Edmund Hamer Broadbent

Who was Edmund Hamer Broadbent?

Edmund Hamer Broadbent was a Christian missionary and author. John Bjorlie wrote that he was a "tidy-looking English gentleman with a bookish side who discovered ways of slipping into and out of countries that others just assumed were 'closed doors.' He was not a big man, and his pleasant, easygoing manner would not have conjured in your mind the picture of the fearless missionary." Born in Lancashire, England, Broadbent operated under the auspices of the Plymouth Brethren movement.

His missionary work from 1900 into the 1920s took him to Austria, Belgium, Egypt, Germany, Poland, Russia, Turkey, the Baltic states, Egypt, North and South America, and Uzbekistan. He spoke fluently French and German and could speak some Russian.

His book, The Pilgrim Church, first published in 1931, is still in print. The Pilgrim Church is an alternative history of the church, unrecorded by secular history. It covers the history of many small churches throughout the ages that have attempted to follow the New Testament church pattern, the success of those that followed the pattern laid out by the apostles and the consequences to the churches that fell away from the pattern.