Jarvis Street Baptist Church

The Jarvis Street Baptist Church is a Baptist church located at the intersection of Gerrard Street and Jarvis Street in downtown Toronto. One of the oldest churches in the city, its congregation was founded in 1818, and the present church constructed in 1875.

Early records indicate that by 1827, church meetings were held at the Masonic Hall on Colborne Street. The congregation then bought property on Lombard Street and constructed a small chapel in 1832. It was then known also as the Baptist Church of York. By 1848, the congregation had moved to Bond Street and became known simply as Bond Street Baptist Church with a membership that grew to 400 by the late 1860s. Beginning with Bond Street and continuing through at Jarvis Street an outreach was begun further west which was established in 1880 as Beverley Street Baptist Church. (See also Toronto Chinese Baptist Church).

The present church was erected on Jarvis Street in 1875, with a large donation to the construction costs from the Canadian Senator and banker, William McMaster. The newly formed Baptist Union of Canada held its first meeting at Jarvis Street in October, 1880. In 1882, William McMaster, William Elliot, (a member of Jarvis Street and a Toronto Pharmacist/Businessman), and others established the Standard Publishing Company, which published the Canadian Baptist, transferring that enterprise from private ownership to a denominational enterprise.

"In 1888 the Western Convention, while in session in Jarvis St. Church, Toronto, passed the following resolution:

"Whereas this question of Union has been carefully considered, both by the Society in the East and by us, therefore, resolved, that we do now receive the Eastern Society into union with us."

The new convention was to be called, 'the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec.'" It is ironic that less than 40 years later the same Convention passed a resolution calling for the dismissal of Jarvis St. and a number of other like-minded congregations during the "Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy".

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