Salem Goldworth Bland

Salem Goldworth Bland (1859–1950) was a Canadian Methodist theologian, Georgist, and one of Canada's most important Social Gospel thinkers.

Biography

He was born on 25 August 1859 in Lachute, Quebec, the son of Emma Bland and Henry Flesher Bland, a Methodist preacher. As a child he lost the use of one of his legs, likely due to polio. He had the useless leg amputated at age thirty and replaced it with an artificial limb. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree at Morrin College in 1877, and later studied at McGill University. He was ordained a Methodist minister in 1884 and served as a preacher in a series of churches in Ontario and Quebec. In 1903, he accepted a position at Wesley College in Winnipeg, Manitoba, as Professor of Church History and New Testament Exegesis.

Originally a relatively conservative Methodist, at Wesley he embraced higher criticism. It was also in Winnipeg that he became committed to activist Christianity and the Social Gospel movement. He became a popular guest preacher across western Canada. At Wesley he tutored a number of students including J. S. Woodsworth, William Irvine, and William Ivens who became early leaders of the social-democratic Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. Bland, a longtime advocate for the creation of a third party alternative to the Liberals and Conservatives, helped found the Ontario CCF.

Bland also became a regular writer for The Grain Growers' Guide, then the main organ of the progressive farmers' movement, from 1917 to 1919. This activism led him into conflict with the leaders of Wesley College and he was dismissed in 1917 after a long battle with principal Eber Crummy.