James Harington Evans

James Harington Evans (1785-1849) was the minister at John Street Chapel in London, 1818-1848. He was educated for the Anglican ministry, but left the established church in 1815 and began preaching in London in a Swiss church. He moved to the new chapel in John Street in 1818, but for many years refused to consider himself a part of any denomination. The John Street chapel was built by Henry Drummond, MP, and was about a fifteen-minute walk to the northeast just past Coram Fields near Grays Inn Road. Evans had espoused Sabellian beliefs on the Godhead in 1819 in his Dialogues on Important Subjects, a controversial publication that led many Baptists to denounce him as holding heretical views of the person of Christ. By 1823 he had renounced his earlier position and become a full-fledged Trinitarian and steadily moved himself and his congregation among the Particular Baptists. Evans became a strong supporter of the BMS, publishing A Sermon on Behalf of the B.M.S. in 1837.