Alexander A. Boddy

Alexander Alfred Boddy was born in 1854 in Manchester, England, into a respectable family. He trained for a time as a lawyer and then felt called to the church. He studied at Durham and was ordained in the Church of England. In 1886 he became vicar of All Saints' Church in Monkwearmouth, a poor parish in the shipbuilding town of Sunderland. He remained there for thirty-six years. He was a devoted pastor who cared for the working families around him and loved to travel.

He was drawn to the life of revival. He visited the Welsh Revival in 1904 and 1905 and saw something of what God was doing among a whole people. In 1907 he made a trip to Norway to meet Thomas Ball Barratt, a Methodist minister who had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit with tongues during a visit to New York. He invited Barratt to come to Sunderland. Barratt came and held meetings in the vicarage and the parish hall. In those meetings many people received what they called the baptism in the Spirit. Boddy's own wife, Mary, spoke in tongues, and he himself received the experience a few months later.

From 1908 to 1914, Sunderland became the center of the early Pentecostal movement in Britain. Boddy held yearly conventions in the parish, which drew hundreds of visitors from many countries. Among them were men who would become leaders of the Pentecostal churches in England, Scotland and Wales. He also edited a magazine called Confidence, which spread news of the movement. He wrote books and pamphlets, including a record of the Sunderland meetings.

He was unusual among the leaders of the movement because he remained an Anglican. He did not want to leave his church, and he did not want to build a new denomination. He hoped that the Spirit would renew the Church of England from within. In this he was disappointed. Church authorities did not welcome the movement, and the bishops showed little interest. Boddy kept his place and tried to keep a bridge between Anglicans and Pentecostals. He cared about order and wished to keep the gifts of the Spirit under the control of Scripture. He also pressed those who spoke in tongues to test every experience against the Word.

His later years brought difficulty. The First World War scattered the conventions, and the movement began to divide over doctrine and leadership. Some Pentecostals went their own way and formed new bodies, while Boddy remained in his parish. He did not hold the front of the movement, and a younger generation of leaders took his place. He also suffered from the loss of friendships and from his own sense that he might have done more.

He retired from his parish in 1922 and died in 1930. He had helped to light a fire that burned in churches across Britain, and he had served his own flock faithfully. His life shows the cost of trying to bring new life into an old church and the difficulty of keeping both loyalty and zeal.