Alberta Bible College - The Founders

The Founders

Helen McGilvary’s motion at a July, 1932, congregational meeting of Central Church of Christ, Lethbridge, Alberta, created Alberta Bible College (ABC). Charles Henry (“C. H.”) Phillips convened classes October 3rd 1932 with Roscoe E. Hollister and, later that school year, eight other students in an unfinished church basement in a classroom sectioned off by a curtain.

From the outset, ABC’s founding was a collaborative effort of several Alberta congregations. But E. E. Breakenridge, a Calgary businessman and an elder at Tuxedo Park Church of Christ, Calgary, was full partner in this effort with C. H. Phillips. Phillips came from an Anglo-Caribbean plantation family, born in London, England, according to one account, who immigrated to Saskatchewan as a 24-year-old. As that young man, he came to Canada "utterly disgruntled" with the brand of Christianity that perpetuated unbearable inequalities between the clergy and the poor.

“C. H.” was exposed to the Restoration Movement by the pioneer Disciples of Christ preacher R. J. Westaway, and he went to study at Eugene Bible University (now, Northwest Christian College) in Oregon. From his studies, C. H. brought a vision of church growth by way of educating men and women for the leadership ministry of the church. In a special 1932 edition of The Alberta Christian, a newsletter of the Alberta Christian Missionary Society, Phillips noted that "There is no question as to the need of such a college in this Northwestern (sic) division of our Dominion. We have the young people in our churches. We know of several who would avail themselves of intensive preparation of the various trained ministries of the churches were it possible."

E. E. Breakenridge was a former Baptist who became a member of Tuxedo Park Church of Christ in 1934. With A. G. Spaeth who donated a building and land in Calgary at 2720 Centre Street North, J. W. Jenkins, the Hovises, J. H. Dean, and several others, Phillips and Breakenridge laid ABC’s institutional foundations. Phillips’s vision was of “a program in classical English Bible.” As implemented, study of the Bible was allied to such as classical logic and rhetoric. Breakenridge marshalled the resources of Disciples in southern and central Alberta to create the new school’s financial and physical infrastructure. In 1936, ABC was incorporated with a self-perpetuating board of trustees in continuity with its founding, provisional board, and in 1937 the school moved to the Centre Street property.

The College was a child of hope for the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement in the context of its growth concurrent with the settlement of the Canadian West, and the challenge of developing an indigenous Canadian leadership.