Evangelist. Born in Dundee, the younger brother of another evangelist, Robert Haldane (1764 - 1842). Haldane was educated in Dundee and Edinburgh, before joining the East India Company in 1785. Having left the established Church of Scotland when the General Assembly of 1796 refused to promote aggressive evangelisation, he toured Scotland preaching in 1797. With his brother founded The Society for Propagating the Gospel at Home, which gave the impetus for the development of the Congregational Churches. His brother, who had inherited the family wealth, built a church or Tabernacle, for Haldane in Edinburgh in 1801, where he preached prodigiously until his death.
Haldane married twice in Edinburgh, in 1793 and, his first wife having died, again in 1822.