Original title:  Title page of

Source: Link

HALLMAN, HENRY SCHLICHTER, teacher, Mennonite elder, printer, editor, and publisher; b. 5 Aug. 1859 in Wilmot Township, Upper Canada, third son and seventh of the 14 children of the Reverend Wendell Hallman and Nancy Schlichter; m. there 18 Jan. 1881 Maria Rosenberger (1862–1942), and they had six daughters and three sons; d. 12 Oct. 1932 in Toronto and was buried in Kitchener, Ont., in the First Mennonite Cemetery.

H. S. Hallman attended public school in New Dundee, Wilmot Township, until he was 13 or 14, and then remained at home to work on the family farm. In his late teens he found employment as a carpenter and cabinet-maker. He attended high school in Berlin (Kitchener) to further his education, obtained a teaching certificate, and taught in a public school in Bruce County for two and a half years. Hallman then returned to Berlin, where he learned the printing trade with local businessman Casper Hett. Hallman would continue in the business until the 1910s.

Hallman was converted (he publicly declared his wish to be a Christian and become a church member) at age 14 and joined the Brethren in Christ church, also known in Canada as Tunkers [see Johannes Wenger*], in which his father was a minister. In 1879 Hallman joined Solomon Eby’s Evangelical United Mennonites, which would take a new name, the Mennonite Brethren in Christ (MBC), four years later. In 1881 Hallman became a probationary minister for the Evangelical United Mennonites, and in 1885 he was ordained as an MBC minister. Afterwards he served congregations in Port Elgin and Elmwood. In 1888 he was made editor of the denomination’s monthly journal, the Gospel Banner. He would hold this post for over 20 years and be its publisher from 1899 to 1908. In 1898, on his own suggestion, he had assumed responsibility for paying off the church’s publishing debt of about $2,000, and by 1904 he had succeeded. During his tenure the Banner’s circulation increased and it became a weekly publication. Hallman started two new periodicals, Youth’s Banner (1897–1907) and the Missionary (1899–1907), as well as a calendar with quotations from the Scriptures (1899–1932). He also found time to edit the hymn-book Songs of glad tidings …, which first appeared in 1898 and went through at least 11 printings, and he published another hymn-book, the Church hymnal …, in 1907.

Hallman was a major leader in the Ontario Conference of the MBC for nearly three decades. In addition to his work as an editor and publisher, he served as secretary of the Ontario Conference’s annual meetings for 15 years, secretary-treasurer (1898–1910) and president (1910–17) of the Foreign Mission Board, and first president (1902–8) of the City Mission Workers Society, an organization of female missionaries who operated in urban centres. These women, known as ministering sisters, held regular evening and Sunday meetings, visited homes, and distributed literature in cities such as Toronto and Winnipeg. The ordained male president of the society provided general supervision, but the sisters, who adopted uniform dress for better recognition, were essentially self-governing. Hallman was also secretary of each quadrennial meeting of the General Conference, which brought together all of the regional conferences, between 1888 and 1904.

Hallman was consistently a strong proponent of holiness theology, which separated the MBC from other Mennonite denominations. This doctrine teaches that after salvation is obtained through repentance of sin, a second work of grace allows a Christian to achieve a level of holiness such that there is no further struggle with temptation. Hallman was drawn to the teachings of former Presbyterian clergyman Albert Benjamin Simpson, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA), and had published his articles in the Banner as early as 1893. Simpson embraced holiness theology; he also advocated divine healing and recognized speaking in tongues, which were features of the emerging Pentecostal movement. Hallman displayed a similar openness to this movement, which began in the first decade of the 20th century and had a divisive impact on various Christian churches, including the MBC’s Ontario Conference. He published articles in the Banner on the practice of speaking in tongues, and in February 1908 he was instructed to cease doing so by the MBC’s publishing committee, which had received a complaint from the Indiana and Ohio Conference. Hallman refused and threatened to resign unless he retained complete editorial freedom on the subject. The situation went unresolved until October, when, at the MBC’s General Conference in Brown City, Mich., delegates decided to replace him as editor of the Banner, effective 2 Jan. 1909.

Although Hallman would be acknowledged as an MBC minister until his death, his interest in Simpson’s teachings continued, particularly on the subject of divine healing. In May 1917 Hallman accepted the pastorate of a CMA congregation in Columbus, Ohio. In November 1919 he became manager of the Christian Alliance Publishing Company in New York City, and he served in that capacity until December 1921. During his time in the city he was elected to the board of managers for the CMA denomination.

Back in Ontario by early 1922, Hallman began serving as pastor of the CMA’s Gospel Tabernacle in Brantford, to which he commuted from his Kitchener home so that he could spend each night with his ailing wife. He occasionally wrote articles for the Banner but does not appear to have held any formal positions in the MBC’s Ontario Conference. In October 1927 he became the head of an east-end Toronto mission of the CMA. He held this position until he died of a stroke, after having suffered from pneumonia, on 12 Oct. 1932.

H. S. Hallman provided crucial leadership to the Mennonite Brethren in Christ denomination in its formative decades. Through his editorial work and writing, he helped to integrate holiness theology with more traditional Mennonite beliefs in pacifism and simplicity in lifestyle. His fascination with Pentecostalism was a factor in the division in the MBC’s Ontario Conference in 1908. However, the warm relationship between the CMA and the MBC, which Hallman had worked hard to develop, would be maintained well into the 20th century.

Samuel J. Steiner

In addition to working as an editor and publisher, Henry Schlichter Hallman wrote many editorials for the Gospel Banner (Pandora, Ohio), as well as several articles, including “Divine healing and the care of the body,” Gospel Banner, 27 April 1922: 3–5, and “The revival campaign in Toronto: services marked by simplicity,” Alliance Weekly (New York), 7 May 1921: 122. Numerous editions of the Gospel Banner are held at the Milton Good Library, Conrad Grebel Univ. College (Waterloo, Ont.), as is the annual Conference Journal of the Ontario Conference of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ (n.p.). Digitized issues of the Alliance Weekly can be examined at Christian and Missionary Alliance, “Archival resources”: cmalliance.org/archives/sign-in.jsp (consulted 25 Jan. 2018). Hallman also collected and compiled the History of the Hallman family in Canada (Berlin [Kitchener], Ont., n.d.; available at www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.97943). A photograph of Hallman and his family is held by the Missionary Church Hist. Trust (Kitchener), Photograph coll., 2007-0356.

LAC, R233-34-0, Ont., dist. Waterloo South (31), subdist. Wilmot (A), div. 1: 20; R233-35-2, Ont., dist. Waterloo South (161), subdist. Wilmot (A), div. 3: 41; R233-177-0, Ont., dist. Waterloo North (130), subdist. Berlin (26): 8. Hist. Soc. of the Bible Fellowship Church, “Minutes of conference”: bfchistory.org/category/conference/minutes-of-conference (consulted 13 March 2024). E. E. Eby, A biographical history of Waterloo Township and other townships of the county … (2v., Berlin [Kitchener], 1895–96), 1. History of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church, ed. J. A. Huffman (New Carlisle, Ohio, 1920). Eileen Lageer, Common bonds: the story of the Evangelical Missionary Church of Canada (Calgary, 2002). “[Obituary],” Alliance Weekly, 5 Nov. 1932: 721. S. J. Steiner, In search of promised lands: a religious history of Mennonites in Ontario (Harrisonburg, Va, and Kitchener, 2015). E. R. Storms, History of the United Missionary Church (Elkhart, Ind., 1958). Waterloo Region Generations, “Rev. Henry S. Hallman”: generations.regionofwaterloo.ca/searchform.php (consulted 25 Jan. 2018). J. C. Wenger and L. L. Keefer Jr, “Holiness movement,” in Global Anabaptist Mennonite encyclopedia online: gameo.org/index.php?title=Holiness_Movement&oldid=88082 (consulted 25 Jan. 2018).

Cite This Article

Samuel J. Steiner, “HALLMAN, HENRY SCHLICHTER,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 16, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed February 12, 2025, https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/hallman_henry_schlichter_16E.html.

The citation above shows the format for footnotes and endnotes according to the Chicago manual of style (16th edition). Information to be used in other citation formats:


Permalink:   https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/hallman_henry_schlichter_16E.html
Author of Article:   Samuel J. Steiner
Title of Article:   HALLMAN, HENRY SCHLICHTER
Publication Name:   Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 16
Publisher:   University of Toronto/Université Laval
Year of publication:   2025
Year of revision:   2025
Access Date:   February 12, 2025