This Week in Texas Methodist History October 24 Southwest Texas Conference Hosts Essentialist Preacher, Harold Paul Sloan, October 22-26, 1941 As formerly MEC and MECS members learned about each other in the aftermath of the 1939 merger, it became quite popular for formerly MECS churches in Texas to invite conference preachers who had formerly been in the MEC. In October 1941 the Southwest Texas Conference, meeting at Travis Park Church in San Antonio, invited Harold Paul Sloan (1881-1961) to be the conference preacher. Sloan was well known to many of the preachers because of his editorship of the most influential regional edition of the Advocate, the New York Christian Advocate. Sloan was also one of the most influential voices in Methodism fighting against Modernism in the Fundamentalist-Modernist debates. While a member of the New Jersey Conference, he organized the League of Faith and Life the main anti-modernist force in the MEC. Sloan served as the League President and publicist. At least 10 years earlier in 1915, Sloan had led a movement to require the 1916 General Conference to remove books with modernist tendencies from the Course of Study reading list. His failure at the 1916 General Conference only heightened his resolve, and drove him further into the world of church politics. He was elected a delegate to the 1920 General Conference and also to subsequent ones. In the 1920s the League turned its attention from the Course of Study books to seminary professors and campaigned for a conservative orthodoxy to be required in Methodist seminaries. From its headquarters in Philadelphia, Sloan published a magazine eventually called Essentialist. The pages of that magazine were filled with criticism of liberal bishops such as Francis McConnell, Edwin Hughes, and Edgar Blake. Although Sloan was MEC, several MECS bishops including Horace DuBose, Warren Candler, and Collins Denny, and some followers dreamed of a new denomination uniting norther and southern conservative Methodists. Sloan preached five times at Travis Park and remained a major force in Methodism. He is buried in New Jersey.