Rowland Bingham

Rowland Victor Bingham (born December 19, 1872 in East Grinstead , Sussex , † December 1942 in Toronto ) was a British - Canadian clergyman , missionary and writer . He was the co-founder and long-time director of the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM).

Life

Bingham emigrated to Canada at the age of 16 and sailed to Africa for the first time in 1893 . His two colleagues Walter Gowans and Thomas Kent died of malaria within a year and he himself returned to Canada with health problems. In 1898 the Sudan Interior Mission was re-established as the "Africa Interior Mission" and Bingham became its director. After a second unsuccessful attempt in 1900, a third attempt in 1902 succeeded in setting up the mission's first station in Pategi in Nigeria . In 1906 the mission returned to the name Sudan Interior Mission .

When Bingham died, the Sudan Interior Mission was arguably the largest Protestant presence in Africa, with 400 missionaries and hundreds of churches.

In addition, from 1904 until his death, Bingham directed Evangelical Christian , Canada's only non-denominational evangelical magazine. To spread his ideas, he also founded Evangelical Publishers (1912) and the Canadian Keswick Conference Center (1924). In 1932 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Wheaton College .

The newspapers maintained by Bingham, along with a number of other evangelical Christian magazines, belong to the SIM archives in Charlotte , North Carolina .

In 1954, the organization he founded became the Evangelical Church of West Africa , which has grown rapidly since then. It had about 3 million members in 2108 and a further 7 million visitors in about 6000 parishes.

Fonts (selection)

• Matthew the Publican and his Gospel. Demonstrating the Rightful Place of This Gospel According to Matthew as the Initial Book of the New Covenant of Jesus Christ and a True Gospel of the Grace of God. Marshall, Morgan & Scott, London / Edinburgh 1937 (English; archived at archive.org).
• Seven Sevens of Years and a Jubilee: The story of the Sudan Interior Mission. Evangelical Publishers, Toronto 1943 (autobiography).
• The Bible and the Body: Healing in the Scriptures. 4th edition. London 1952.

literature

• James Hogg Hunter: A Flame of Fire: The Life and Work of RV Bingham. Toronto 1961 (English).
• Brian McKenzie: Fundamentalism, Christian Unity, and Premillennialism in the Through of Rowland Victor Bingham (1872-1942): A Study of Anti-Modernism in Canada. Dissertation, Toronto School of Theology, 1985 (English).
• George Thomas Kurian, Mark A. Lamport (Eds.): Encyclopedia of Christianity in the United States. Volume 5. Latham, Maryland 2016, p. 274 (English; side view in the Google book search).

Web links

• Brief biography of Gary R. Corwin: Bingham, Rowland Victor. In: Dictionary of African Christian Biography. Center for Global Christianity and Mission, 1998, accessed January 30, 2019.