Canadian Protestant League president Larry Saunders.

Aaron Dunlop, pastor of the Victoria Free Presbyterian Church, said 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of the year J.B. Rowell began to preach, in his native England.

Rowell arrived in Victoria in 1927, and founded Central Baptist Church – long one of several strongly-established downtown congregations. His prior Canadian pastorates had been in Kamloops and Prince Rupert.

Dunlop believes Rowell’s story needs retelling to a new generation of Christians. And he hopes, as well, to see the man portrayed as a gracious pastor and evangelist.

“He was sometimes viewed as anti-Catholic and belligerent. We want to dispel that. He was [in reality] an evangelist, whose desire was for the souls of men and women.”

Rowell was the Victoria president of the CPL during his long tenure at Central. In that role, he had occasion to preach for controversial Protestant cleric and political leader Ian Paisley during a visit to Ireland.

Dunlop – himself Irish-born, and not politically minded – said he recognizes that Paisley, in agreeing a few years ago to a power-sharing arrangement with Catholics in Northern Ireland, has “mellowed politically, but not theologically.”  

The CPL has been in decline for some years, Dunlop says. And some of that has been due to the fact that churches of all kinds relate more closely to each other, sometimes muting their denominational and theological distinctives.

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The Protestant Challenge magazine is still published by the organization; but the numbers of people involved in it are considerably down from three decades ago.

Dunlop has the good fortune to have Grace Eno, Rowell’s daughter, in his Sunday evening congregation. Now in her 80s, she remains a faithful member of her father’s church.

Eno has Rowell’s papers, memorabilia, history and sermon notes, and has made them available for Dunlop’s CPL presentation. Rowell, he said “was very methodical and complete in his record-keeping, and that will help us considerably in presenting his legacy at the conference.”

The purpose of the conference is both “historical and theological,” Dunlop noted. “It is to bring to light and make [the community] aware that the gospel as it was preached – and Protestantism as it was defended [in Rowell’s time] – is still preached and defended in Victoria today. It is very much a Reformation message.”

The conference, to be held at Sandman Inn, 2852 Douglas Street, will feature two other presenters besides Dunlop.

The keynoter will be John McKnight, minister of the influential Evangelical Methodist Church near Washington, DC, in Darlington, Maryland. McKnight is also president of the American Council of Christian Churches, a fundamentalist/Reformed association. He will speak about the survival of Protestantism in North America.

Larry Saunders, pastor of Toronto Free Presbyterian Church and president of the CPL, will provide a multi-media history of Protestantism in Canada. Dunlop will speak to the theme of ‘What is Positive Protestantism?’

Contact: canadianprotestantleague.org.         – Lloyd Mackey

April 2010