Career in ministry and academia
Riley was the minister of Nazarene churches in Livermore Falls, Maine, New Haven, Connecticut, South Portland, Maine, and Toronto, Ontario. He was minister of the College Church of the Nazarene in Nampa, Idaho from 1944 to 1952, when he was elected as president of Northwest Nazarene College. While president of NNC from 1952 to 1973, Riley led an ambitious academic program to expand and professionalize the Christian liberal arts college. His Campus Plateau 1970 program added a number of new doctorates to the faculty, helped fund several new buildings, and clearly strengthened the college's reputation in the Pacific Northwest. Riley was particularly successful in encouraging Nazarenes of the Northwest to increase their financial support of the regional denominational college. [4] He retired as president in 1973 and became a missionary in Africa, Australia, Israel, and Switzerland for five years. He published From Sagebrush to Ivy: The Story of NNC 1913-1988 in 1988 [5] and died in 2001 at the age of 92. [2]
Publications
R and R: Recollections and Reflections. Caldwell, ID: Bible Books. Limited Edition. 1992.
From Sagebrush to Ivy: The Story of Northwest Nazarene College: 1913 to 1988 Nampa, Idaho: NNC,1988, 300 pp.
The Golden Stairs (Christian Service Training) Beacon Hill Press 1956
This Holy Estate-Guidance in Christian Homemaking: Beacon Hill Press: 1970
Nazarene Theological Dictionary: Contributor
Faith and Imagination: Essays on Evangelicals in Literature : 1985, 2012
Nampa is the largest city of Canyon County, Idaho. Its population was 81,557 at the time of the 2010 census and grew to 100,200, according to the 2020 Census. It is Idaho's third-most populous city. Nampa is about 20 miles (32 km) west of Boise along Interstate 84, and six miles west of Meridian. It is the second principal city of the Boise metropolitan area. The name "Nampa" may have come from a Shoshoni word meaning either moccasin or footprint.
The Church of the Nazarene is an evangelical Christian denomination that emerged from the 19th-century Wesleyan-Holiness movement in North America. With its members commonly referred to as Nazarenes, it is the largest Wesleyan-Holiness denomination in the world and a member of the World Methodist Council.
The Boise City–Nampa, Idaho Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) is an area that encompasses Ada, Boise, Canyon, Gem, and Owyhee counties in southwestern Idaho, anchored by the cities of Boise and Nampa. It is the main component of the wider Boise City–Mountain Home–Ontario, ID–OR Combined Statistical Area, which adds Elmore and Payette counties in Idaho and Malheur County, Oregon. It is the state's largest officially designated metropolitan area and includes Idaho's three largest cities: Boise, Nampa, and Meridian. Nearly 40 percent of Idaho's total population lives in the area.
Northwest Nazarene University (NNU) is a private Christian university in Nampa, Idaho.
Henry Orton Wiley was a Christian theologian primarily associated with the followers of John Wesley who are part of the Holiness movement. A member of the Church of the Nazarene, his "magnum opus" was the three volume systematic theology Christian Theology.
Thomas Jay Oord is a theologian, philosopher, and multidisciplinary scholar who directs a doctoral program at Northwind Theological Seminary and the Center for Open and Relational Theology. He formerly taught for sixteen years as a tenured professor at Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, Idaho. He is the author or editor of more than twenty-five books and hundreds of articles. Oord is known for his contributions to research on love, open theism, postmodernism, the relationship between religion and science, Wesleyan, holiness, Nazarene theology.
Mildred Olive Bangs Wynkoop was an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene, who served as an educator, missionary, theologian, and the author of several books. Donald Dayton indicates that "Probably most influential for a new generation of Holiness scholars has been the work of Nazarene theologian Mildred Bangs Wynkoop, especially her book A Theology of Love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism." The Wynkoop Center for Women in Ministry located in Kansas City, Missouri is named in her honour. The Timothy L. Smith and Mildred Bangs Wynkoop Book Award of the Wesleyan Theological Society also jointly honours her "outstanding scholarly contributions."
Michael Lodahl is a theologian in the Church of the Nazarene. He graduated from Northwest Nazarene College in 1977, graduated summa cum laude from Nazarene Theological Seminary in 1981, and earned a Ph.D. from Emory University. He has pastored one church, La Puente Church of the Nazarene from 1981–1984, held professorship at Northwest Nazarene University, and currently teaches at Point Loma Nazarene University. He has published over 10 books, some of them held in many libraries. His best-known literary work is Story of God. His most widely held book is Shekhinah/spirit : divine presence in Jewish and Christian religion, published by Paulist Press in 1992, and held in 292 worldCat libraries.
Joseph G. Morrison (1871–1939) was an American minister and general superintendent in the Church of the Nazarene.
William Marvin Greathouse was a minister and emeritus general superintendent in the Church of the Nazarene. He was born in Van Buren, Arkansas.
The Wesleyan Philosophical Society (WPS) is an academic society largely represented by academic institutions affiliated with Christian denominations in the Wesleyan tradition. Despite its primarily Wesleyan orientation, there has been increasing participation from scholars in Catholic, Orthodox, and other Protestant traditions. Likewise, there are no formal doctrinal or affiliational requirements for membership in the society or participation at its conferences. Anyone with an interest in philosophical subjects pertaining to conference themes is welcome to attend, regardless of his or her personal theological orientation or affiliation.
Kent Richmond Hill is Senior Fellow for Eurasia, Middle East, and Islam at the Religious Freedom Institute in Washington, D.C..
Olive May Winchester (1879–1947) was an American ordained minister and a pioneer biblical scholar and theologian in the Church of the Nazarene, who was in 1912 the first woman ordained by any trinitarian Christian denomination in the United Kingdom, the first woman admitted into and graduated from the Bachelor of Divinity course at the University of Glasgow, and the first woman to complete a Doctor of Theology degree from the divinity school of Drew University.
Donna Fletcher Crow is mystery writer known for historical Christian fiction. She lives in Boise, Idaho, but sets much of her work in England.
George Lyons is a scholar and retired professor of New Testament studies at Northwest Nazarene University. Dr. Lyons began teaching at Olivet Nazarene University in 1977.
Frederick James Shields was a minister, educator, and president of the Eastern Nazarene College.
Russell Victor DeLong (1901–1981) was a Nazarene minister, evangelist, and college president.
Kenneth H. Pearsall was an American ordained minister and academic administrator who served as the 8th president of Northwest Nazarene University from 1973 to 1983.
Joel K. Pearsall is an American attorney, academic administrator, and former church administrator serving as the president of Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, Idaho.
