

[4] Pinnock, Clarke, “The Modernist Impulse at McMaster University” in Baptists in Canada: Search For Identity Amidst Diversity. (Burlington: G. R. Welch Co. Ltd. 1980) 193-208.

[5] Clark, William Newton, A Biography with Additional Sketches by his Friends and Colleagues. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916), 49.

[6] Clarke, William Newton, Sixty Years with the Bible: A Record of Experience. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909), 127-128.

[7] Clarke, William Newton, A Biography With Additional Sketches by his Friends and Colleagues. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916), 54. William Newton Clarke, Sixty Years with the Bible: A Record of Experience, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909), 132.

[8] Ibid, 55

[9] G.A. Rawlyk, “A. L. McCrimmon, H.P. Whidden, T.T. Shields, Christian Education and McMaster University” in Canadian Baptists and Christian Higher Education, ed. G.A. Rawlyk (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), 35.

[10] Pinnock, Clarke, “The Modernist Impulse at McMaster University” in Baptists in Canada: Search For Identity Amidst Diversity. (Burlington: G. R. Welch Co. Ltd. 1980) 193-208.

[11] Marsden, George M. Fundamentalism and American Culture, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 105.

[12] For a full treatment of this see G.A. Rawlyk, “A.L. McCrimmon, H.P. Whidden, T.T. Shields, Christian Education and McMaster University” in Canadian Baptists and Christian Higher Education, ed. G. A. Rawlyk (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), 32-34.

[13] Straub, Jeffrey Paul, The Making of a Battle Royal: The Rise of Liberalism in Northern Baptist Life 1870-1920, (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2018), 165-226.

[14] Priest, Gerald L. “A. C. Dixon, Chicago Liberals, And The Fundamentals.” Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal Volume: DBSJ 01:1 (Spring 1996), 115.

[15] Priest, Gerald L. “A. C. Dixon, Chicago Liberals, And The Fundamentals.” Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal Volume: DBSJ 01:1 (Spring 1996), 116.

[16] The Ottawa Evening Journal, May 6, 1903.

[17] Osterhaven, Eugene, “American Theology in the Twentieth Century” in Christian Faith and Modern Theology, ed. C.F. Henry (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1964)

[18] Pickford, John H. What Hath God Wrought, (Vancouver: Baptist Foundation of BC. 1987), 16

[19] The Ottawa Evening Journal, October 25, 1910

[20] Ibid, October 25, 1910

[21] Ibid, October 25, 1910

[22] The Ottawa Journal, October 25, 1910

[23] Pickford, John H. What Hath God Wrought, (Vancouver: Baptist Foundation of BC. 1987), 17.