Charles Wesley Brashares

Born on March 31, 1891 in Williamsport Ohio, Brashares would prove to be a devoted and useful church administrator. He completed his undergraduate education at Ohio Wesleyan University in 1914. In 1916, he married Julia Estelle Merrill. A year later, Brashares completed a Bachelor of Sacred Theology at Boston University. He completed additional graduate education at Boston University and Harvard University from 1917-1918.

Throughout the course of his life, Brashares developed his ministry in a number of locations and in a number of capacities. He was received on trial and ordained as a deacon in 1915 by the New England Conference. In 1917, he became an ordained elder in the Maine Conference. He worked at a number of churches in New England, and several in the Midwest before he was elected bishop at the North Central Jurisdictional Conference in 1944. He was then assigned to the Des Moines area from 1944 to 52, and the Chicago area from 1952 until his retirement in ’64.

Brashares was also influential in the governance of the national and global methodist church, and he participated in a number of ecumentical bodies. He served as delegate to the General Conference of the M. E. Church in 1928 and ’32, and The Methodist Church in 1940 and 1944. Brashares acted as chairman of the Coordinating Council of The Methodist Church from 1952 to 1960, and he was elected president of the National Council of Bishops in 1954. He was a member of the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches. Brashares attended the 1949 session of the South Asia Central Conference, and he participated in the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches at Evanston, Illinois in 1954. He was also delegate to the World Methodist Conference in 1956 at Junaluska, North Carolina. Brashares visited India in 1949 and Latin America in 1956.

Throughout his life, Brashares also took a keen interest in education. Not only did he serve on the General Board of Education, but also he was a trustee at Northwestern University, Scarritt College, Illinois Wesleyan University, and Garrett Biblical Institute in Evanston. Brashares was also Trustee of Wesleyan Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

Over the course of his lifetime, Brashares was awarded several honorary doctorates. He received a D.D. from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1927, an LL.D. from Cornell College in 1945, an LL.D. from Boston University in 1928, an L.H.D. from Simpson College in 1949, a Litt.D. from Iowa Wesleyan College in 1951, and an L.H.D. from Illinois Wesleyan in 1954.

He died in 1982.

His papers are held at the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan.

Sources:

“Charles Wesley Brashares,” The Encyclopedia of Methodism (Duke, 1974).