Luther Lee and four other ministers of the Methodist Episcopal Church left that denomination in 1843 because of their opposition to slavery to form the Wesleyan Methodist Connection. I was reminded that, as Wesleyans and as Houghton College, we are part of a tradition of Christians who believed that the Gospel of Jesus Christ ought to shape not only our personal morality but our politics. Unlike today, when research would suggest that politics shapes religious preferences in our society (See, for example, Robert Putnam, American Grace, 2010) rather than the other way around, Luther Lee and his colleagues believed that the Gospel shakes up our world as well as our personal lives. //

Houghton College was born out of this tradition. Willard J. Houghton, in 1883, founded an educational institution to prepare bold Christians whose transformation by the Holy Spirit gave them a passion to “fix up the world.” There was for him no divide between a “personal” and “social” Gospel.

I invite you today, as alumni and friends of Houghton College, to live up to the calling of our heritage in the Wesleyan Methodist tradition and, above all, to live up to the bold, adventurous and sometimes risky calling of the Gospel.