An ordinary parish vicar rarely opens the church doors to a revival that reshapes the map of world Christianity. That is what Alexander Boddy did in Sunderland, in the north of England, and the gesture still echoes among Pentecostals and charismatics scattered around the world today.
Born in Manchester, England, in 1854, the son of an Anglican pastor, Boddy worked for a few years as a lawyer before sensing the call to ministry. A spiritual experience at the Keswick Convention in 1876 convinced him to seek ordination in the Church of England.
In 1884 he became vicar of All Saints’ Church in Monkwearmouth, Sunderland, where he would remain for nearly forty years. In 1891 he married Mary Pollock, who would become his main partner in prayer and in the healing ministry.
In 1904 he traveled to Wales to follow closely the revival led by Evan Roberts. Convinced that God was working in a similar way elsewhere, he visited Norway in 1907 and witnessed the Pentecostal ministry of the Norwegian T. B. Barratt.
Back in Sunderland, he invited Barratt for a series of meetings in September 1907. The services stretched deep into the night, with reports of healing and of what those present described as baptism in the Holy Spirit accompanied by tongues.
From 1908 onward, Boddy presided over annual Whitsuntide conventions at his church, which brought together leaders from different traditions until 1914. During the same period he founded Confidence magazine and helped Cecil Polhill create the Pentecostal Missionary Union.
Boddy insisted that the Holy Spirit exists to exalt Christ, not to promote phenomena, and preached unity among denominations without demanding uniformity. Even so, his support for the British war effort in the First World War and his fidelity to infant baptism distanced him from younger Pentecostal leaders. The Sunderland revival itself attracted people of quite varied motivations and behaviors, which led Boddy to restrict admission to the conventions by invitation and to require submission to the chairman’s decisions, a policy some within the movement saw as an improper check on the moving of the Spirit.
He left Sunderland in 1922, because of Mary’s health, and served a small parish in Pittington, near Durham, until his death in 1930. Pentecostal historian Donald Gee observed that his fidelity to the Anglican Church may have limited his role as a leader of the movement, but his gesture of opening a traditional church to revival continues to inspire the pursuit of unity among different traditions.
