This post was originally posted at my Brethren-focused website, O Brethren! I am not sure I currently agree with everything herein, but thought I’d repost here anyways — I’ll post new stuff as it comes up.
I’ve been thinking of roots lately. Specifically, the roots of a church, located in a particular place and time. Within a particular tradition. How deep do they go? Are they like the roots of a tree, or are they more like a rhizome, networked and sprawling?
The church that I am currently part of (Peace Christian Community) is a new church, not exactly a plant. Instead, I would suggest that it might be thought of as an outcropping. I want to make that distinction because, while there have been “plants” in the sense of an explicit “daughtering” of a new church from another, pre-existing church, many Brethren (or Brethren-adjacent) churches in the region have started independently but also not as the result of a schism. So “outcropping” seems like it might be a workable metaphor. Peace is the outcropping of a few churches in the greater Edmonton area: Southview Christian Fellowship, Millcreek Christian Fellowship, and Ministik Church. These churches emerged anywhere from 15 to 20 to 30 years ago. They all — sometimes in a roundabout way — emerged as outcroppings (and in the case of Southview, a plant) of other churches: either Capilano Christian Assembly or Clareview Bible Chapel. Clareview got started sometime in the early 80s (their website says they have been in the Clareview neighbourhood since 1985), as an outcropping of Bethel Gospel Chapel. Capilano was started in 1978, as an outcropping (rather than a plant) of Bethel Gospel Chapel, Sharon Gospel Chapel, and Wyecliff Bible Chapel. The earliest of these was Bethel Gospel Chapel, which started in 1947. Bethel was itself an outcrop of the 97th Street Gospel Hall, having begun as a Sunday School ministry. The 97th Street Gospel Hall started at some point likely in the early 1900s — the most comprehensive history of the Brethren in Alberta, compiled by Robert L. Peterson (and uploaded and revised on the excellent BrethrenPedia by Doug Engle), mentions that there were four assemblies at the time. It also cites J.J. Rouse’s biography, which mentions a small assembly starting in Edmonton in 1905. This is likely the first assembly in Edmonton.
The history of the last 100 years of the Brethren tradition in Edmonton obviously does not exist in a vacuum. Simultaneously, there were all sorts of networks emerging, breaking, and getting reinforced over that period — both throughout Alberta and across Canada. These networks were built via institutions and organizations such as Mount Carmel Bible College, Kawartha Lakes Bible School, Vision Ministries Canada, MSC Canada, and numerous camps and retreats. These networks grew through the work of conferences, meetings, publications, marriages, friendships, and beyond.
The link of J.J. Rouse to the assemblies in Edmonton provides a direction to trace the lineage further backwards. Rouse was part of a group of itinerant evangelists (as were other early Edmonton figures such as the Benners), having become a Christian in 1893 as part of the Brethren movement in the region of Orillia, Ontario under the influence of Alexander Marshall, Donald Munro, and Donald Ross, three Scots who came to Canada in the 1880s as evangelists. Marshall was instrumental in the founding of Dominion Gospel Hall in Orillia. Munro and Ross arrived in Canada in the early 1870s, according to H.A. Ironside.
This early period in Canadian Brethren history is very interesting, partly because of the Scottish influence, which, despite being similar to the Plymouth Brethren, was actually an independent emergence that occurred during the Scottish revivals of 1859 and afterwards. This revivalism also resonated with what was taking place in the United States through the ministry of Dwight Moody. (Note that I have since better understood that there were Exclusive assemblies in Ontario much earlier than those that were planted out of the Munro/Ross itinerant preaching. There appear to have been meetings occurring as early as the 1860s, with connections to Darby. According to BrethrenPedia, Archie McKellar — whose descendants have played an important role in Alberta’s Brethren scene — was an itinerant preacher in the area of Wingham, which appears to be one of the earliest assemblies in Ontario.)
Alexander Marshall was saved in 1867 in Glasgow at a circus through the preaching of Gordon Forlong. As one history describes it: “A large canvas tent at the foot of Saltmarket Street, used during the Glasgow Fair week as a circus for performing horses, was hired by Gordon Forlong—a Christian gentleman gifted as an evangelist, whose name is notably associated with revival times—and became the spiritual birthplace of many souls” (Beattie, Brethren: The Story of a Great Recovery). Marshall was actively involved in several gatherings of Christians “according to New Testament practices,” as was the distinguishing description of these pseudo-Brethren assemblies, including at Union Hall in Glasgow (which is where he received his commendation in 1876).
Looking further back to the conversions of Donald Munro, Donald Ross, and Gordon Forlong himself, we see some of the varied influences at work on the other side of the Atlantic. Donald Munro was saved at 19 through the ministry of Hay Macdowall Grant in the town of Wick.1 This would have taken place around 1858, on the cusp of the famous Laymen’s Revivals in Scotland, which spanned 1859-1861.2 Donald Ross was saved in 1838 and was a missionary from 1858 onwards first in Ediburgh and later in Aberdeen. Gordon Forlong was saved in 1851 in London, but was also actively involved in the revivals in Scotland from 1859-1862. The Laymen’s Revivals in Scotland are an essential element in the history of the Brethren in Canada.
Tom Lennie’s book on the Scottish revivals in this period traces some of its origins, interestingly, to “a growing movement which first appeared in both of Canada’s Atlantic Provinces (Maritimes and Newfoundland) from 1856, and in Ontario, Canada in the autumn of 1857, as well as in a growing number of simultaneous, but unconnected interdenominational prayer meetings in cities and towns across America” (loc 671). Although Lennie does not name them, these appear to be referring in one case to the 1857 Hamilton, Ontario Revival (which was much wider than just Hamilton — extending even to northern Ontario locations like Barrie), which took place alongside the preaching of Methodists, Walter and Phoebe Palmer, the co-founders of the Holiness movement. Reports of these revivals spread across the Atlantic (although Lennie’s book does not provide extensive detail of the means by which this occurred).
What is still not clear to me is how the unique features of the Brethren — the focus on New Testament practices, the Lord’s Supper, laity, and sectarianism — become important to folks like Marshall, Munro, and Ross. Revivalism would transmit emphases such as the importance of the laity in mission (e.g., through the preaching of laypeople, which would have been very unusual to people at the time), simplicity, and a rejection of liturgical requirements. Tim Grass has an interesting comment about Donald Ross, who “found that revivalism, and in particular the twin problems of clerical antagonism and of what to do with those converted through his ministry, forced him to consider the need for a gathered church” (Gathering to His Name, 124). Nevertheless, initially, these gathered churches were resistant to aligning with assemblies. As Ross said, “We had heard of ‘Brethren,’ but only as bad , bad people, and we resolved to have nothing to do with them.” This very helpful paper provides some insight into the timing of Ross’s joining with a more typically Brethren assembly, which occurred in 1871. By 1878, he had immigrated to North America.
I envision the next step in understanding the genealogy of the Brethren in Canada — and especially in Alberta — as having two focuses: first, arriving at a “thicker” description of the spiritual lineages that would have made up the founding families of early Edmonton churches like the 97th Street Gospel Hall and Bethel Gospel Chapel (e.g., the Cummings family is instrumental in both churches — what is their faith origin back in Ireland?); and, second, what precedes the Scottish revival. A possible direction lies in what Ross Howlett McLaren calls “the triple tradition.”
Stay tuned for more.
- See Donald Munro: A Servant of Jesus Christ ↩︎
- See Scotland Ablaze: The Twenty-Year Revival that Swept Scotland, 1859-1879 ↩︎