James Beaven

James Beaven was an Anglican clergyman, theologian, classical scholar, and educator born in Wiltshire in 1801. After studying at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and serving English parishes, he moved to Toronto in 1843 as professor of divinity at King’s College. A Calm Exposure of the Unfairness of the “General Reply to All Objections” appeared in London in 1840 as part of a larger ecclesiastical controversy involving Isaac Taylor’s Ancient Christianity. He later taught and ministered. His publications ranged from sermons and catechisms to studies of Cicero, Irenaeus, and natural theology. Recreations of a Long Vacation described an 1845 tour of Upper Canada with Bishop John Strachan. For readers of Canadian intellectual history, Beaven’s career connects Oxford church debates with the growth of religious education and Anglican institutions in nineteenth-century Toronto.