Bishop, Mrs. Mathews honored at scholarship events
4/10/2003
NOTE: Photographs and a related report, UMNS story #209, are available.
By Joretta Purdue*
Retired
Bishop James K. Matthews speaks to the "Servant Leader Symposium" in
Washington, sponsored by the United Methodist Higher Education
Foundation. Bishop Matthews and his wife Eunice were honored as part of
the symposium. A UMNS photo Jay Mallin. Photo number 03-138,
Accompanies UMNS #210, 4/10/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
WASHINGTON (UMNS) - Bishop James K. and Eunice
Mathews are an international couple, dedicated workers in the Lord's
vineyard and still vigorous as they approach their 63rd anniversary.
The
retired bishop, who has been quoted as saying, "I never saw an area I
didn't like," is known for his intercultural work in India and around
the world. His wife, who was born in India, assisted her father,
legendary missionary E. Stanley Jones, and her husband in work on the
subcontinent, in addition to leading ministries on her own.
The
couple was honored at a symposium and banquet by the United Methodist
Higher Education Foundation April 4-5. The theme of the events was
"Clash of Civilizations: The Challenge to Our Institutions of Higher
Learning."
"I've never been homesick because I've felt at home
anywhere in the world," Bishop Mathews said at the banquet, which raised
funds for a scholarship endowment. "I have been a global person," he
told United Methodist News Service. "I'm at home anywhere in the world."
Mathews,
who turned 90 in February, had gone to India as a missionary in 1938.
He served as a pastor in Bombay and then in Dhulia, where he was also
the district superintendent.
The Mathewses married in India
June 1, 1940, when the war in Europe was already being felt in British
India. "It was a very testy time," Mrs. Mathews recalled.
In
1942, James Mathews volunteered for the U.S. Army, hoping to be a
chaplain, but the Army said it needed people who knew India serving in
other capacities. He found himself a captain in the quartermaster corps,
as Allied forces carved out a new road to supply embattled China, the
road through Burma having been cut by the Japanese. Eunice Mathews
worked alongside her husband as a civilian employee with business and
secretarial training.
In 1946, Mathews was brought back to the
Methodist Board of Missions headquarters in New York and four years
later became an associate general secretary of the board. The work took
him all over the world. His ministries included heading an appeal to
raise money in the church for rebuilding South Korea after the war
there.
Mrs. Mathews' attention was focused on home and the
couple's three children, all born in the United States. She did not
travel much for about 16 years, she said.
In 1956, her husband
was elected bishop by Indian Methodists, but he declined the post,
saying it was time that people of Indian heritage be elected. Four years
later, the Northeastern Jurisdiction of the U.S. church elected him
bishop.
Bishop Mathews served the Boston Area from 1960 to 1972 and the Washington Area from 1972 to 1980. Those were not quiet times.
On
Easter Sunday 1964, he and Bishop Charles F. Golden, an African
American serving in the Methodist Church's segregated Central
Jurisdiction, were barred at the door of Galloway Methodist Church in
Jackson, Miss. Mathews said afterward that he believed they would be
admitted when the pastor read the statement he and Bishop Golden had
prepared, but it was not accepted at the church - though it was
subsequently published.
Such actions and statements addressing
racism spoke eloquently to Bishop Felton Edwin May, current bishop of
the Washington Area, when he was a pastor in Chicago. At the April 4
banquet, he said that the two men "shook this denomination to its
foundation." May noted that they were at all times trying to act as
agents of reconciliation.
"We did not know you, but what you did served as a catalyst for what we became," said May, an African American.
Mathews
was also concerned about events in Asia. In 1966, Religious News
Service (now Religion News Service) filed a story with the headline:
"Methodist bishop defends churches' right to speak out on Vietnam."
"Bishop
James K. Mathews told the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of the
World Council of Churches that American churches 'have done a great
service to democracy' by keeping Vietnam open for debate and 'insisting
upon our leaders hearing the dissenting voice and defending their
policies,'" the RNS story said.
At the banquet, May cited a
letter from Mathews to the Washington Area May 21, 1980, urging church
members to be peacemakers and reconcilers in the crisis with Iran even
though they might be reviled. He closed his letter saying, "May the
gentle words of Jesus, 'Blessed are the peacemakers,' sustain us in
courageous and prophetic ministries of reconciliation in these troubled
times."
"I am greatly disturbed by the present situation,"
Mathews said of the war in Iraq. In the UMNS interview, he said he sees
the connectedness of all human life. "Our lives as human beings are
intertwined." He said it seems to him a person living today has been
"touched in some way by every person on earth. Because that is true, it
ought to affect everything we do as individuals.
"Our
connectedness is a profound reality," he said, and "ought to govern
everything we do, as it ought to govern the affairs of nations."
Mathews
was called back to service three times after his retirement in 1980.
During 1985-86, he was bishop of the Zimbabwe Annual Conference. His
influence is often cited in the placement of African University, the
church-related school that was opened in Mutare, Zimbabwe. He remains a
part of the university's development committee and would like to see a
first-class medical school established there. "I can see it having an
influence on the whole continent," he said enthusiastically.
When
the Albany (N.Y.) Area was created in 1990, he was named to head the
new church region until the 1992 jurisdictional elections. Called from
retirement again, he was tapped to head the New York Area in 1995, when
its active bishop went on medical leave.
The couple have
continued the work of Mrs. Mathews' father in the ashram or retreat
movement and the work of her mother in supporting scholarships.
"It's
a different India in many, many ways now," Mrs. Mathews said. "Things
change, but we try to see things (the works her mother and father
started) keep going." And they have helped expand the work. She
mentioned a boys' school her mother had started that had been a primary
school but now includes junior-high level classes.
The bishop has
also maintained an interest in Santiago College in Chile, which was
founded by missionaries. He became chairman of the board for the school,
which serves 1,000 children from preschool through 12th grade, when he
was working for the mission board and has continued to support the
school.
# # #
*Purdue is United Methodist News Service's Washington news director.
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