John Bunyan MCCURE

MCCURE, JOHN BUNYAN (b. Camberwell England, 5 Aug 1822). Strict and Particular Baptist minister.

McCure omits any autobiographical information prior to the age of thirteen. At this age he relates how his mother suffered from 'rheumatic gout' for a period of twelve years necessitating his leaving home and seeking employment. Very early in his religious experience he became preoccupied with the Calvinistic doctrine of election: 'My trouble was now, whether I was one of the Lord's chosen'. McCure was converted under Richard Luckin, a paedobaptist, at Woodbridge Chapel, Clerkenwell. Shortly after his conversion he became convinced of believer's baptism, and was immersed by the Rev John Luscombe at Bethel Chapel, City Road, London. McCure preached his first sermon on Sunday 1 Mar 1840 and was married the same year at the Islington Church. He became a full-time preacher among the Strict and Particular Baptists. Intimidated out of his pastorate by creditors and affected by the claims of a wife and six children, he requested the churches of Kent and Sussex for assistance to migrate to Australia. This plan was achieved with outside assistance by means of a chaplaincy to a group of Congregational emigrants.

McCure arrived in Melbourne in Dec 1852. Disillusioned by the lack of employment and preaching opportunities he left for Geelong one week later. Here he worked as a groom and carriage driver and was soon exercising a part-time ministry. He was able to purchase land and build Mt Zion Baptist Church in 1856, becoming its full-time minister.

McCure moved to Sydney in 1861, hired the Odd Fellows Hall in Sussex St, and presided over the revival of a Strict and Particular Baptist conventicle. But a prosperity sufficient to buy land in Castlereagh fell far short of convincing the denomination of the way it should take.

Although McCure was accepted as a colleague by other Baptist ministers in Sydney, he was not considered as a representative figure by Sydney Baptists. He was described by the deacons of the Masonic Hall Baptist Church as 'an excellent and good man but uneducated'; he and his congregation were of 'that class known in England as of "high sentiment" '. This would have been a reference to the Hyper-Calvinist convictions of both McCure and his church.

The Strict and Particular Baptists persevered as small body and under McCure's successors such as Daniel Allen (q.v.), moved in a domain of their own.

Within Australian evangelicalism, McCure was a capable Baptist representative of the Hyper-Calvinist sectarian tradition among British Baptists. He was the first missionary from the English Strict and Particular Baptists to be sent to Australia. He stood in the line of the English Hyper-Calvinists John Gill, William Gadsby and the Gospel Standard Churches. Typical of the exclusivism of Strict and Particular Baptists he rejected 'duty-faith'. This was the universal human responsibility to repent and believe the gospel which was characteristic of both Arminianism and Evangelical Calvinism. The message of salvation was to be restricted to the elect and not preached indiscriminately. His arrival in Australia sharpened and symbolised the theological differences that existed among British Baptists which were inevitably transplanted to colonial shores. At a time when Australian Baptists were moving towards evangelical tolerance and unity, McCure stood for the remoteness and rigidity of Hyper-Calvinist Baptist secthood.

John Bunyan McCure, Life in England and Australia: Reminiscences of Travels and Voyages Over One Hundred Thousand Miles; or, Forty Years in the Wilderness: A Memorial of the Loving-kindness of the Lord (London, 1876)

MICHAEL CHAVURA