Amos Norton Craft (July 7, 1844 - August 30, 1912) [1] was an American Methodist and early skeptic writer.
Craft was born in Mecca, Ohio, on July 7, 1844. [1] [2] He married Alice Alvira Judson on March 10, 1863. [2] They had four children. Craft graduated from Mount Union College in 1865. He was a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church. [2] In 1878 he settled in Oil City, Pennsylvania. [2]
Craft obtained a PhD in philosophy from Mount Union College. [3] He is most well known for his Epidemic Delusions (1881). According to skeptic Daniel Loxton the book is a "critical gaze over spirit mediums, end of the world panics, bogus religious relics, witch-hunting manias, haunted houses, clairvoyance, and mesmerism. Again and again he hammered home the point that paranormal claims rest upon arguments from ignorance." [4]
Craft died on August 30, 1912, in Meadville, Pennsylvania. [5]
The African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church and Connection, usually called "the A.U.M.P. Church", is a Methodist denomination. It was chartered by Peter Spencer (1782–1843) in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1813 as the "Union Church of Africans", where it became known as the "African Union Church".
Scientific skepticism or rational skepticism, sometimes referred to as skeptical inquiry, is a position in which one questions the veracity of claims lacking empirical evidence. In practice, the term most commonly references the examination of claims and theories that appear to be beyond mainstream science, rather than the routine discussions and challenges among scientists. Scientific skepticism differs from philosophical skepticism, which questions humans' ability to claim any knowledge about the nature of the world and how they perceive it, and the similar but distinct methodological skepticism, which is a systematic process of being skeptical about the truth of one's beliefs.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church, usually called the AME Church or AME, is a Methodist Black church. It adheres to Wesleyan-Arminian theology and has a connexional polity. The African Methodist Episcopal Church is the first independent Protestant denomination to be founded by black people; though it welcomes and has members of all ethnicities.
William J. Quarter was an Irish American prelate of the Catholic Church. He was the first Bishop of Chicago (1844–1848).
The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, or the AME Zion Church (AMEZ) is a historically African-American Christian denomination based in the United States. It was officially formed in 1821 in New York City, but operated for a number of years before then. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church adheres to Wesleyan-Arminian theology.
Amos Adams Lawrence was an American businessman, philanthropist, and social activist. He was a key figure in the United States abolitionist movement in the years leading up to the Civil War and the growth of the Episcopal Church in Massachusetts. He was instrumental in the establishment of the University of Kansas and Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin.
Matthew Simpson was an American bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, elected in 1852 and based mainly in Philadelphia. During the Reconstruction Era after the Civil War, most evangelical denominations in the North, especially the Methodists, were initially strong supporters of radical policies that favored the Freedmen and distrusted the Southern whites. However, by the late 1860s in border state conferences, the MEC North moved well away from their work with the Freedmen's Bureau and often sided with the grievances of Southern white members. Bishop Simpson played a leading role in mobilizing the Northern Methodists for the cause. His biographer calls him the "High Priest of the Radical Republicans."
Rev. Henry Gerhard Appenzeller was a Methodist missionary. He and four other missionaries, including Horace N. Allen, Horace G. Underwood, William B. Scranton, and Mary F. Scranton introduced Protestant Christianity to Korea from 1885 to 1902. He was known for his three major contributions to Korea: the Paichai College Hall, the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Seoul, and the translated New Testament.
John Morgan Walden was an American bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He also gained notability as a newspaper editor and journalist, as a State Superintendent of Education in Kansas, as an officer in the Union Army, and as an Official in his Christian denomination.
Daniel Alexander Payne was an American bishop, educator, college administrator and author. A major shaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), Payne stressed education and preparation of ministers and introduced more order in the church, becoming its sixth bishop and serving for more than four decades (1852–1893) as well as becoming one of the founders of Wilberforce University in Ohio in 1856. In 1863, the AME Church bought the college and chose Payne to lead it; he became the first African-American president of a college in the United States and served in that position until 1877.
Francis Enmer Kearns was a Methodist pastor, a professor of English, a member of denominational boards and agencies, a bluegrass musician, a bishop of The Methodist Church and the United Methodist Church, and a visiting professor of a United Methodist Theological Seminary. He was the first resident bishop of the Ohio East Episcopal Area of The Methodist/United Methodist Church.
Charles Bayard Mitchell (1857–1942) was an American bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, elected in 1916. He also distinguished himself as a pastor and in service to his denomination.
Daniel Loxton is a Canadian writer, illustrator, and skeptic. He that wrote or co-wrote several books including Tales of Prehistoric Life, a children's science trilogy, and Abominable Science!. As editor of Junior Skeptic, Loxton writes and illustrates most issues of Junior Skeptic, a children's science section in the Skeptics Society's Skeptic magazine.
Robert Crothers Kirk was an American politician who served as the fifth lieutenant governor of Ohio from 1860 to 1862 under Governor William Dennison.
The Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist Connection (AWMC), originally the Wesleyan Methodist Church (Allegheny Conference), and also known as the Wesleyan Methodist Church (WMC), is a Methodist denomination within the conservative holiness movement primarily based in the United States, with missions in Peru, Ghana, and Haiti.
Madison College was an educational institution in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, operated by the Methodist Episcopal Church. The college was chartered by the Pennsylvania legislature in 1827, and it was operated by the Methodist Episcopal Church until 1832, after which it became associated with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Andrew Stewart was instrumental in its physical construction.
Morris Brown was one of the founders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and its second presiding bishop. He founded Emanuel AME Church in his native Charleston, South Carolina. It was implicated in the slave uprising planned by Denmark Vesey, also of this church, and after that was suppressed, Brown was imprisoned for nearly a year. He was never convicted of a crime.
Alice Rebecca Appenzeller was the first American and first Caucasian born in Korea. Daughter of the Methodist missionary Rev. Henry Appenzeller who was among the first to introduce Protestantism to Korea, she spent her early years in Seoul until returning to the United States in 1902. There she pursued her education, first at the Shippen School for Girls. She later graduated from Wellesley College, after which she returned to the Shippen School to teach. She was appointed by the Methodist Church as a missionary teacher at Ewha College in Seoul in 1915 and became president of the college in October 1922.
Rev. John E. Price was an elder and minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. He was a minister for around 50 years. He was the founder and president of the Garnet Equal Rights League at Harrisburg. He wrote hymns and was an editor for the Zion Church Advocate and, with William H. Day, the Zion Church Herald and Outlook, the first paper of the AME Zion Church. Day was a minister, abolitionist, and educator.
John Swanel Inskip was an American minister and evangelist affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was a proponent of family sittings in church and a leader in the holiness movement, serving as founder and president of the National Camp Meeting Association for the Promotion of Holiness from 1867 until his death.