November 14, 2023 We in the EMC owe a great debt to our founder and first General Superintendent, Rev. Dr. James Henry Hamblen. Almost hard to believe, but Dr. Hamblen was born in 1877, relatively soon after the conclusion of the American Civil War. He was born on November 13th, and his father was a veteran of the Civil War. Yesterday would have been his 146th birthday, so it seemed appropriate to devote this Tuesday Brief to his memory. Dr. Hamblen served for forty years in the East, Central, and West Texas conferences of the Methodist Church, and became increasingly concerned with the creeping “modernism” that was effectively watering down the gospel into something he, and several others, could no longer tolerate. In the early-to-mid 1940’s Dr. Hamblen spoke out firmly against the Methodist church’s liberal leanings. He felt many cardinal truths were being abandoned, and its new ministers were being trained to reject pure Biblical teaching. In his autobiography, “A Look into Life,” Dr. Hamblen noted: “I could not conscientiously remain in a church where modernism predominated and where the leaders did not believe in and uphold the Articles of Religion of Methodism; where the Sunday School literature was filled with doubt of the inspiration of the Bible and the fundamental doctrines of evangelical Christianity; where the young preachers trained in our Methodist Divinity Schools no longer believed the cardinal doctrines of our church.”
This was his rationale for resigning from the Methodist Church, ending four decades of service to the denomination. He stood for truth at a time when his faithfulness cost him his ordination, his pulpit, and his pension. These things were not primary to him. Obedience to the Lord and His Holy Word meant more to him than those temporal things. Upon his departure from the Methodist Church, he was contacted by several others who had made or were making the same fundamental commitment. A small group of ministers and laypeople met together in Memphis, Tennessee on May 9th, 1946, to pray, and out of that meeting the Evangelical Methodist Church was born. THANK YOU, Dr. Hamblen, for your unbending commitment to the truth of God’s Word. May we all hold high the torch passed to us by faithful men and women like you!