Francis Asbury
Francis Asbury (1745 –
1816) was one of the first two bishops of the Methodist Episcopal
Church in the United States.
Born at Handsworth,
near Birmingham, England of Methodist parents, Asbury became a
local preacher at 18 and was ordained at 22. In 1771 he
volunteered to travel to America. When the American War of
Independence broke out in 1776 he was the only Methodist minister
to remain in America.
Francis Asbury statue, Wilmore,
Kentucky
In 1784 John Wesley named Asbury and Thomas Coke as
co-superintendents of the work in America. This marks the
beginning of the "Methodist Episcopal Church of the USA". For the
next 32 years, Asbury led all the Methodists in America.
Like Wesley, Asbury preached in all sorts of places: courthouses,
public houses, tobacco houses, fields, public squares, wherever a
crowd assembled to hear him. For the remainder of his life he rode
an average of 6000 miles each year, preaching virtually every day
and conducting meetings and conferences. Under his direction the
church grew from 1,200 to 214,000 members and 700 ordained
preachers.
Asbury kept a journal assiduously; on December
8, 1812 he crossed the Broad River into York County, South
Carolina and came to the home of David Leech, Esq. He states in
his journal that Leech offered him a Bible and a bottle of brandy;
he wrote, "I took one." Years before Asbury had complained in his
diary of a German Lutheran man named (Jacob) Bookter in upper
Richland County, South Carolina, who charged him too much for a
night's lodging for himself and his horse. The incident so
inflamed Asbury that he was said to have converted a good number
of Lutherans in a fiery sermon the next day.
There are
three schools named after Asbury, two located in Wilmore,
Kentucky: Asbury College and Asbury Theological Seminary. In
addition, DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana was originally
known as Indiana Asbury College after him. Also Francis Asbury
Elementary school in Hampton Virginia. In addition, the town of
Asbury Park, New Jersey and the former Asbury Methodist Church on
Staten Island (now the Son-Rise Interfaith Center) stand as
monuments to his memory in areas known to have been part of his
missionary work. An equestrian statue of Asbury was erected in
Washington, D.C. in 1921.
Asbury's boyhood home,
Bishop Asbury Cottage, in Sandwell, England, is now a museum.
Bishop Asbury is buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Baltimore near
the graves of Bishops John Emory and Beverly Waugh. |
