Warren Wilson

May 1, 1867 (age 69)

He joined the staff of the Y. M. C. A. in New York City, first as secretary of the student department, then as editor of its magazine, the Intercollegian. While in that post he entered Union Theological Seminary, graduating in 1894, in which year he was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry. For the next five years Wilson served as pastor of a rural union church in Quaker Hill, New York. This move influenced his entire future career, for here he grasped the significance of the social forces impinging on rural America. Though he moved in 1899 to an urban parish, as pastor of the Arlington Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, an elder there recognized his exceptional ability and encouraged him to take graduate work in sociology at Columbia University. For his thesis he made a thoroughgoing social analysis of Quaker Hill. Written with scientific exactitude but with insight and feeling, it was the first such study of a rural community. He received the Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1908. In that same year Wilson became secretary of the Church and Country Life Department of the Presbyterian Board of National Missions, a post he held until his death. Seeing the church as an institution inextricably bound to the community it served, and believing that programs had no validity unless based on facts, he conducted with a group of younger, sociologically trained clergy a score of rural surveys in every major region in the United States. These became standard documents for the embryonic rural life movement which developed from the report of President Roosevelt's Country Life Commission in 1908. These surveys exposed also the problems and deficiencies of rural education, which became of great concern to Wilson. Hence when Teachers College, Columbia University, asked him to introduce a course in rural sociology, he assumed that added responsibility and continued it for a decade (1914 - 1923). For the ten years prior to his death he was also lecturer on the rural church at Union Theological Seminary. In rural sociology his chief contributions were the application of the theory of marginal utility to rural social life and, as early as 1919, the development and application of the concept of regionalism to rural social conditions. The rural church was always Wilson's first concern. Kindred spirits in many denominations turned to him, and never in vain. He served them until their own religious bodies organized departments similar to his. His books were highly influential in the development of rural church policy. Firm in his convictions and not always tactful, he aroused some opposition. His proclamation that "God is the highest economic need of man as bread is the first" was deemed heresy by the fundamentalists. Others were affronted by his insistence that the church was a social as well as a divine institution and by the innovations and additions to the programs of rural churches which he advocated, such as soil conservation and recreational activities. Twice he was nearly dismissed, but each time thousands of protests from within and without his denomination and from rural educators and other secular rural leaders saved him. More conventional recognition came to him in election to numerous positions of trust in various organizations. Warren Wilson died on March 2, 1937 in New York City of complications following a mastoid operation and was buried at Sherman, Connecticut, just over the hills from Quaker Hill, where he had established the home to which he expected to retire.

Back to Profile

Photos
Works

book

The Evolution of the Country Community

( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

Community Study For Cities: A Practical Scheme For The Investigation Of The Problems Of The Large Town Or City Ward From The Point Of View Of The Church And Its Work...

(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

The Revival of Interest in the Country Church (Classic Reprint)

(Excerpt from The Revival of Interest in the Country Churc...)

The Church at the Center

( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

Quaker Hill A Sociological Study

Rural Religion and the Country Church

The Second Missionary Adventure...

( This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923....)

Synod's Opportunity (Classic Reprint)

(Excerpt from Synod's Opportunity These men, the agents o...)

Warren Hugh Wilson Edit Profile

clergyman sociologist

Background

Warren H. Wilson was born on May 1, 1867, on a western Pennsylvania hill farm near Tidioute, Warren County, the fifth in a family of ten children. His father, John Sloan Wilson, of Scottish descent, had served an apprenticeship in silversmithing in Philadelphia before taking up farming. While in Philadelphia he met and subsequently married a young sister of his master, Elizabeth Hamilton, a native of County Derry, Ireland, who had come to America at the age of eleven.

Education

Wilson began his education in the public schools there. He graduated from Oberlin College (Bachelor of Arts degree) in 1890.

In 1908, Warren Wilson received the Doctor of Philosophy degree.

Career

He joined the staff of the Y. M. C. A. in New York City, first as secretary of the student department, then as editor of its magazine, the Intercollegian. While in that post he entered Union Theological Seminary, graduating in 1894, in which year he was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry.

For the next five years Wilson served as pastor of a rural union church in Quaker Hill, New York. This move influenced his entire future career, for here he grasped the significance of the social forces impinging on rural America.

Though he moved in 1899 to an urban parish, as pastor of the Arlington Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, an elder there recognized his exceptional ability and encouraged him to take graduate work in sociology at Columbia University. For his thesis he made a thoroughgoing social analysis of Quaker Hill. Written with scientific exactitude but with insight and feeling, it was the first such study of a rural community. He received the Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1908.

In that same year Wilson became secretary of the Church and Country Life Department of the Presbyterian Board of National Missions, a post he held until his death. Seeing the church as an institution inextricably bound to the community it served, and believing that programs had no validity unless based on facts, he conducted with a group of younger, sociologically trained clergy a score of rural surveys in every major region in the United States. These became standard documents for the embryonic rural life movement which developed from the report of President Roosevelt's Country Life Commission in 1908. These surveys exposed also the problems and deficiencies of rural education, which became of great concern to Wilson. Hence when Teachers College, Columbia University, asked him to introduce a course in rural sociology, he assumed that added responsibility and continued it for a decade (1914 - 1923).

For the ten years prior to his death he was also lecturer on the rural church at Union Theological Seminary. In rural sociology his chief contributions were the application of the theory of marginal utility to rural social life and, as early as 1919, the development and application of the concept of regionalism to rural social conditions.

The rural church was always Wilson's first concern. Kindred spirits in many denominations turned to him, and never in vain. He served them until their own religious bodies organized departments similar to his. His books were highly influential in the development of rural church policy. Firm in his convictions and not always tactful, he aroused some opposition. His proclamation that "God is the highest economic need of man as bread is the first" was deemed heresy by the fundamentalists. Others were affronted by his insistence that the church was a social as well as a divine institution and by the innovations and additions to the programs of rural churches which he advocated, such as soil conservation and recreational activities.

Twice he was nearly dismissed, but each time thousands of protests from within and without his denomination and from rural educators and other secular rural leaders saved him. More conventional recognition came to him in election to numerous positions of trust in various organizations.

Warren Wilson died on March 2, 1937 in New York City of complications following a mastoid operation and was buried at Sherman, Connecticut, just over the hills from Quaker Hill, where he had established the home to which he expected to retire.

Achievements

The clergyman and sociologist, Warren Hugh Wilson was a leader in the movement among Protestant groups to revive the rural churches and a pioneer in rural sociology. Warren Wilson Junior College at Swannanoa, North Carolina, perpetuates his name.