Fred Hoskins

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Fred Hoskins (8 January 1906 – 20 April 1966) was an American clergyman who served as first co-president of United Church of Christ with James Wagner from 1957 to 1961.

United States Federal republic in North America

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.

United Church of Christ Protestant Christian denomination

The United Church of Christ (UCC) is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination based in the United States, with historical confessional roots in the Congregational, Reformed, and Lutheran traditions, and with approximately 4,956 churches and 853,778 members. The United Church of Christ is a historical continuation of the General Council of Congregational Christian churches founded under the influence of New England Pilgrims and Puritans. Moreover, it also subsumed the third largest Reformed group in the country, the German Reformed. The Evangelical and Reformed Church and the General Council of the Congregational Christian Churches united in 1957 to form the UCC. These two denominations, which were themselves the result of earlier unions, had their roots in Congregational, Lutheran, Evangelical, and Reformed denominations. At the end of 2014, the UCC's 5,116 congregations claimed 979,239 members, primarily in the U.S. In 2015, Pew Research estimated that 0.4 percent, or 1 million adult adherents, of the U.S. population self-identify with the United Church of Christ.

James Elvin Wagner (1873–1969) was a U.S. clergyman. The last president of the Evangelical and Reformed Church, Wagner served as the first co-president of the United Church of Christ from 1957 until 1961. His Congregational Christian counterpart was the Rev. Fred Hoskins.

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Life and career

Hoskins was a graduate of Illinois College before earning a doctorate at Yale Divinity School in 1932. Hoskins served as pastor in Jacksonville, Illinois and at Plymouth Congregational Church in Des Moines, Iowa before succeeding Albert Buckner Coe as minister of First Congregational Church in Oak Park, Illinois in 1950. [1]

Illinois College liberal arts colleges in the United States

Illinois College is a private liberal arts college in Jacksonville, Illinois. It is affiliated with the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church (USA). It was the second college founded in Illinois, but the first to grant a degree. It was founded in 1829 by the Illinois Band, students from Yale University who traveled westward to found new colleges. It briefly served as the state's first medical school, from 1843 to 1848, and became co-educational in 1903.

Yale Divinity School

The School of Divinity at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut, is one of twelve graduate or professional schools within Yale University.

Jacksonville, Illinois City in Illinois, United States

Jacksonville is a city in Morgan County, Illinois, United States. The population was 19,446 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Morgan County. It is home to Illinois College, MacMurray College, Illinois School for the Deaf, and the Illinois School for the Visually Impaired.

He oversaw the merger of Congregational Christian Churches with the Evangelical and Reformed Church into the United Church of Christ in 1961. [2] Hoskins died at Nassau Hospital in Mineola, New York after having a heart attack at his Garden City, New York church office. [3]

The Congregational Christian Churches were a Protestant Christian denomination that operated in the U.S. from 1931 through 1957. On the latter date, most of its churches joined the Evangelical and Reformed Church in a merger to become the United Church of Christ. Others created the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches or joined the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference that formed earlier in 1945. During the forementioned period, its churches were organized nationally into a General Council, with parallel state conferences, sectional associations, and missionary instrumentalities. Congregations, however, retained their local autonomy and these groups were legally separate from the congregations.

The Evangelical and Reformed Church (E&R) was a Protestant Christian denomination in the United States. It was formed in 1934 by the merger of the Reformed Church in the United States (RCUS) with the Evangelical Synod of North America (ESNA). A minority within the RCUS remained out of the merger in order to continue the name Reformed Church in the United States. In 1957, the Evangelical and Reformed Church merged with the majority of the Congregational Christian Churches (CC) to form the United Church of Christ (UCC).

Mineola, New York Village in New York, United States

Mineola is a village in Nassau County, Long Island, New York, United States. The population was 18,799 at the 2010 census. The name is derived from an Algonquin word meaning a "pleasant village".

The Hoskins Visitorship was established at Yale Divinity School in 1967 in memory of Hoskins, and the Fred Hoskins Christian Influence Award at Illinois College was also named in his honor.

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References

  1. ↑ Staff report (Jan 8, 1950). Inaugural Sermon to be Preached by Oak Park Minister. Chicago Daily Tribune
  2. ↑ Dugan, George (July 4, 1961). 2 Churches Merge Today in Ceremony Joining 2,000,000. New York Times
  3. ↑ Staff report (April 21, 1966). DR. FRED HOSKINS OF UNITED CHURCH; Former Head of Ecumenical Movement Dies at 60. New York Times



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