By Phillip Stone ’94, college archivist
Throughout the college’s history, numerous Wofford graduates have pursued ordination in the Methodist Church. Many of them served local churches in South Carolina and elsewhere, influencing countless families as they ministered in communities. Several 20th-century Wofford graduates went on to have a profound influence on the life of the church well beyond South Carolina.
Dr. Albert C. Outler was perhaps the foremost Methodist theologian of the 20th century. A Georgia native and son of a Methodist minister, he graduated from Wofford in 1928. After attending seminary at Emory University, he served churches in South Georgia before pursuing a Ph.D. in religion at Yale University. He taught at Duke, then Yale, and finally, in 1951, took a position at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. His research and teaching focused on John Wesley, and he became one of the world’s leading authorities on Wesley’s life and theology.
Before Outler, scholars did not have much of an appreciation for Wesley as a theological innovator, but Outler changed that. He had a profound impact on the way Methodists and others view Wesley, and was largely responsible for coming up with the term “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” to describe the basis of Wesley’s theology — the reliance on scripture, reason, church tradition and personal experience in reaching theological conclusions. He was a leader in bringing Methodism into the greater ecumenical movement and was an observer at the Second Vatican Council. He preached the sermon at the uniting conference of the United Methodist Church in 1968. An endowed chair in religion at Wofford honors Outler’s memory.
While Outler was one of the church’s leading theologians, Edwin D. Mouzon was one of its organizational leaders. Mouzon, a member of Wofford’s Class of 1889, grew up in Spartanburg at Central Methodist Church. Following graduation, he joined the South Carolina Conference but immediately transferred to Texas. He spent the next 20 years serving churches there, eventually leaving the pulpit to start a theology department at Southwestern University. It was from that position that in 1910, the 41-year old Mouzon was elected a Methodist bishop. He championed the creation of Southern Methodist University and its seminary, the institution where fellow Terrier Albert Outler made many of his contributions to Methodism. Mouzon served as a bishop for 27 years and was the senior bishop at his death. During his tenure, he was a leader in the efforts to reunify the Northern and Southern branches of Methodism, serving as the chair of the unsuccessful unification commission in the 1910s. After that attempt failed, he continued to work for church union for the rest of his life, though he died two years before reunification in 1939. He was last in Spartanburg just a month before his death, when he came to preach at Central’s centennial celebration.
Wofford continued to contribute leaders to the Methodist Church, and a generation of clergy helped steer South Carolina Methodism through turbulent times. One of those, the Rev. Eben Taylor, was a 1948 Phi Beta Kappa graduate. After his seminary studies at Duke, he served churches in South Carolina for over 40 years. Taylor was elected to represent South Carolina at the General Conference on several occasions and was at the uniting General Conference in 1968 to hear Albert Outler’s unification sermon. Taylor was an acknowledged leader in social justice causes, and his papers, which are in the Wofford archives, reflect his interest in helping make the Methodist Church a more inclusive denomination. Taylor inspired generations of clergy who came after him, and more than a few Wofford alumni have followed in his path to lead Methodists not just in South Carolina, but throughout the denomination.
A few Wofford alumni joined the Rev. Dr. Ron Robinson in the spring for the “Our Methodist Roots-Symposium on Race and Justice.” Watch a recording of the event.