Joseph Kinghorn

Joseph Kinghorn (1766-1832) was baptized at seventeen by his father, David Kinghorn (a Baptist minister in Bishop Burton, Yorkshire). Shortly thereafter Joseph entered Bristol Academy. After a short stint at Fairford in Gloucestershire, he began his ministry at the Baptist meeting at St. Mary’s, Norwich, in 1789 and remained there until his death in 1832. He was involved in the local campaign to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts in 1790, and was troubled over England’s involvement in the war with France. Like numerous other Baptist ministers of his day, Kinghorn, an excellent scholar, also kept a school to train young men for the ministry. During his years in Norwich, Kinghorn was a member of the Speculative Society, a group of intellectuals (dominated by local Unitarians) devoted to the free inquiry of ideas. Though not a High Calvinist, Kinghorn was, however, a believer in closed communion, becoming embroiled in a controversy with Robert Hall in 1816 over the practice of open communion. Though not a prolific writer, Kinghorn still contributed a number of articles to the Baptist Magazine, the Eclectic Review, and the Evangelical Magazine. He was also a firm supporter of the BMS, speaking and traveling widely on its behalf. He played an active role in the effort to keep the Serampore Mission unharmed during the parliamentary debate in 1813 over the renewal of the East India Company’s charter. See M. H. Wilkin, Joseph Kinghorn of Norwich: A Memoir (Norwich: Fletcher and Alexander; London: Arthur Hall, 1855); Charles B. Jewson, “St. Mary’s, Norwich,” Baptist Quarterly 10 (1940-1941), 340-346; Dean Olive, “Joseph Kinghorn (1766-1832),” in The British Particular Baptists, ed. Michael A. G. Haykin, 5 vols. (Springfield, MO: Particular Baptist Press, 1998-2019), 3: 81-111.