Elijah Embree Hoss
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Elijah Embree Hoss (1849-1919) was an American Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, elected in 1902.
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[edit] Early life
Born 14 April 1849 on Cherokee Creek, four miles from Jonesboro in Washington County, Tennessee, U.S.A., he was a son of Henry and Maria Sevier Hoss. His mother was a granddaughter of General John Sevier. The family moved to Jonesboro before Elijah was two years old. He was the second child and the first son of a family of eight children. He professed faith in Jesus Christ and joined the church at Jonesboro when he was ten years old.
Elijah married Miss Abbie Clark of Knoxville, Tennessee 19 November 1872. They had three children: Mary, E.E., Jr., and Sessler. Mrs. Hoss died 15 June 1918 in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
[edit] Education
Elijah was educated in the schools of Jonesboro, Tennessee. He entered Ohio Wesleyan University in 1866, studying there two years. He then entered Emory and Henry College, earning his B.A. degree in 1869. He had acquired the habit of reading widely in early life. He was known in college for the range of his studies and the accuracy of his scholarship. His memory was prodigious, so that accurate and wide information was at his ready command.
[edit] Ordained Ministry
Elijah was Licensed to Preach in the M.E. Church, South at Jonesboro on 8 February 1866. He was Admitted on Trial to the Holston Annual Conference 29 September 1869. He was appointed to Jonesboro. The first person he received into church membership was his own father. He was then appointed to Knoxville, Tennessee in 1870.
In July 1872 he transferred to California and was stationed at San Francisco. He transferred back to the Holston Conference in 1875 and was stationed at Asheville, North Carolina.
Rev. Hoss became a Professor at Martha Washington College in 1876. He was elected President of this institution in 1879. He became a Professor at Emory and Henry College in 1881, elected as President in 1885. In August 1885 Rev. Hoss was elected to the Chair of Ecclesiastical History, Church Polity and Pastoral Theology at Vanderbilt University, serving there until 1890.
In May 1890 Rev. Hoss was elected the Editor of the Southern Christian Advocate, an important periodical of the M.E. Church, South. He held this position until his election to the Episcopacy in 1902. Previous to this, he was a delegate to five General Conferences of his denomination. The final time elected, he lacked on six votes in the Holston Conference, besides his own, of being unanimously elected.
[edit] Episcopal Ministry
As a Bishop, Elijah Hoss was a fraternal representative of his denomination to nearly every Methodist Church in the world. His last great mission of this kind was to Australia in 1915. He was the Presiding Bishop of the M.E. South work in Brazil, (1905-08) and in the Orient (1910 and 1915).
Bishop Hoss was given a year's vacation, 1914-15. He retired on account of feeble health in 1918. He died 23 April 1919 in Muskogee, Oklahoma, at the home of a son. He was buried in Muskogee beside his wife. They were reinterred together at Jonesboro, Tennessee 12 April 1924.
[edit] Selected Writings
- Address: The Religious Press, Washington, Second Ecumenical Conference, 1891.
- Address: General Missionary Conference, 1901, Organization for Mission Work.
- Address: The New Demands upon Methodist Authorship, London, Third Ecumencial Conference, 1901.
- Sermon: Face to Face with the Eternal World, Wesleyan Christian Advocate Pulpit, 1904.
- Address: Temperance and Prohibition, Toronto, Fourth Ecumenical Conference, 1911.
- Methodist Fraternity and Federation, 1913.
- David Morton - A Biography, 1916.
- William McKendree, A Biographical Study
- many magazine articles.
[edit] Biography
- Life, Ecumenical Methodist, I.P. Martin.
[edit] References
- Leete, Frederick DeLand, Methodist Bishops. Nashville, The Methodist Publishing House, 1948.
- Sketches of Holston Preachers[1]
