H. B. Sharman

Henry Burton Sharman (1865–1953) was a Canadian Christian theologian.

Biography Henry Burton Sharman was born 12 August 1865, in Stratford, Ontario, the eldest of eleven children. After attending school in Stratford, Sharman entered the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) at Guelph in 1882 where he received a Diploma in Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Science in 1884. He traveled to England while at Guelph to import Hereford cattle. In 1896, he married Abbie Lyon, also employed as a secretary for the SVM.

As his personal study of the gospels deepened, Sharman began to distance himself from the SVM claim for "the evangelization of the world in this generation," although it would take him a further lifetime of study before he could adequately prove to himself from scripture (articulated in "Son of Man and Kingdom of God: a critical study", his only post-doctoral work that was not entirely a book of unanswered questions) that Jesus' view of the kingdom of God was not apocalyptic. He and Abby left the employ of the YMCA and SVM and both returned to school to gain a doctorate.

Henry entered graduate studies in 1900 in the Department of New Testament History and Literature at the University of Chicago where he studied church history, modern and ancient languages, theology and ethics, and Old and New Testament studies, and was particularly influenced by his contact with Professor Ernest De Witt Burton; he was also a contemporary of Edgar J. Goodspeed and Shailer Mathews. He received his Ph.D. in 1906 and was retained by the Divinity School at the University of Chicago as a lecturer for several years. His dissertation, "The Teachings of Jesus About the Future", was published and widely reviewed in 1909. An advocate of the new "higher criticism", which encouraged the application of the critical methods of historians, scientists, and literary critics to the Bible, Henry found that his modern liberal views made him popular with students but often created difficulties with his more conservative colleagues and he felt increasingly uncomfortable in an academic setting. In 1909 he left the University of Chicago to return to Canada; in future he would hold university positions on an honorary basis only.

As a way of achieving financial independence that would enable him to pursue his religious vocation in his own way, with associates R. W. Gladstone and his brother-in-law, John N. Lyon, he helped found the Ontario Metal Culvert Company based in Guelph, Ontario, which became the Canada Ingot Iron Company in 1915. Henry Burton Sharman served as President from 1908 to 1920, and as a member of the Board of Directors until 1931; after only six years his goal of financial independence had been achieved.

During these early years of intense involvement in his business when he traveled back and forth across the country, Henry did not lose contact with students. He remained intimately involved with the Canadian student YMCAs and YWCAs as a leader of Bible study classes and, after its formation in 1920, with the Student Christian Movement of Canada, also holding a position as part-time lecturer at the University of Toronto.

After 1914 Sharman devoted several years to the writing, publishing his own parallel version of the New Testament Gospels in 1917, which he titled Records of the Life of Jesus. The synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are arranged side by side in sequential order to highlight their similarities and differences. The Gospel of John is included separately, as it has a different makeup and few direct parallels. He developed a unique seminar format for studying the Records, one which involved the Socratic method of using probing questions to engage the gospel materials.

In 1922 Sharman attended the meeting of the World's Student Christian Federation in Peking (Beijing), China, on behalf of the Student Christian Movement of Canada. Beginning in Canada in 1923, he led seminars, which became six-week-long intensive studies. Students from around the world would come to study the records of the life of Jesus, devoting the full morning of each day to the work. The emphasis was on the "Jesus of history" rather than the "Christ of faith." Sharman was something of an iconoclast, and challenged his students to seek to do God's will regardless of tradition, institutions or the potential cost of acting against doctrinal edicts. From 1925 to 1946 Sharman conducted a yearly 6-week wilderness Bible retreat at remote Camp Minnesing in Algonquin Park, where he trained religious leaders from around the globe. and his wife Mary Austin Endicott, and Muriel Duckworth, the tireless peace activist. He was also influential in the life and teaching of his famous Unitarian sister-in-law, Sophia Lyon Fahs. Cyrus Leroy Baldridge, an important illustrator and activist, but not a Christian, remembered of his time at the University of Chicago that "I slipped through, really working in only one course, 'The Life of Jesus,' wherein Professor Sharman made the analytical method so exciting that a few of us actually exercised our minds." One sociological study of Sharman's influence made much of a split in his students that occurred in the late 1940s and continued after his death, some focusing on transformation of the individual, and others the transformation of society.