The Beginnings of the Newfoundland Bible Society

Abstract

Much confusion has occurred about the beginnings of the Newfoundland Bible Society, an evangelical Protestant organization in the early nineteenth century. In the 1980s, the alleged founding date of 1812 led to a public celebration of its supposed 175th anniversary. But archival research demonstrates that the founding of a local Bible Society Auxiliary in Newfoundland was a lengthy process that lasted more than 30 years until its establishment in 1846. As elsewhere, the organization united members of several Protestant churches — Anglican, Congregationalist, Methodist, and Moravian — in cooperating with each other. At the same time, this Protestant cohesion and focus on the Bible as sole religious and ethical norm evoked fear of Protestant aggression among Roman Catholics while Tractarian Anglican bishops opposed the Society’s liberal ecumenicity. Environmental factors such as the first of several fires in nineteenth-century St. John’s as well as religious conflict may have been among the factors responsible for the delayed establishment of the Bible Society Auxiliary in Newfoundland.