Philip Moxom

Background

His father, Job Hibbard Moxom, a grenadier in the British army, came to Canada as a member of a regiment sent out to suppress the famous Papineau rebellion among the French-Canadians.

Education

Supporting himself by teaching school, he spent two years at Kalamazoo College (1866 - 68), and two years more at Shurtleff College, Alton, Ill. , where he was graduated in 1870.

In 1875, feeling the need of a proper education, he entered the Rochester Theological Seminary, at the same time preaching each Sunday at a Baptist church in Mount Morris, N. Y.

After receiving his theological degree in 1878, he entered Rochester University, and a year later was granted a bachelor's degree.

Career

Philip, only thirteen years old, but man-grown, was also eager to enlist.

His father, pastor of a Baptist church in Bellevue, Mich. , had announced his resignation and the date of a farewell sermon.

Prevented from being present on this date, he directed his son to take his place.

He was ordained at Bellevue on Sept. 19, 1871, and the following year he went to a Baptist church at Albion, Mich. , where he remained three years.

It was in his thirty-first year (1879) that Moxom began his brilliant career in the Christian ministry.

A superb specimen of manhood, six feet four inches tall, graceful, forceful, eloquent, devoted, he was called to the First Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio.

Six years later (1885), he went to the First Baptist Church in Boston, where he remained for eight years.

It was at this time, also, that he found certain restrictions of the Baptist church irksome--its rigorous practice of immersion, and its exclusion of the unbaptized from the communion table.

Unable to conform or be silent, he suddenly in December 1893 resigned his Boston pulpit, "not knowing where he would go. "

In his opinions he was "strong-bitted, " as he put it, and free, sometimes blunt, in their expression.

He held his own with such contemporaries as Phillips Brooks, Minot J. Savage, George A. Gordon, Edward Everett Hale, as one of the most popular and influential preachers of his day.

His greatest hour, perhaps, came in 1893, at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, where he was selected to present to that remarkable assembly the Christian argument for immortality.

He visited Europe seventeen times, frequently to attend international peace conferences and church councils.

His scholarship was wide and deep.

He published the following books: The Aim of Life (1894), From Jerusalem to Nicaea: the Church in the First Three Centuries (Lowell Institute Lectures, 1895), The Religion of Hope (1896), Two Masters: Browning and Turgenief (1912).

[Rochester Theolog.

Sem.

Gen. Cat.

Religion

Moxom, Philip Stafford, , Canada 1848 1923 Male Clergyman Baptist clergyman, was born in Markham, Ontario, Canada.

After peace had been restored, the elder Moxom left the army to study for the ministry, and became pastor first of a Methodist, and later of a Baptist church.

It was during this period that he became generally known and admired as one of the most progressive and fearless preachers in the orthodox pulpit.

In quick succession, however, he received invitations from five different churches--a Baptist, a Presbyterian, a Congregational, a Universalist, and a Unitarian.

Accepting a call to the South Congregational Church, Springfield, Massachussets, in March 1894, he was installed on Apr. 3, and entered upon a distinguished pastorate of twenty-one years.

In personal relations he was warm-hearted, expansive, companionable, yet frank and independent.

Politics

(1910); The Congregational Year-Book, 1923; Congregationalist, Aug. 23, 1923; Springfield Republican, Aug. 14, 1923; Who's Who in America, 1922-23; collection of clippings from Springfield Republican for entire time of Moxom's stay in Springfield and now preserved in the public library of that city. ]

Views

His theological attitude was liberal; from the orthodox point of view, radical.

Personality

He was of an ardent, enthusiastic, often impulsive temperament.

He sought always the essentials of belief, and was impatient of petty refinements of doctrine or practice.

Connections

At the outbreak of the Civil War, the father offered his services to the government and was promptly commissioned a second lieutenant.

parents:

Anne

With his wife, Anne Turner, who had been brought to Canada from England by her parents when three years of age, he emigrated in 1857 to the United States, settling first at Dement, and then at DeKalb, Ill.

married:

Elliott

He was twice married: first, on Sept. 6, 1871, to Isabel Elliott (died in May 1919), by whom he had three sons and one daughter, and second, in June 1920, to Mrs. Jessie Braman Daggett, of Indiana.

Wife:

Anne

With his wife, Anne Turner, who had been brought to Canada from England by her parents when three years of age, he emigrated in 1857 to the United States, settling first at Dement, and then at DeKalb, Ill.

Daughter:

Elliott

He was twice married: first, on Sept. 6, 1871, to Isabel Elliott (died in May 1919), by whom he had three sons and one daughter, and second, in June 1920, to Mrs. Jessie Braman Daggett, of Indiana.