This Week in Texas Methodist History   January 10

 

Texas Methodists Mourn Former Pastor and Bishop, H. M. DuBose,  January 15, 1941

 

 

A beloved former member of the Texas and East Texas Conferences who was elected Bishop,  Horace Millen DuBose, died in Nashville on January 15, 1941.   He had served churches in Galveston, Houston, Huntsville, and Tyler as well as three other conferences.  He had also served as an editor of church publications in both San Francisco and Nashville.

 

DuBose was born near Mobile, Alabama, in 1858.  His father was local Methodist preacher.  DuBose received a high school education, but never earned a college degree.

 

He jointed the Mississippi Conference in 1877 at age 19.   His last appointment in Mississippi was the Fayette Circuit, and was appointed to St. James in Galveston---a remarkable ascent for such a young man.  He served St. James, Huntsville, Shearn in Houston (today’s First Methodist), and Marvin Methodist in Tyler. 

 

In 1890 he transferred to Los Angeles and ministered Trinity Methodist, at the time the largest Methodist church west of the Rocky Mountains.  After two years there he moved to San Francisco to assume the editorship of the Pacific Methodist Advocate.  After four years in that position he returned to Marvin in Tyler.  The next appointment was back to the Mississippi Conference and First Methodist Jackson.  

 

He was named Secretary of the Epworth League and moved to Nashville.   He had taken an interest in youth work, and while at Shearn in 1886 had organized a youth Chautauqua in San Marcos.  He later claimed that the event was the origin of the Epworth League.  (He was overstating his importance.  The Epworth League actually began in the MEC and was soon adopted by the MECS.  One of his duties in that role was editing the Epworth Era which he did for 12 years.  He asked to return to the pulpit and was assigned to Augusta, Georgia, but after two years returned to Nashville as Book Editor.  It was from that office that he was elected bishop in 1918.  

 

It was common in his era for editors to also become authors.  After all, they had access to publishing and book distribution systems.  Dubose wrote, among others, The Gang of Six, Margaret, The Life of Dr. Barbee, and The Symbol of Methodism.

 

 

Dubose was an anchor of the conservative wing of Methodist bishops,  Time magazine quoted him  in his obituary, "If the Angel Gabriel should come down and tell me that he had changed his mind on prohibition  and wanted it resubmitted, I would not follow him.”

 

The unsigned obituary in the Southwestern Christian Advocate, probably written by his former colleague, retired Bishop John M. Moore, commented, “His theology was exceedingly traditional and conservative.  His understanding and understanding of the Bible rested upon scholars that were in no sense modern.”    Quite a constrast---DuBose never had any college and Moore had an Ivy League Ph.D. and theological study in Germany.   That both could be elected bishops of the MECS says something about the different paths to the episcopacy.