William Reid MCEWEN

MCEWEN, WILLIAM REID (b. Bready, Co. Tyrone, Ireland, 23 May 1906; d. Geelong, Vic, 7 April 1989). Reformed Presbyterian minister and secretary of the Bible Union.

The son of James McEwen, minister of the Reformed Presbyterian (RP) Church of Ireland, William McEwen was educated in Londonderry at TCD and at the RP Theological Hall. He was ordained on 5 Sept 1928 for work in Australia, where there was a single RP congregation at Geelong. He arrived in August 1929 after a period of further study at the RP Seminary in Pittsburg. In 1933 he initiated a home meeting in the Melbourne suburb of McKinnon, and he served the resultant congregation, formally organised in 1946, until his retirement on 5 September 1978.

In 1942 McEwen became the secretary of the Bible Union of Victoria, and edited its magazine, Evangelical Action, from 1944 to 1985. He lectured in church history for a period at MBI, was involved in the Australian Institute of Archaeology and the Ulster Society and wrote for the Christian newspaper New Life. He was not a prominent preacher, but he excelled in journalism.Evangelical Action reached only a small constituency rather isolated from the mainstream of evangelical life, but his frequent letters in the press made him widely known as a spokesman for conservative Protestantism, and an opponent of mainstream ecumenism.

McEwen was a faithful upholder of his church's distinctive positions, including its opposition to the singing of compositions in the worship of God other than the Biblical psalms, and he expounded the Calvinism of the Westminster Confession with enthusiasm. Nevertheless, he made common cause with all who upheld the inerrancy of the Bible and the basic evangelical doctrines and who separated from alliances which involved cooperation with Modernists. A small cheery man, he was firm but not pugnacious. His gracious spirit and quiet perseverance were very evident to those who know him. He and his wife Bessie (d. 1986) had one child, Alastair, who became Professor of Old Testament at the Reformed Theological College, Geelong.

E J Daley, 'A Bible Union Spokesman For Over 40 Years', Evangelical Action (June/July 1989); D Parker, 'The Bible Union: A Case Study in Australian Fundamentalism', JRH 14:1 (1986)

ROWLAND S WARD