William T. Gunn

William Thomas Gunn (15 January 1867 – 30 September 1930) was a Christian minister of the Congregational Union of Canada who urged the amalgamation of Christian denominations across Canada and subsequently became the third Moderator of the newly formed United Church of Canada. Much of Gunn's work as Moderator dealt with various points of friction between the founding factions. That work exacerbated his chronically poor health, and he died less than two weeks after the end of his term.

Early life and education William T. Gunn was born in Keene, Ontario in 1867. During his formative years, Gunn attended services at both the local Presbyterian and Methodist churches, but eventually became a member of the Congregational church. and The Congregationalist and Christian World., and became a "prodigious writer." Gunn also became the treasurer of the Congregational church's Foreign Missionary Society. As a result of this and his writing, Gunn became a well-known figure in the Canadian Congregational church.

In 1903, Gunn left pastoral ministry after being commissioned by the Congregational church to visit all the congregations of the Union to raise funds for the Congregational Jubilee Fund.

Gunn immediately became an "activist for union", Gunn's pamphlet went on to say that a union was not to be feared, pointing out that all three denominations has undergone many previous unions — for example, the Presbyterian church in Canada was the result of nine different unions, and the Methodist Church the result of eight different unions. "one great National Church of all that love God, working together to make our Dominion His Dominion from sea to sea and all the kingdoms of this world the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ." Another significant document was Gunn's "family tree" diagram of the three denomninations that showed their genealogical roots going back to 1817. Don Schweizer later wrote "The visual power of the diagram made it easy ... to understand The United Church as the natural destination of Canadian church history."

By 1917, Gunn had become a member of the Congegational Committee on Co-operation of the Congregational Union, and worked with representatives of the Presbyterian and Methodist churches to create a suggested plan for amalgamation of the three denominations.

By 1924, the three denominations had worked out a framework for a single denomination, which would require an act of Parliament. Gunn went to Ottawa representing the Toronto District Association of Congregational Churches in support of the petition to enact the United Church of Canada Act, and was recognized in the Visitor's Gallery on 9 May 1924 by House of Commons Speaker Rodolphe Lemieux.

Union Gunn, as the most well-known member of the Congregational faction, became a member of the First General Council of the new United Church of Canada in April 1925, at which George C. Pidgeon, leader of the Presbyterian faction, was chosen as the first Moderator. On June 10, 1925, the United Church of Canada was formally inaugurated, and Gunn resigned his posts within the Congregational church to become part of the new administration. He quickly organized the Committee on Literature, Publicity and Missionary Education to oversee publication of series of books, pamphlets, articles and photographs covering the missionary work of The United Church, and served as secretary of the committee until his death.

Moderator The first Moderator, George C. Pigeon, had led the Presbyterian denomatinon entering the United Church, and the second had been James Endicott of the Methodists. At the third General Council of the United Church in 1928, it made sense to choose the most well-known Congregationalist, William T. Gunn, as the third Moderator.

As Moderator, Gunn travelled to the United Kingdom to speak about the new United Church. He also spent a lot of time working on issues arising from the different ways that the three denominations had done things before amalgamation. The committee working on a new hymn book had to keep a fine balance of hymns from each denomination. When it seemed that too many old favourites were going to be discarded in favour of more modern hymns, Gunn wrote to the chair of the hymn book committee, Alexander MacMillan, with the words "remember the common people." As a result, some hymns marked to be discarded were gathered into a section titled "Gospel Call." Church historian Don Schweitzer noted that this section of hymns "came to be popularly regarded as one of [the new hymn book's] treasures." In the end, Gunn, along with his predecessors Pidgeon and Endicott, put forward a joint statement appealing for patience and mutual trust, giving assurances that the church was "working toward a new system which will be better than either of those which it superseded."

Gunn then stepped down as Moderator, and was succeeded by Edmund H. Oliver.

Death Only ten days after Gunn stepped down as Moderator, he suffered a heart attack, followed a few days later by a second attack, which proved fatal.

Legacy For a number of years in the early twentieth century, one of Gunn's aphorisms regularly appeared as filler in Christian newspapers: "The measure of a man's difficulties is the measure of God's trust in him." Reginald Maxwell and Sophia Lyon Fahs quoted Gunn, when asked the question "Do we really enjoy the new mixed fellowship [of the United Church]?" as replying "Beyond all expectations." In 1959, a set of nine stained glass windows was created for the narthex of Bloor Street United Church that illustrated Canadians who had been important in the establishment of the United Church in Canada and its origins in the Congregationalist, Methodist and Presbyterian congregations. One of the windows was dedicated to William T. Gunn.