Journal: Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal
Volume: DBSJ 24:1 (NA 2019)
Article: Thomas Todhunter Shields, Jr. “The Canadian Spurgeon”
Author: Jeffrey P. Straub

DBSJ 24 (2019) p. 97

Thomas Todhunter Shields, Jr. “The Canadian Spurgeon”

Jeffrey P. Straub1

Introduction

No name stands out in Canadian Baptist history quite like the name Thomas Todhunter Shields, Jr. (1873–1955), the long-time pastor of the Jarvis Street Baptist Church of Toronto, one of Canada’s most historic churches. More than sixty-four years after his death, one can hardly separate the name of Shields from the grand old church at the corner of Jarvis and Gerrard Streets. The church celebrated its two hundredth anniversary in “the City of Spires”2 last year, where the shadow of Shields that hung over the church during forty-five of those two hundred years continues. At least three of the legacies he helped to erect continue to the present. First, there is the stately gothic style edifice, raised from the ashes of a terrible fire that occurred in the mid-afternoon March 4, 1938, collapsing the steeple and decimating the auditorium of the 1875 building. Shields’s fingerprints are all over the rebuilt structure which reconstruction he oversaw.3 The second abiding memorial is The Gospel Witness, which he began in 1922 during the conflict with theological liberalism then dominating Canadian Baptist life. Initially it was a church paper sent out to interested friends. In time it became an alternative to the denomination’s paper, The Canadian Baptist. The final testament to Shields is the Toronto Baptist Seminary, still housed on church property, which began in 1927 in response to conflict with McMaster University over liberalism. Shields believed that there was a need to train gospel ministers without the fear of them becoming tainted with theological error. Thomas Todhunter Shields and Jarvis Street Baptist Church are inseparably linked, and Shields’s memory is still felt in its stately halls.

DBSJ 24 (2019) p. 98

There have been a number of titles ascribed to Shields during and since his long career. Perhaps the most common title was that of “The Battling Baptist,” by a writer who described T. T. later in life due to his controversial nature.4 The title captured a side to T. T. that is hard to dismiss. During much of his Jarvis Street ministry, Shields was involved in disputes with an assortment of individuals—friend and foe alike. At the end of the 1910s, he was fighting worldliness in his church. There was also a question of the role and nature of the music in the service. Music had become so dominant, he complained, that the time allotment for the preaching was reduced. By the time T. T. entered the pulpit, similar ...