This Week in Texas Methodist History March 1

South Central Jurisdictional WSCS Meets in Dallas,  March 1943

The South Central Jurisdiction was approaching the 4^th anniversary of its creation in early 1943.  The various conferences from Nebraska to Texas were learning to live together in a new relationship.  The Woman’s Society of Christian Service (WSCS) and Wesleyan Service Guild (WSG) created jurisdictional organizational according to the geographic areas.  Texas was placed in the South Central Jurisdiction along with Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. 

Dallas had the honor of hosting the 1943 jurisdictional meeting of the WSCS.   Sessions were held in First Methodist.  Most of the speakers were the usual persons one would expect.  The host pastor, Angie Smith, and Marshall Steel of Highland Park MC provided welcoming addresses.   The most prominent newspaper columnist of the city was Lynn Landrum, but he was serving in the Army so Mrs. Landrum (Anna Belle) spoke to the assembled women.

Another one of the speakers was Dana Dawson pastor of Shreveport First Methodist from 1934 to 1948 when he was elected bishop and oversaw the Kansas-Nebraska Episcopal Area.

Dawson’s subject was a report from his visitation of Japanese relocation camps.  The Methodist Church created a committee to study the camps, and Dawson was a member of that committee. 

Dawson began his talk by acknowledging that at least two-thirds of the Japanese forced to live in the camps were American citizens.  He also acknowledged that Japanese aliens determined to pose a threat were in internment camps rather than the relocation camps.    

            He then criticized the comparison of Japanese relocation camps to Hitler’s concentration camps and came down squarely on the side of the decision to establish the relocation camps.   He said, “I think the government is to be congratulated for doing a necessary piece of work quickly, efficiently, and humanely.  . .It has been conducted as to be a good illustration of Christian ethics in government affairs.  I salute the Stars and Stripes and am proud to be an American citizen.”

The passage of time has changed the predominant view of the necessity of the relocation camps.  In 1988 the U. S. Congress voted reparations to the Japanese Americans who had been relocated.

This Week in Texas Methodist History February 23

Texas Methodists Kick Off Aldersgate Bicentennial Celebration, February 1938

As the bicentennial of John Wesley’s Aldersgate experience approached, Texas Methodists launched a campaign to celebrate this milestone of Methodist history.  Although the actual date was May 24, the celebrate began during the last week of February, 1938. 

First Methodist Fort Worth hosted the first celebration on February 23.  First Methodist Houston followed on February 24, and Travis Park San Antonio on February 25.   The following week El Paso, Amarillo, Oklahoma City, and Dallas were the locations. 

Bishop A. Frank Smith was Director of the Aldersgate Committee and appeared at several of the events.  He was joined by other bishops, including Boaz, Dobbs, and Hay of the MECS and Bishops Ralph Cushman and Lester Smith of the MEC.    These bishops would meet again in Kansas City in 1939 as part of the Uniting Conference that created the Methodist Church. 

The schedule at each city followed was the same:  9:30  program, 2:00 discussion, and 7:30 a worship rally.  Promotional materials state clearly that his was not a fundraising program.   Instead they were designed to deepen the spiritual life of participants. 

Naturally Methodist colleges were also involved in the bicentennial observance.  McMurry College in Abilene held a two day meeting on March 2 and 3 with Professor J. T. Carlyon of the School of Theology at SMU as the speaker.  At Southwestern University in Georgetown, the speaker was Dr, Charles T. Thrift, Jr.   His topic was “A brand plucked from the burning.”  Methodists will recognize the phrase as the way John Wesley referred to himself after being rescued from a house fire in childhood.   Following Dr. Thift at Southwestern was Dr. Paul Quillian, pastor of First Methodist Church in Houston who came to Georgetown for two days of programs. A total of 85 Aldersgate programs were held at Methodist schools.

The programs provided a boost to the study of Methodist history.  Francis McConnell’s biography of Wesley was published the next year (1939).  Umphrey Lee’s John Wesley and Modern Religion was available for the bicentennial, having been published in 1936, 

This Week in Texas Methodist History February 16

President Hyer Leaves Presidency of SMU; Returns to Lab and Classroom, February 1920

Few people have had as great an influence in Texas higher education than Robert Stewart Hyer (1860-1929).  The Georgia-born physicist finished his formal education at Emory and moved to Georgetown to teach physics at Southwestern University.   In addition to his teaching duties, he also conducted experiments in x-rays and wireless telegraphy.  In 1894 he sent a wireless message from Southwestern to the County Jail, one mile away.  He built his own x-ray machine. 

He was also an active lay man at First Methodist Church in Georgetown.  In 1898 he reluctantly accepted the presidency of Southwestern and put his impressive stamp on the institution.  He oversaw the completion of the Administration building and moved his physics lab into it.  He also designed a dormitory, Mood Hall.  Both buildings are still in use.  Both my grandfather and I lived in Mood Hall.  Students no longer live there.

In the first decade of the 20^th century Hyer attempted to move Southwestern to the much larger city of Dallas in what is known as the “removal controversy.”  He lost that battle, and in 1911 moved to Dallas to create a new university.  For the next four years Hyer raised money, supervised construction, recruited faculty and students to create Southern Methodist University.   He also picked out the colors (Red and Blue for Harvard and Yale) and chose the name “Mustangs” for the athletic teams.  He even selected the motto  Veritas liberabit vos  

When he arrived in Dallas in May 1911, the future site was nothing but farmland far from the city center, but by 1915 he was ready to welcome students.  

SMU was successful in attracting students from the start, but financial difficulties also appeared   One hundred years ago this week, the trustees asked for Hyer’s resignation.  They wanted someone who was a better fundraiser and named Hiram A. Boaz (1866-1962) as the second president.  Boaz had been president of Polytechnic in Fort Worth (today’s Texas Wesleyan University) and was an ordained Methodist minister.  He served as SMU president only briefly because in 1922 he was elected bishop.

Hyer’s removal was not accompanied with bitterness.  He returned to the classroom and taught both physics and Bible until his death in 1929.  In 1925, a building, the Hyer Hall of Physics, was named in his honor. 

Hyer was active in denominational affairs.  He was a delegate to several General Conferences and a member of the committee that discussed the merger of the MEC and MECS. 

This Week in Texas Methodist History February 9

Cockrell Hill Dedicates New Sanctuary, February 14, 1943

Cockrell Hill began as a stage stop on the route from Dallas to Fort Belknap but today it is an incorporated city completely surrounded by the city of Dallas. 

In 1911 a developer, Frank Jester, laid out lots and encouraged economic activity in the area.  In 1912 14 residents met in the front yard of Mr. and Mrs. R. T. Koch for the purpose of founding a Sunday School.  They soon moved closer to the center of town and the residence of  Mr, and Mrs. Henslee.  The Sunday School grew all summer so that by the end of summer, they decided they needed a building. 

On Labor Day, 1912, a working picnic was held.  Men constructed a 40 foot by 30 foot wooden building-almost completing the structure in one day.  Women served food on the construction site. 

The Methodists bought the wooden building and used it until 1940.  Then the trustees decided they needed a more substantial building so they hired an architect and built a modern building. 

The building was dedicated on February 14, 1943 by Bishop Ivan Lee Holt.  In Methodist practice a building is not dedicated until is free of debt. 

One of their neighboring churches, Tyler Street, donated 100 hymnals to the new church.  J. P. Hensley was pastor and F. A. Buddin was District Superintendent. 

The church then held another dedication on the next Sunday, February 21.  The pulpit Bible, hymnals, and organ were all dedicated in another dedicatory service. 

The members of the church immediately began raising funds for an educational building.  Their strategy was a “Dollar A Week Club.”   They secured pledges from fifty families to donate $1.00 per week until they had enough to begin construction. 

Cockrell Hill continues its service to the community with services in both Spanish and English.  The city was incorporated in 1937.  If it had not incorporated, it certainly would be part of the city of Dallas today. 

This Week in Texas Methodist History  February 2

Dallas First Methodist Welcomes Radical Christian Socialist, February 1946

The city of Dallas achieved a reputation as one of the most right wing cities in America in the aftermath of World War II.  Local politicians and the Dallas Morning News conflated racial justice with communism and railed against both.

It is therefore; just a little surprising that in February, 1946, First Methodist Dallas hosted one of the most prominent radical Christian Socialists of the era.  The speaker was Sherwood Eddy (1871-1963).  Eddy was born into a wealthy family in Leavenworth, Kansas, and enjoyed fine educational opportunities at Phillips Academy and Yale University.  He had a religious experience in 1889 and although he trained as an engineer, went to Union Theological Seminary.  This led him not to ordination, but to work in the Student Volunteer Movement and the YMCA.  His father’s death in 1894 left him independently wealthy.  He then went to Princeton Seminary, graduating in 1896.  That same year he went to India as a lay missionary with the YMCA’s Student Volunteer Movement.  He mastered the Tamil language and gained the confidence of  Tamil leaders in the anti-colonial movement.  He was eventually appointed to responsibilities beyond India and traveled to China, Japan, the Philippines, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Egypt, Palestine, and czarist Russia. 

He enthusiastically embraced the Russian Revolution and made 15 trips to the Soviet Union.  Those trips resulted in his 1934 book, Russia Today:  What Can We Learn from it?

In 1931 he ended his work with the YMCA and became a member of the Fellowship of Christian Socialists, a group that believed individualist capitalism to be incompatible with the Gospel of Christ.   In 1936 he put his socialistic ideas into practice with agricultural co-ops in Mississippi which were also supported by Eddy’s friend, Reinhold Niebuhr. 

The cooperatives included agricultural operations, a store, credit union, pasteurization plant, educational program, a library, and religious service---all conducted on an interracial basis.   The cooperatives lasted until 1956. 

A man such as Eddy, who had been an apologist for the Soviet show trials and a “fellow traveler” if ever there was one would be an unlikely choice to draw a crowd in Dallas, but that is what happened. 

The crowd at Dallas First Methodist was estimated at 2200 on a Thursday night when he spoke on the topic, “What Christ Means to Me.” 

The appearance was the kickoff for the Dallas District’s implementation of the denominational Crusade For Christ.   The denomination had set a goal of 1,000,000 souls saved, and the Dallas District was using Eddy’s appearance to push the home visitation campaign scheduled for March 4.

Members of the Dallas District Crusade Committee included, Harold F. Boss, Jack V. Folsom, Dave Lacy, Marvin Malone, Roy Farrow, Robert A. Bell, W. J. Evans, and J. B. Oney. 

Just three years later, in 1949, Eddy reduced his travel schedule by moving to Jacksonville, Illinois and joining the faculty of Illinois College and MacMurray College.   He died in Jacksonville on Nov. 4, 1963.