T. E. Ruth (1875–1956)

Preacher and Controversialist

Ken R. Manley

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781725299603, 9781725299610
• eBook ISBN: 9781725299627
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Biographies

T. E. Ruth (1875-1956) was one of the most controversial Baptist ministers ever to serve in Australia. After a successful career in England as preacher, pastor, and writer, Ruth came to the significant Collins Street Baptist Church in Melbourne in 1914. During the tumultuous years of the World War, Ruth cared for the bereaved and bewildered people in his congregation and in the city. He also led public debates about conscription, engaging in intense platform clashes with his Catholic opponent, Archbishop Daniel Mannix. He later moved to the Pitt Street Congregational Church in Sydney where he was soon involved in public opposition to the Labor premier J. T. Lang as well as becoming a popular columnist in the secular press.To his critics he was a "sectarian bigot" and was mocked as "Ruthless Ruth"; to others, he was an ardent Empire loyalist, an admired and successful Protestant defender.Some critics accused him of being a Christian spiritualist and others have suggested that he formulated a theology for fascism. Ruth denounced millennial Adventism and hellfire eschatology as he affirmed universalism and a continuing spiritual development after death. This fascinating study of a progressive thinker, public theologian, and controversialist illuminates one of the more divisive and formative periods in Australian religious and political life.

1

“A Brilliant Son of Devon”

The arrival of a new minister for the Collins Street Baptist Church in Melbourne aboard the RMS Orama on March 9, 1914, was what would today be called “a media event.” Representatives of the church and the denomination jostled with reporters from the daily press to assure the young minister of a warm welcome. Under the heading “Rev. T. E. Ruth Arrives,” the Argus told readers that Ruth was “a little under average height, of slight build, dark complexioned with a very quiet manner, which is roused to emphasis under the stress of ideas held with strong conviction.”1 Ruth was frequently likened in physical appearance and oratorical style to Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, a comparison that Ruth enjoyed.2 On a return visit to England in 1922, he was hailed as “a brilliant son of Devon.”3

The Forming of a Baptist Preacher

Thomas Elias Ruth was born in the small Devon village of Aveton Gifford on December 17, 1875, the eldest son of George William Saunders Ruth (1852–89) and Mary Ann Elson (1856–1911), who had six children.4 George was a stonemason, and members of the Ruth family had been present in the village for many generations. George Ruth died on December 26, 1889, when Tom was only fourteen.

St. Andrew’s Church, Aveton Gifford

Ruth was baptized at St. Andrew’s parish church on February 6, 1876: “I do not remember it, but there is documentary evidence to that effect. I did not believe in it. Indeed, I have been told that I vehemently protested. But neither for the privilege nor for the protest was I responsible.” He was under twelve years old when he was confirmed in that church: “I am certain that I did not intelligently apprehend the meaning of the broken baptismal vows of my forgotten godparents,” and confirmation “did not prevent my joining some other boys in raiding an orchard the next day.”5

Years later, as he was writing about how his understanding of faith had changed across the generations, Ruth imagined that the ghost of his grandfather (Charles Ruth) had appeared to accuse him.

Now, my grandfather had never lived outside a lovely little village nestling in a little Devonshire valley. On Sundays he acted as “clerk” at the parish church. In the absence of a choir and a choral service, he led the responses. And he said several times at every service, “As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.” . . . He told me he’d been a dreadful heretic in his own day, but being parish clerk, he hadn’t said so, so that if he lived on the earth today he would probably believe pretty much what I believe.6

On several occasions he told how he came to reject the traditional evangelical belief in hell.

Into our little Devon village when I was a boy, there came, week by week, the published sermons of one of the greatest evangelical preachers of the nineteenth century, and I vividly remember how often my soul was stirred by his powerful word-pictures of hell, how my childish imagination made of the weirdest imagery the most literal reality; sometimes making sleep a dreadful experience through fear of waking in never-dying flames; sometimes making me cry out in agony of soul, asking God to have mercy on a little boy of ten who had sinned unto death; at other times producing a period of philosophic calm when I would compare my chances with the chances of other boys with whom I had stolen apples and indulged in boyish pranks which assumed such diabolical importance in the lu...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: “A Brilliant Son of Devon”
• Chapter 2: A Baptist Pastor in Melbourne: The Early Years (1914–15)
• Chapter 3: Imperial Protestant
• Chapter 4: Wake up, Australia!
• Chapter 5: Ruth and the Catholics in Tumultuous Times (1918)
• Chapter 6: “The Commonwealth Constitutes His Congregation”
• Chapter 7: Ruth: A Public Theologian?
• Chapter 8: The Eschatology of T. E. Ruth
• Chapter 9: Becoming a Sydney Identity (1923–30)
• Chapter 10: A Political and Social Crisis (1930–32)
• Chapter 11: “The Little Napoleon” of Pitt Street (1933–38)
• Chapter 12: “A Good Secular Pulpit”
• Chapter 13: Adelaide and Retirement Years (1939–56)
• Chapter 14: Tom and Herbert: “A Religion of Loyalty”
• Conclusion: “Remember Me at My Best”
• Bibliography