Richard Roberts

Richard Roberts (31 May 1874 – 10 April 1945) was a minister of the Calvinist Methodist Church in Wales, the Presbyterian Church in England, and the United Church of Canada. He rose to prominence in the United Kingdom during the First World War when he openly declared his belief in pacifism during the opening days of World War I. He moved to United States, and thence to Canada, becoming a minister in the newly formed United Church, and eventually became the 6th Moderator of the United Church, as well as a leading theologian of the time.

Early life Richard Roberts was born in 1874 in Blaenau Ffestiniog in northern Wales, the son of a minister in the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Church who was a former slate quarry worker. While attending high school at Liverpool Institute, young Richard was not drawn to religious life at first, and instead went on to study science at University College of Wales in Aberystwyth. Although he completed a degree in science, his poor eyesight hindered his ability to do dissections, and he switched to theological studies at Bala-Bangor Theological Seminary in 1894, earning his Bachelor of Divinity two years later.

Roberts immediately met with some like-minded people, including Henry Hodgkin, William E. Orchard, Edwyn Bevan, George Bell (later Bishop of Chichester) and William Temple (later Archbishop of York and Archbishop of Canterbury). The group quickly started to published a series of Papers for Wartime. In December 1914, with the help of Quaker Lucy Gardner, Roberts and a small group conceived the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). Increased friction with his congregation over his views led to his resignation in July 1915, and he became editor of a monthly journal, The Venturer.

In 1921, Roberts moved to Montreal to become the minister of the American Presbyterian Church. The church's Board of Publication dug their heels in and refused to negotiate, proposing to publish the new hymnary without any Oxford hymns. The chair of the Board of Publication was a member of Roberts' congregation, and Roberts sat down with him to convince him to negotiate with Oxford. Roberts became part of the negotiating team that eventually settled on a compromise copyright solution.

In the early 1930s, Roberts drafted the United Church of Canada's endorsement of the World Disarmament Conference.

At the end of his term, Roberts was not convinced that a corner had been turned, and warned that any church that cared less about its purpose than its organization was "sick unto death ... [if that church] forgets or becomes indifferent to its worship, to the preaching of the Word, to it Sacraments and its devotional life, to its missionary calling, the writing is on the wall."

In his closing address to the General Council, Roberts also warned that another war, even more world-spanning that the Great War, was inevitable, and urged the church to be the first to step forward and declare that it would "lend no countenance whatever to the furtherance of any future wars ... gravely fear for the future of the church if it suffers this enormity to overtake the world without raising its voice in forthright repudiation of it before it happened."

Retirement and death In 1938, Roberts stepped down as minister of Sherbourne United, but continued to travel, explore theology and evangelize. In 1939, as war enveloped the world again, Roberts was one of 75 people to sign the public document "Witness Against War." Although the attorney general of Ontario threatened prosecution, in the end, the United Church offered a statement that sought to find a compromise between the pacifist signatories and those within the church that supported the war, a statement Roberts called "feeble and cowardly."

Personal life Roberts and his wife Anne raised three daughters.