Henry Alline - Legacy

Legacy

Though he made many converts to his religious ideas the Allinites splintered into many competing Newlight sects after his death. Some of these were Pansonites, Chipmanites, Kinsmanites, Blackites, Welshites, Hammonites, Palmerites, Brookites, Pearlyites and Burpeites,and a few even turned to the Anabaptist belief. Most of these sects disappeared as quickly as they appeared, with the followers eventually merging with either Wesleyan, Congregationalist churches or helping establish two major Baptist denominations in the Maritime region. This legacy has made the Maritime region the Baptist bastion of Canada.

In America his theology was a key generative factor in the birth of New England’s Free Will Baptist churches.

Alline is Canada’s most prolific Eighteenth-century writer, publishing 487 hymns & spiritual songs, three sermons, many pamphlets, his Journal, as well as two major works - 'Two Mites Cast into the Offering of God, for the Benefit of Mankind' and ‘A Court for the Trial of the Anti-Traditionalist' His Journal has now taken its place as one of the classics of North American spiritualism and he is considered Canada’s first great Protestant and one of its most important theological writers.