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William Taylor (bishop)
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Missionary Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church
Methodist Episcopal Church
The Methodist Episcopal Church, sometimes referred to as the M.E. Church, was a development of the first expression of Methodism in the United States. It officially began at the Baltimore Christmas Conference in 1784, with Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke as the first bishops. Through a series of...
, elected in 1884. Taylor University
Taylor University
Taylor University is a private, interdenominational, evangelical Christian college located in Upland, Indiana. Founded in 1846, it is one of the oldest evangelical Christian colleges in America....
, a Christian college in Indiana, carries his name.
Ancestry and birth
Taylor was born 2 May 1821 in Rockbridge County—home to Sam HoustonSam Houston
Samuel Houston, known as Sam Houston , was a 19th-century American statesman, politician, and soldier. He was born in Timber Ridge in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, of Scots-Irish descent. Houston became a key figure in the history of Texas and was elected as the first and third President of...
(b.1796), Robert E. Lee
Robert E. Lee
Robert Edward Lee was a career military officer who is best known for having commanded the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War....
(b.1807), and Stonewall Jackson
Stonewall Jackson
ຄຽשת״ׇׂׂׂׂ֣|birth_place= Clarksburg, Virginia |death_place=Guinea Station, Virginia|placeofburial=Stonewall Jackson Memorial CemeteryLexington, Virginia|placeofburial_label= Place of burial|image=...
(b.1824)—in the Commonwealth of Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
. He was the oldest of eleven children born to Stuart Taylor and Martha Hickman. In his autobiography, Story of My Life (1896), Taylor describes his grandfather, James, as one of five brothers who were “Scotch-Irish of the Old Covenantor type…who emigrated from County Armagh, Ireland, to the colony of Virginia, about one hundred and thirty years ago” (i.e. 1766). The Hickman family was of English ancestry and settled in Delaware in the late 1750s. Both families “fought for American freedom in the Revolution of 1776” and afterward emancipated their slaves. Taylor’s father, Stuart, was a “tanner and currier—a mechanical genius of his times”; his mother was “mistress of the manufacture of all kinds of cloth.” Both parents, he says, were of “powerful constitution of body and mind…their English school education quite equal to the average of their day.”
Conversion to Christ
Before William was ten years old, his grandmother had taught him the Lord's Prayer and explained that he could become a son of God. He longed for this relationship, but was unsure how to obtain it. Overhearing the story of a poor Black man who had received salvationSalvation
Within religion salvation is the phenomenon of being saved from the undesirable condition of bondage or suffering experienced by the psyche or soul that has arisen as a result of unskillful or immoral actions generically referred to as sins. Salvation may also be called "deliverance" or...
, he wondered why he could not, also. He recounts in his autobiography,
- "soon after, as I sat one night by the kitchen fire, the Spirit of the Lord came on me and I found myself suddenly weeping aloud and confessing my sins to God in detail, as I could recall them, and begged Him for Jesus' sake to forgive them, with all I could not remember; and I found myself trusting in Jesus that it would all be so, and in a few minutes my heart was filled with peace and love, not the shadow of a doubt remaining."
He entered the Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
Annual Conference
Annual Conference
An Annual Conference in the United Methodist Church is a regional body that governs much of the life of the "Connectional Church." Annual conferences are composed primarily of the clergy members and a lay member or members from each charge . Each conference is a geographical division...
in 1843. Bishop Taylor traveled to San Francisco, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
in 1849, and organized the first Methodist
Methodism
Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide. The movement traces its roots to John Wesley's evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism. His younger brother...
church in San Francisco. Between 1856 and 1883 he traveled in many parts of the world as an evangelist
Evangelism
Evangelism refers to the practice of relaying information about a particular set of beliefs to others who do not hold those beliefs. The term is often used in reference to Christianity....
. He was elected Missionary Bishop of Africa in 1884, and retired in 1896. Books he wrote include:
- Seven Years' Street Preaching in San Francisco (1857)
- Christian Adventures in South Africa (1867)
- Four Years' Campaign in India (1875)
- Our South American Cousins (1878)
- Self-Supporting Missions in India (1882)
- The Story of My Life (1895)
- Flaming Torch in Darkest Africa (1898)
See also
- List of Bishops of the United Methodist Church
- William C. Ringenberg, Taylor University: The First 150 Years (Upland IN: Taylor UniversityTaylor UniversityTaylor University is a private, interdenominational, evangelical Christian college located in Upland, Indiana. Founded in 1846, it is one of the oldest evangelical Christian colleges in America....
Press, 1996) ISBN 0-9621187-2-9 - Justus Henry NelsonJustus Henry NelsonThe Revd Justus Henry Nelson established the first Protestant church in the Amazon basin and was a self-supporting Methodist missionary in Belém, Pará, Brazil for 45 years.-Early years:...
- Amazon missionary recruited by Taylor - 100 McAllister Street100 McAllister Street100 McAllister Street is a residential apartment tower located in San Francisco, California, owned and operated by the University of California, Hastings College of the Law...
, originally known as the William Taylor Hotel and Temple Methodist Episcopal Church
