James Henry COLE

COLE, JAMES HENRY Founder of the first Baptist churches in WA.

An accountant from the Melbourne suburb of Brighton, Cole travelled by steamer to WA in Mar 1895, with the intention of establishing a Baptist church. During a series of public meetings in the Perth Town Hall, on 23 June 1895 he was able to form the Perth Baptist Church, which he pastored for the next three months. Following this he formed a church at Fremantle and pastored it for several months. He then proceeded to Katanning, 315 km south-south-east of Perth, where he founded the first Baptist church outside the capital. He also helped establish a preaching station at Geraldton, 424 km north of Perth. These moves firmly established the Baptist cause in Western Australia, and even before Nov 1896 when Cole returned to Vic at the conclusion of his Katanning pastorate, another church (Bayswater, formed from the Perth Church) had come into existence.

While Cole was absent the 'close membership' view he had advocated from his Victorian Baptist background had given way in some churches (including Perth) to the 'open membership' view. Such a change reflected leadership originating in SA where 'open membership' was generally favoured. When Cole arrived back in WA on 8 Oct 1902 he identified not with the Baptist Union (1896) but with the avowedly 'close membership' General Baptist Association, whose origins may be traced to 1900. During this second visit, Cole initially pastored a church on the Goldfields, then Bayswater. A family bereavement led him to return to Vic in Oct 1904.

Although Cole had been heavily involved in preaching before he came to WA, he had no theological training, nor was he ordained when he first left Vic. However, whereas attempts by local people to establish the Baptist cause in WA proved ephemeral both in 1893 and again in 1894, Cole's combination of experience, organisational ability, leadership, and zeal, succeeded.

RICHARD K MOORE