India, Malaysia, and the Philippines: A Practical Study in Missions
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This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
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William Fitzjames Oldham was an American Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church and Missionary Bishop for Southern Asia.
Background
William Fitzjames Oldham was born on December 15, 1854, in Bangalore, India, the only child of James and Mary Elizabeth (Burling) Oldham. His forebears, principally of Irish descent, had for generations been connected with the British army, navy, or merchant marine; his father was an officer in a Sepoy regiment. Bereft of his mother at an early age, young Oldham was raised by an Indian nurse. As a child he read widely in the great English authors, whose works he often later quoted in his addresses and sermons.
Education
Oldham attended Anglican parochial schools in India and at fifteen entered Madras Christian College, where he was influenced by Scottish missionary teachers. Later William attended Allegheny College at Meadville, Pennsylvania (1879 - 82), and in 1883 received the A. B. degree from Boston University.
Career
On the completion of the college William Oldham was put in charge of a small missionary school in Madras. He taught Bible daily and attended services every Sunday, but, as he later wrote, found "no life of the Spirit anywhere manifest. " He subsequently was assistant master in Bishop Cotton's Grammar School in Madras and then became a member of a picked corps of engineers engaged in a trigonometrical survey of India. One Sunday while in Poona he and a friend went, in the spirit of fun, to hear an American Methodist evangelist, D. O. Fox, an associate of William Taylor. Never before had Oldham listened to a message of such urgency and fervor. "There came to me, " he wrote later, "a realization of God's pardoning and comforting presence and a strange warming and uplifting of heart. " He joined the Methodist Church and in 1876 was licensed to preach.
Impressed with the great need for the education of the Christian children in India, he decided to go to America to prepare himself for educational mission service. He attended Allegheny College at Meadville, Pennsylvania (1879 - 82), and in 1883 received the A. B. degree from Boston University. Returning to India, he was sent by the Bengal Conference in 1885 to establish a Methodist mission in Singapore. While there he also founded an English and a Tamil church and an Anglo-Chinese school. After five years of arduous labor in the tropical climate, however, ill health forced him to leave Malaysia. Returning to the United States, Oldham served at first as pastor of the Butler Street Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1895 he was called to the new chair of missions and comparative religions at Ohio Wesleyan University (Delaware, Ohio). Five years later he was elected assistant corresponding secretary of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, with headquarters at Chicago. The General Convention of May 1904 elected him missionary bishop for Southern Asia, and for eight years he supervised the missions of the Church in South India, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
In 1912, Oldham resigned to become a corresponding secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions, but four years later he was again elected to the episcopate, this time as general superintendent assigned to South America, where he served until his retirement in 1928. His twelve years in South America were marked by his characteristic interest in educational missionary service. Largely through his influence and efforts, four outstanding institutions were developed: Ward College and the Union Theological Seminary in Buenos Aires, Santiago College in Chile, and El Vergel, an experimental farm and agricultural school at Angol in southern Chile.
William Oldham died of pneumonia in Glendale, Calififornia, and was buried there in Forest Lawn Memorial Park.
Achievements
William Oldham founded an English and a Tamil church and an Anglo-Chinese school in Singapore. Through his influence some other institutions were opened: Ward College and the Union Theological Seminary in Buenos Aires, Santiago College in Chile, and El Vergel, an experimental farm and agricultural school at Angol in southern Chile.
Oldham is author of the following books: Sketch of Thoburn, The Picket Line of Missions (1897); The Study of Missions in Colleges, Student Missionary Appeal (1898); Presenting the Gospel to Non-Christian Peoples, Ecumentical Missionary Conference (1900); Addresses: What the Missionary Secretary Can Do and The Deaconess as a Missionary Worker, First General Missionary Convention, Cleveland (1903); Malaysia, Nature's Wonderland (1907); Address: To Advance in Foreign Missions, Militant Methodism, Downey (1913); Address: The Crucial Hour of Missions in Non-Christian Lands, The Second General Missionary Conference (1913); India, Malaysia, the Philippines (1914); Graves Missionary Lectures (1914); The World Task and Opportunity, New England Methodism's Convention (1915); Address in Challenge of Today (1915); Introduction, Bishop Frank Warne's Story of His Conversion (1915); Address: Book of Devotions (1916); Thoburn - Called of God (1918).
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Membership
Oldham was a member of M. E. General Conferences in 1880, 1900, 1904, 1908 and 1912; a member of the Second and Fourth Ecumenical Conferences in 1891 and 1911 and of the Edinburgh Convention in 1910.
Personality
Once described as "the last of a group of international circuit riders, '" Oldham had an innate graciousness, a friendliness, and a warmth of sympathy which endeared him to all who knew him. As a public speaker he possessed originality of thought, forcefulness without vehemence, and a quiet humor that gave unique charm to his words; deep earnestness marked his sermons.
Connections
On September 13, 1875, Oldham married Marie Augusta Mulligan; they had no children.
