Silas MEAD

MEAD, SILAS (b. Curry Mallet, Somerset, England, 16 Aug 1834; d. Perth, WA, 13 Sept 1909). Baptist minister, mission enthusiast and theological educator.

Born into a farming family, Mead was baptised at 15 and soon engaged in lay preaching in the local area and in the local Baptist chapel which he helped to build. Aiming to become a pastor, he attended night school at nearby Taunton and entered Stepney, later Regent's Park, College (BA 1857, MA 1859, LLB 1860), and went on to study eastern languages at the University of London.

The Principal of Stepney/Regent's Park College, Joseph Angus, had a marked impact on Mead's outlook. Angus, a former secretary of the BMS encouraged Mead's enthusiasm for foreign missions. Mead never departed from the theological conservatism he learned from Angus. Mead's one theological book, Scripture Immersion (1867), reflected Angus's belief that theology is an inductive science with the texts of scripture as its facts and the rules of Francis Bacon its method.

Mead was recommended by Angus to a group of prominent Adelaide Baptists, led by George Fife Angas (q.v.) who were seeking to establish a strong central Baptist church in Adelaide. Mead accepted the invitation to Adelaide after he had received assurances that this new work would be well supported financially. He arrived at Pt Adelaide on 13 July 1861. His wife-to-be, Ann Staple of Stoke-sub-Hamdon, Somerset, followed him to Adelaide in 1864 and they were m. on 25 May 1864.

A new Baptist church was constituted with Mead as pastor on 5 Aug 1861. A large Gothic style building was erected in Flinders St Adelaide and under Mead's wise and decisive leadership the church prospered. It quickly became the largest and most influential Baptist church in Adelaide, reaching 263 members by 1866 and 410 in 1871.

Although not an inspiring preacher, Mead soon came to dominate Baptist affairs in SA due to his deep spirituality, organisational ability, evangelistic zeal, and eirenical spirit. He gave exactly the type of leadership that the hitherto divided Baptists of SA needed. He was one of the chief driving forces behind the establishment of the SA Baptist Association in 1863 of which he was three times president and four times secretary. During the years of rapid expansion of the Baptist denomination in SA between 1863 and 1885, Mead was the principal strategist. He strongly encouraged members of Hinders St Baptist Church to leave the church and establish new Baptist causes in the suburbs of their residence. Although Mead was never officially appointed to be in charge of denominational extension, he played a crucial liaising role between the Association Committee and groups of Baptists wanting to found new fellowships.

Mead favoured an open-communion policy whereby all Christians, whether they had been baptised as a believer or not, were admitted to church membership and to participation in the Lord's Supper. The vast majority of Baptist churches in South Australia followed Mead's example in this regard. This policy of open-membership served to distinguish SA Baptists from Baptists in other colonies, particularly those in NSW who adopted a closed-membership policy and a more sectarian approach in denominational affairs.

Mead was also involved in the theological education of prospective pastors and he was a founding member and lecturer in exegesis at Union College, a joint theological college of the Presbyterian, Baptist and Congregational denominations. In the 1880s Mead pushed for the establishment of a federal Baptist College in Melbourne, but was unsuccessful.

In June 1868 Mead was influenced by the holiness movement and remained an enthusiast for holiness teaching throughout his life. However, remaining true to his moderate Calvinist beliefs he rejected the doctrine of sinless perfectionism which some within the holiness movement held. He was greatly disappointed that the movement had waned by the end of the nineteenth century.

In the 1870s Mead tried to influence the SA Baptist Association to enter into an organic union with the Congregationalists. Keenly evangelical, he believed that Christian disunity was a severe limitation on the spread of the gospel. He did not carry his fellow Baptists with him on this issue, and alarmed at the spread of liberal theology in other Protestant denominations in the 1880s, he later retreated from his earlier position.

Although Mead was greatly respected, his influence among SA Baptists waned in the 1890s. He was outspoken in his rejection of liberal theology and social Christianity but he was not able to change the theological direction of a younger generation of South Australian Baptists.

Keenly interested in young people, Mead often confronted young adherents of his church with their need of salvation and he was one of the first to establish a Christian Endeavour Society in Australia. He also took an interest in Christian students at the University of Adelaide and he encouraged his son Cecil (q.v.) to establish a Christian Union there in 1890.

Mead was also the driving force behind the establishment of the SA Baptist Missionary Society (later called the Furreedpore Mission) in 1864. This was the first of the Australian Baptist mission societies. He encouraged Baptists in other colonies to begin their own mission work, but Mead also had a vision for a united Australian Baptist missionary effort in India.

Upon leaving the pastorate of the Flinders St Baptist Church in 1897, Mead accepted an invitation to become Principal of Harley College, a London missionary training college associated with the work of the English evangelist and writer of premillennial books, H Grattan Guinness.

After resigning from Harley College in 1901, Mead returned to Australia to live with his daughter Gertrude, a doctor in Perth. He had an active retirement. Mead became co-pastor with his son-in-law, Rev A S Wilson, of the Museum St Baptist Church, Perth, and headed Baptist ministerial training in Western Australia.

Mead also served a term as president of the Baptist Union of WA, and was elected president in 1902 and 1903 of the Inter-state Conference of Baptists in Australia. He attended the inaugural meetings of the Baptist World Alliance in London in 1905 where he presented a paper on missionary methods in which he argued for the granting of greater autonomy of action for missionaries on the field from their home committees.

Mead died of pneumonia in 1909 and was survived by four children, including his missionary doctor son Cecil and daughter Gertrude who became a prominent Perth doctor. His first wife Annie died 15 June 1874, and his second wife Mrs Leighton, a widow whom he married in 1880, died in 1886. Mead was an outstanding example of a thoughtful, eirenical and vigorous evangelicalism. Although new theological directions in South Australia meant that his influence eventually waned, yet his achievements were impressive by any standard.

ADB 5; W Barry, There Was a Man: The Life of Cecil Silas Mead (Melbourne, nd); H E Hughes, Our First Hundred Years: The Baptist Church of South Australia (Adelaide, 1867); R K Moore (ed), Baptists of Western Australia: The First Ninety Years (Perth, 1991); J S Walker, 'The Baptists in South Australia, 1863 to 1914, (BTh thesis, Flinders University, 1990)

SELECT WRITINGS: J Price, S Mead, S Vincent, Our Centenary Volume (Adelaide, 1892); S Mead, Scripture Immersion: Or Arguments Showing Infant Baptism to be Unscriptural and Believers Baptism to be Exclusively Scriptural and Obligatory (Adelaide, 1867)

JOHN WALKER