WINFRED ERNEST GARRISON, 1874-1969
EDWARD G. HOLLEY

Just a few days before his death, Dr. Winfred Ernest Garrison whispered to one of his friends, “I’ve had a myocardial infarction and the angel of the Lord is hovering near.” Shortly afterwards, on February 6, he quietly passed away at the age of 94 at Bayou Manor in Houston. Memorial services for this distinguished Disciples scholar, writer, and educator were held at First Christian Church on Saturday, February 8. At the conclusion of the services the congregation joined the church choir in singing one of Dr. Garrison’s own hymns, “God of our Fathers, the Strength of Our People,” from Christian Worship, a Hymnal, The last verse seemed particularly appropriate for our age:

God of all peoples, let justice and peace like a river

Flow through the world until all, in one common endeavor,

Build among men brotherhood’s kingdom, and then

Thine be the glory forever.

Few men have been as much a legend in their own time as Winfred E. Garrison. The possessor of numerous earned and honorary degrees, he had served as president of three institutions: Butler University, Highlands University, and State University of New Mexico. From 1921 to 1927 he was dean of the Disciples Divinity House, University of Chicago, and from 1921 to 1943 was first Associate Professor and then Professor of Church History at the University of Chicago. In 1951 he came out of retirement to be Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Houston from which he again retired in 1964 at the age of 89. He was Assistant Editor of the Christian-Evangelist from 1900-1904 and Literary Editor of the Christian Century from 1923-1955. He was a poet, violinist, and sculptor of bronze works which are displayed in various colleges and churches in the United States and Ireland.

However important his interests in scholarship and learning, even more important was Dr. Garrison’s interest in people. His personal warmth and humor cheered everyone whose life touched his. As recently as last August my eleven-year-old son and I had driven him to the University of Houston campus so that he could see the new addition to the M. D. Anderson Memorial Library. We also wanted him to see the new location of his own portrait in our Humanities Reading Room. Dr. Garrison was frail even then. ‘Tm tottering, but not doddering,” he remarked. And indeed he wasn’t. Up until the last he maintained that keen interest in scholarship and people that marked his last professorship.

Later, reminiscing in his apartment, he took a book down from the shelves and handed it to Gailon. “Here, Gailon,” he said, “is my first book. It helps a little if your father owns the publishing firm.” The volume was his Wheeling through Europe, an account of a bicycle tour, published in St. Louis in 1900, where his father was then editing the Christian-Evangelist. Between that date and the end of his life he published numerous books, articles, and book reviews in church history, religion and poetry. Most of the major church historians of the first half of the twentieth century were his friends, including the recently deceased dean of American church historians, Kenneth Scott Latourette. His alma mater, Yale, named a lectureship for him. Within the past decade Dr. Garrison had completed Paul Hutchinson’s 20 Centuries of Christianity after that author’s untimely death, served as Publisher’s critic for Roland Bainton’s Horizon History of Christianity, and completed “an anthology of poems as aids to reflections,” Singing Sages (1966). Equally impressive to his close friends was his own poetry collected under the title Thy Sea So Great (1965).

For the readers of the Restoration Review, Dr. Garrison’s chief impact will have come through his historical work on the restoration movement. In his Religion Follows the Frontier, a History of the Disciples of Christ (1931), Dr. Garrison lifted restoration history from the sectarianism in which it had wallowed to the level of first rate church history. In line with the then emerging currents in American history, he sought to relate the religious movement to the cultural and intellectual milieu of which it was a part. This pioneering work was followed by his An American Religious Movement, a Brief History of the Disciples of Christ (1945), Christian Unity and the Disciples of Christ (1955), and, with A. T. DeGroot, the two definitive editions of The Disciples of Christ, a History (1948 and 1958). As Roscoe M. Pierson has noted, “the historiography of the Disciples reached full maturity with the publications of Winfred E. Garrison.”

Moreover, he was an active trustee of the Disciples of Christ Historical Society. As the “Dean of Disciple Historians” his likeness appears along with those of Alexander Campbell and Robert Richardson in the stained glass windows of the Society’s Lecture Hall, the only living church historian to be so honored.

He took pride in the fact that all segments of the restoration movement were welcome at the Society and were beginning to come to its support. From sifting through his books prior to his move to Bayou Manor several years ago, I can attest that all segments of the restoration brotherhood regularly honored him with autographed copies of their books and articles.

Yet Dr. Garrison’s interests were much broader than the movement into which he was born (his father was editor of the Christian-Evangelist from 1869 to 1912). His interest in ecumenical affairs led to his attendance as a delegate or official consultant to world church conferences in Oxford, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Lund (Sweden), and Evanston. However, he was never a blind member of such groups and it seems just to say that he was as little interested in a monolithic Protestant Church as he was in a monolithic Roman Catholic Church. For many reasons it is rather unfortunate that what he regarded as one of his best books, Quest and Character of a United Church (1955), has received relatively so little attention. Perhaps this is because of his lucid treatment of the consistent failure of certain doctrinal attempts toward unity. Neither fundamentalists nor ecumenists cared much for his view that doctrinal uniformity had not been the road to unity from the primitive church to the present day. Rather it was his view that realistically the best one could hope for was a feeling of brotherliness, of fraternity, among various kinds of Christians. Restorationists of all persuasions might consider well his plea for such basic principles as liberty, loyalty, mutual love, and shared responsibility.

This feeling of brotherly concern Dr. Garrison expressed not only in his writings but in his personal relationships as well. It was part and parcel of his religion that he felt brotherly concern for all, from the freshman student to the distinguished professor. In my experience in academic life, few professors have been so much respected not only for their scholarly attainments but also for their genuine religious faith as was Winfred E. Garnson.

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Edward G. Holley is director of libraries, University of Houston.