Samuel FORSYTH

FORSYTH, SAMUEL (b. Co Tyrone, Ireland, 1 May 1881; d. Felixstow, SA, 24 Aug 1960). Methodist clergyman.

Of farming parents, Samuel Forsyth was apprenticed to a local tradesman, but migrated to Brisbane in 1901, and was involved in open-air gospel meetings in New Zealand in 1902. He studied at H L Morton's (q.v.) Belair training college in 1905 and then began evangelistic work on Yorke Peninsula. He m. Ida Nankivell in 1907 and was ordained into the Methodist ministry 1912, serving first at Broken Hill. Various other appointments followed. After his first wife died he m. Ida Brummit (q.v. Ida Forsyth) in 1923. After a six-month tour of Methodist central missions in Britain, Forsyth was appointed superintendent of the Adelaide Central Mission 1929-52. His ministry revealed a shift among many evangelicals, often Methodists, away from hard-edged evangelism and the all-embracing authority of the Bible towards an activism focussed on caring for the poor in which the cross of Christ was decreasingly central.

His principal endeavour was to establish Kuitpo Labour Colony in rough forest country 50 km south of Adelaide. Here, during the depths of the 1930s depression, he sought to establish a self-supporting community drawn from the unemployed. The State Unemployed Relief Committee and Hill (ALP) government resisted his enthusiastic do-goodism. The Butler (UAP) government, containing the influential Methodist layman Shirley Jeffries, provided subsidies which gave continuity to the project, but it was only a temporary and charitable facility. In the 1940s it was transformed into a residential institution for the rehabilitation of alcoholics, again with government support.

The Central Mission itself maintained membership and attendance during the 1930s and, under Forsyth's assistant George White, developed its radio ministry by purchasing 5KA in 1944, which greatly enlarged its audience. Forsyth meanwhile moved on his own initiative in 1943 to purchase a house and 8ha at Payneham which he developed into 'Resthaven' for the accommodation of aged people. As with most of his decisions, it was personal, even impetuous, and achieved with exiguous resources. But it met a significant need among aged, respectable working class people denied the ability to accumulate resources for retirement by their employment experience (or lack of it, during the depression). Forsyth campaigned for funds and presided over substantial growth. In retirement he was superintendent at Payneham, and participated in placing successful pressure on the Menzies (LCP) federal government in 1953 to subsidize such well-intentioned charity. The resultant Aged Persons Homes funding was a bonanza for church-based agencies and saw the rapid expansion of Resthaven and many like it into multi-million dollar organisations serving large government and community purposes.

Forsyth was a simple-minded Irishman who acted out Biblical injunctions to go about doing good.

Ida Forsyth, He Came From Ireland, Adelaide, 1952; ADB 8; B Chalmers, 'Need, Not Creed: A history of the Adelaide Central Methodist Mission', MA thesis, Flinders University, 1986

BRIAN DICKEY