History
The Pentecostal Collegiate Institute had previously operated as the Pentecostal Collegiate Institute and Bible Seminary in Saratoga Springs, New York from 25 September 1900. [2] Disagreements with its founding president and second principal, Rev. Lyman C. Pettit, resulted in the Educational Committee of the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America (APCA) deciding in May 1902 to dismiss Pettit, and to sell its assets in Saratoga Springs.
The committee relocated the school to North Scituate, Rhode Island, [3] a village roughly 10 miles (16 km) west of Providence. A North Scituate Pentecostal congregation had been located there since its organization during the winter of 1896-1897. [4] When it learned that Pettit had held the Saratoga property in his own name, the APCA had to raise additional funds to purchase a new campus. [5]
The school's financial struggles appeared to add to its difficulties. It had numerous interim principals and short-term leadership for years, making it difficult to accomplish fundraising or to settle on educational goals for the school.
William F. Albrecht (1902-1904)
Acting on their own initiative, in June 1902 Rev. William F. Albrecht, the founding principal of the Saratoga school and inaugural principal of the relocated institution, and Rev. Fred A. Hillery, the pastor of the People's Pentecostal Church in South Providence, placed an option on the disused facilities of the former Lapham Institute, which had been vacant since 1876. [6] [7]
The facilities comprised a large three-story Greek Revival central building designed by New England architect Russell Warren in 1839. The central building was attached by two-story covered walkways to two separate wings; each had 33 rooms, and housed classrooms, offices, staff apartments, and dining facilities, a library and reading room on the second floor, and a large room on the third floor. Two other buildings served as separate male and female dormitories. [8] Authorized by the Educational Committee, Hillery purchased the Lanham Institute property for $4,500, and arranged a mortgage loan for $3,000. [9]
The APCA Educational Committee voted to organize a separate corporation to administer the new school, with the proviso that it would be dependent upon the APCA. [6] PCI was incorporated in Rhode Island on 17 April 1903. [10] It was incorporated by members of the APCA: Hillery, Henry N. Brown, William H. Bache, Henry M. Randall, and Frank L. Sprague. [11] Members of the Educational Committee sold sufficient stock to finance the purchase and renovations. [6]
Albrecht, Ernest Winslow Perry (1876-1902), a faculty members, and some students who had relocated to Rhode Island worked to renovate the facilities to begin classes. [6] PCI opened for its first classes on 16 September 1902. [12] Most students and faculty refused to move from Saratoga Springs, so Albrecht dropped the liberal arts program. [13]
For several years, the relocated PCI in Rhode Island functioned as a private lower school, offering elementary and secondary education programs, and a college preparatory program. [14]
For the next four years, leaders encountered difficulties in securing students, funds, and teachers. [15] Olive May Winchester (1879-1947) was one of the new faculty. [16] She was a graduate of Radcliffe Ladies College. [17] Winchester taught at PCI until 1909. That year she moved to Scotland to study at the divinity school of the University of Glasgow. While teaching at PCI, Winchester traveled frequently on behalf of the college. She raised money and held services in small communities that lacked regular church services. [18]
Another faculty member was Jesse B. Mowry, who was supporting himself by working as the Superintendent of Schools in Glocester, Rhode Island, and the Commissioner for Forestry for the state. [19]
The first class graduated from PCI in June 1903. Estella "Stella" Adelia Reynolds, the younger daughter of Hiram F. Reynolds, APCA Foreign Missionary Secretary, was the first graduate. [15] The Educational committee authorized Reynolds to act as general agent for PCI. [6]
Albrecht resigned as principal by August 1904. He established the short-lived Hudson River Holiness Institute, an interdenominational co-educational college preparatory school, in the Prospect Park Hotel at Catskill Point. [20] [21] The Holiness Institute closed by June 1905. Albrecht suffered mental illness and in 1910 was living as an inmate of the Hudson River State Hospital, a state psychiatric hospital then operating at Poughkeepsie, New York. [22]
David C. Thatcher (1904)
Rev. David C. Thatcher (1858) had an interim role for a year.
W.H. Daniels (1905)
Rev. William Haven Daniels was an interim for one year.
Walter C. Kinsey (1905-1906)
Rev. Walter C. Kinsey (1861- ) was principal for one year.
E.E. Angell (1906-1913)
Rev. Ernest E. Angell (1875-1939) became the principal of PCI in 1906. [23] By 1907 the enrollment had increased to eighty-four, overcoming the decrease in students caused by the change of location. [15]
After the union of the APCA and the Church of the Nazarene at Chicago in October 1907, to form the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene, PCI was endorsed by the new denomination. But it received no additional financial support. Within a year three other Nazarene institutions of higher education had been founded that also needed financial assistance. [24] Angell and his successors struggled to raise the necessary funds. [25] To help needy students pay their way, in 1908 Angell decided to start a separate industrial education program at PCI under the name of the Pentecostal Trade Schools. [25] It was incorporated separately in 1911 by the state legislature, at a time when industrial schools were encouraged to meet labor demands of new industries. [26]
By 1910 PCI had purchased machinery for making brooms, sewing and printing, in order to enable students to earn their way in a co-operative work program. [27] To attract more students, PCI soon started commercial and stenographic courses. [28] In 1913 Angell resigned as principal; he suffered from ill health from the stress of running PCI. [29] [30]
Martha Curry (1913-1914)
Rev. Martha "Mattie" Eva Curry (1867-1948), a nationally known evangelist for the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene, served as interim principal of PCI for the 1913-1914 school year. [31]
J.C. Bearse (1914-1916)
From 1914-1916, Rev. Joseph Caldwell Bearse (1869-1931) was principal of PCI. Bearse laid the foundations for the eventual addition of a four-year liberal arts program at PCI, by recruiting well-qualified faculty members. Bearse had attended Brown and Boston universities.
In 1914 Olive Winchester, the first woman to graduate with a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Glasgow University, [18] and the first woman ordained by any Christian denomination in Scotland, [32] returned to PCI to be the head of the Theology department. [33] She was appointed vice-principal. [34] Bertha Munro, who was head of the academy, was an honor graduate of Brown University. She started graduate studies at Radcliffe College. Stephen S. White (1890-1971) was attending graduate classes at Brown. [35]
PCI continued to struggle financially. Bearse wrote: "If we only could have fires to keep us warm, and food to eat that was paid for, it would seem almost like heaven. . . . The struggle to meet our bills is a real test of blood and nerve." [36]
A.R. Archibald (1916-1917)
Dr. Albert R. Archibald, S.T.D. (1855- ) an ordained Methodist clergyman, [37] and graduate of Boston University, served as interim principal for the 1916-1917 academic year. [38] [39] Winchester resigned in 1916, and moved to Berkeley, California to continue her studies at the Pacific School of Religion. [40]
J.E.L. Moore (1917-1919)
In 1917 Rev. John Edgar Littleton Moore (1883-1935) was appointed as principal of PCI, with the immediate challenge of ameliorating the college's debt. [41] An estimated $50,000 was needed to erase the debt and equip PCI for college work. Moore was successful in raising the required funds before December 1918. While principal at PCI, Moore also completed graduate work for a master's degree at Boston University. [42] In 1918 the Board of Trustees voted to make Moore president of the college, commence the full four-year college course, and to change the institution's name to Eastern Nazarene College. [43]
Scituate is a town in Providence County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 10,329 at the 2010 census.
The Church of the Nazarene is an evangelical Christian denomination that emerged from the 19th-century Holiness movement in North America. With its members commonly referred to as Nazarenes, it is the largest Wesleyan-holiness denomination in the world.
The Holiness movement involves a set of Christian beliefs and practices that emerged chiefly within 19th-century Methodism, and to a lesser extent other traditions such as Quakerism and Anabaptism. The movement is Wesleyan-Arminian in theology, and is defined by its emphasis on the doctrine of a second work of grace leading to Christian perfection. A number of evangelical Christian denominations, parachurch organizations, and movements emphasize those beliefs as central doctrine. As of 2015, Holiness movement churches had an estimated 12 million adherents.
The Eastern Nazarene College (ENC) is a private, Christian college in Quincy, Massachusetts. Established as a holiness college in Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1900, the college had moved to Rhode Island for several years. With its expansion to a four-year curriculum, it relocated to Wollaston Park in 1919. It has expanded to additional sites in Quincy and, since the late 20th century, to satellite sites across the state. Its academic programs are primarily undergraduate, with some professional graduate education offered.
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.
Phineas F. Bresee was the primary founder of the Church of the Nazarene, and founding president of Point Loma Nazarene University.
The Smithville Seminary was a Freewill Baptist institution established in 1839 on what is now Institute Lane in Smithville-North Scituate, Rhode Island. Renamed the Lapham Institute in 1863, it closed in 1876. The site was then used as the campus of the Pentecostal Collegiate Institute and later the Watchman Institute, and is now the Scituate Commons apartments. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
The Watchman Industrial School and Camp, also known as the Watchman Institute, was founded in 1908 for black youths by Reverend William S. Holland in Providence, Rhode Island. He based it on the educational theories of Booker T. Washington. In 1923, Holland moved the school to North Scituate when he acquired the property of the Pentecostal Collegiate Institute. He closed the school in 1938 during the Great Depression, when many private schools were unable to survive financially.
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."
James Blaine "J. B." Chapman was an American minister, academic administrator, and newspaper editor. He served as the president of Arkansas Holiness and Peniel College, editor of the Herald of Holiness, and general superintendent in the Church of the Nazarene.
Donald D. Owens is an American general superintendent emeritus in the Church of the Nazarene, and also a retired ordained minister, missionary, professor, and seminary and college president. Owens is the founding president of the forerunner of Korea Nazarene University, and Asia-Pacific Nazarene Theological Seminary in Taytay, Rizal, Philippines (1983-1984), and served as the pioneer missionary for the Church of the Nazarene in the Republic of Korea (1954-1966), and as a missionary for four years in the Philippines (1981-1985), where he was the first Regional Director of both the Asia Region (1981-1985) and the South Pacific Region (1981-1983) of the Church of the Nazarene. Owens was the 2nd President of MidAmerica Nazarene College in Olathe, Kansas for 4 years from 1985. In June 1989 Owens was elected the 28th General Superintendent of the Church of the Nazarene, and after being re-elected in 1993, served until his retirement in June 1997.
The Central Nazarene College was a junior college located in Hamlin, Texas. It closed in 1929.
Fred A. Hillery was an early leader in the American Holiness Movement; the founding president of the South Providence Holiness Association; the founding pastor of the People's Evangelical Church, the "mother church of the Church of the Nazarene in the East"; a co-founder of the Central Evangelical Holiness Association and also of the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America; one of the founders of the Pentecostal Collegiate Institute ; one of the founding fathers of the Church of the Nazarene; and the publisher of holiness periodicals and books.
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.
Frederick James Shields was a minister, educator, and president of the Eastern Nazarene College.
William Howard Hoople was an American businessman and religious figure. He was a prominent leader of the American Holiness movement; the co-founder of the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America, one of the antecedent groups that merged to create the Church of the Nazarene; rescue mission organizer; an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene, and first superintendent of the New York District of the Church of the Nazarene; YMCA worker; baritone gospel singer; successful businessman and investor; and inventor.
The history of the Church of the Nazarene has been divided into seven overlapping periods by the staff of the Nazarene archives in Lenexa, Kansas: (1) Parent Denominations (1887–1907); (2) Consolidation (1896–1915); (3) Search for Solid Foundations (1911–1928); (4) Persistence Amid Adversity (1928–1945); (5) Mid-Century Crusade for Souls (1945–1960); (6) Toward the Post-War Evangelical Mainstream (1960–1980); and (7) Internationalization (1976-2003).
Lyman C. Pettit was the founder and first president of the Pentecostal Collegiate Institute ; the founding pastor of both the Congregational Methodist Church of Saratoga Springs, and the First People's Church of Brooklyn, New York; and an ordained clergyman who was the pastor of churches in the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America, and the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.
The Pentecostal Collegiate Institute was a short-lived co-educational collegiate institute operated initially by the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America at Saratoga Springs, New York from September 1900 to May 1902, and from then by Lyman C. Pettit until its closure in February 1903. It is considered an antecedent institution of the Pentecostal Collegiate Institute and also Eastern Nazarene College.
Susan Norris Fitkin was a Canadian ordained minister, who served successively in the Society of Friends, the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America, and finally in the Church of the Nazarene. Fitkin was the founder and first president of the Church of the Nazarene's Women's Foreign Missionary Society from September 1915 until her retirement in June 1948. Fitkin served twenty-four years on the General Board of the Church of the Nazarene. In 1924 Fitkin and her husband Abram Fitkin funded and founded the Fitkin Memorial Hospital in Manzini, Swaziland, and also funded and founded Nazarene Bible Training Schools in China, and Beirut, Lebanon.
