Southwestern and Methodism
Southwestern’s complicated relationship to Methodism, past, present, and future.
The connection of Southwestern to the Methodist denomination of Protestant Christianity begins at the University’s very conception, with the vision of Martin Ruter for a single central Methodist university in the Republic of Texas.
Martin Ruter was one of the first Methodist ministers to come to Texas as a missionary after the Republic of Texas was formed in 1836. He traveled throughout Texas in the early days of the Republic, preaching sermons to isolated Anglo settlers, often in their homes. Ruter was originally from Massachusetts and had been president of two colleges elsewhere before coming to Texas (Augusta College in Kentucky, and Allegheny College in Pennsylvania), so he knew the importance of higher education. He argued that the only way to “settle” the Texas “frontier” was to establish a set of private primary and secondary schools that fed into a central university, as they did throughout New England at the time.
Although he would die before his vision was realized, his legacy lived on long enough to inspire the formation two years after his death of Rutersville College–his namesake, the first college chartered in Texas, and one of Southwestern’s four root colleges. The other three of Southwestern’s root colleges–Wesleyan, McKenzie, and Soule–were also created or developed by Methodist preachers with intentions to establish the Methodist denomination solidly in Texas, whether for a similar colonial purpose or in competition with other denominations.
These four colleges were combined by Francis Asbury Mood in 1872, who was himself a Methodist preacher and the sitting president of Soule University. This new “South Western” University (then two words) was to be a Methodist institution for the raising up of young Christians in the state of Texas. In its early years, Southwestern maintained this goal by keeping metrics on the number of students converted to Christianity and the number of students planning on going into ministry after their college years. References to God and Christianity were everywhere throughout curricular documents as well as social policies on campus.
Despite its Methodist roots and central purpose, Southwestern considered itself practically nonsectarian: “its mission… [was] to promote Christian principles but not to proselytize its students into becoming Methodists.” (Jones 122) This implicit and sometimes explicit Christian mission has continued throughout the University’s history in multiple ways, chief among them being mandatory Chapel attendance up until 1967. With the exception of the years 1915-1917, when this rule was briefly abolished, students were required to attend services in the Chapel that dwindled in frequency from daily to weekly as time passed.
The Chapel requirement was accompanied by classes, meals, and club meetings that all opened with prayer; mandatory bible classes until 1977; encouragement to attend voluntary services throughout the week; and countless Christian organizations attended by students and supported by faculty. For most of Southwestern’s history, faculty were only hired if they identified as Christian, presidents were churchgoing or even clergymen, and Methodist bishops occupied reserved seats on the board. Over the years, Southwestern has been home to a number of different Methodist conventions and speakers; as such, it has been at the center of debates within the Church surrounding topics such as integration, the historical and spiritual role of the Bible, the appointment of members of the LBGTQ+ community to clerical positions, and marriage equality.
Southwestern’s student body, in keeping with the sentiments of the greater institution, largely reflected Judeo-Christian values throughout most of its history; ultimately, this resulted in a predominantly white, Protestant population. Author Bill Jones describes the time following World War II as a particular time of strong religious sentiment among students, echoing trends throughout the United States. In the 1960s, feeling shifted amidst growing social justice movements, and as Southwestern’s student body slowly diversified and expanded, there was no longer an implicitly Methodist collective identity that unified the students. This led to the end of required chapel by President Fleming in 1967, and while there was an initial resurgence in attendance, it dropped off quickly (Jones 446).
As time has passed, Southwestern’s ties to Methodism have remained woven into the fabric of the institution itself. This is not, however, accompanied by a strong Methodist presence in the daily lives of current students. Religion classes are no longer required, with the last religion requirement having been removed from the curriculum in 2010. In addition, the reserved time slot on Thursdays for Chapel was removed from the schedule grid in 2019, meaning not only that Chapel is no longer central to the rhythm of the student schedule, but also that most students have class during the time when Chapel was once held. Now, without mandatory Bible classes or even the necessity of scheduling around Chapel, most students can pass through the University without ever spending any time directly navigating its Methodist affiliation.
Moving into the future, Southwestern is increasingly concerned with questions of diversity and inclusion, and reckoning with its colonial and normatively white, Protestant past is an important part of moving forward by addressing the way these legacies implicitly and explicitly exclude people of other faiths and cultures.
Current Chaplain Reverend Ron Swain, a longstanding figure in Southwestern’s institutional history, maintains that a broadly ecumenical and almost interfaith conception of Methodism–and the Chapel itself as a broadly spiritual vs. religious space–is a way to achieve this inclusion due to its core purpose of developing the whole person as a compassionate and caring individual. Whether or not this or any other conception of the University’s relationship to Methodism provides a pathway to Southwestern’s multicultural future is a question that remains to be answered.
