William Nast was an American clergyman, editor, and founder of the first German Methodist church in the United States.
Background
William Nast was born on June 15, 1807 in Stuttgart, Germany. His father, Johann Wilhelm, was a government official; his mother, Elisabetha Magdalena Ludovika, the daughter of an Austrian officer. Both parents died in Nast's early childhood and his rearing was left in the hands of an elder sister, Frau Dr. Süsskind.
Education
He attended school at Stuttgart and at Vaihingenan-der-Enz, and after his confirmation (1821) he entered the theological seminary at Blaubeuren. At the seminary Nast had as his roommate David Friedrich Strauss, later the well-known disciple of Ferdinand Christian Baur, and though for a time young Nast fought against the current rationalistic intellectual tendencies, he finally gave way to the Zeitgeist, and at the age of eighteen entered the University of Tübingen. After two years of study he left the university.
Career
After wandering about, visiting Vienna, Munich, and Dresden, he finally took the advice of his brother-in-law, Dr. Süsskind, and came to America. Arriving in 1828, he secured a position as tutor in a Methodist family on Duncan's Island, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he had a pleasant home, gained his first impressions of Methodism, and became acquainted with several Methodist ministers.
In 1832 he went to West Point as librarian and instructor in German, and here amidst the "godless atmosphere of the military academy" he felt again the call to the ministry. Another period of confusion of mind now followed. Wandering more or less aimlessly about, he finally came to the communistic community of Württembergers at Economy, Pennsylvania, where he remained for a time, working in the fields.
Through Bishop McIlvaine of the Protestant Episcopal Church he secured a position as teacher of Greek and Hebrew at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio. Here he became acquainted with a pious Methodist shoemaker, who took him to a nearby Methodist quarterly meeting. Finally, he made the definite decision to enter the Methodist ministry, and was admitted on trial to the Ohio Conference.
Just at this time T. A. Morris, editor of the Western Christian Advocate, the Methodist journal at Cincinnati, was urging that work be begun among the rapidly increasing German population, and in 1835 Nast was appointed German missionary to Cincinnati. Among his early converts was John Swahlen, who became the co-founder with Nast of German Methodism. Nast was soon traveling over Ohio and adjoining states, averaging some three hundred miles per month, visiting German communities. In 1838 he was able to organize the first German Methodist church in the city of Cincinnati.
In September of the same year a German church-paper, Der Christliche Apologete, was founded (first issue January 1839), with Nast as the editor, a position which he held for some fifty-three years. Besides editing this paper, he busied himself with extensive writing and translating and was the founder of German Methodist Christian literature in America.
Nast made several journeys to Europe in the interest of his work; in 1844 he was permitted by the General Conference to visit Germany; in 1857 he attended the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance at Berlin, where he delivered an address on Methodism; and in 1877 he again visited Germany and Switzerland.
Achievements
Connections
On August 1, 1836, he married Margaret Eliza McDowell, of a Scotch Presbyterian family of Cincinnati. Of the five children born to them, three were living at the time of Nast's death.