Taylor University: Methodist Mission Becomes Evangelical College

The small college in Upland, Indiana, draws students from across the country who are looking for something specific: a rigorous academic education inside a community shaped by evangelical Christian faith. Taylor University's ability to deliver on that combination is rooted in a history that is older and more complicated than its rural Grant County setting might suggest.

The school was founded in Fort Wayne in eighteen forty-six by the North Indiana Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, originally as Fort Wayne Female College, a women's institution at a time when the education of women in the United States was far from guaranteed. It began admitting men coeducationally around eighteen fifty, making it one of the earlier coeducational institutions in the Midwest. The name changed to Fort Wayne College, and in eighteen ninety the school was renamed Taylor University in honor of Bishop William Taylor, a Methodist missionary who spent decades traveling to remote parts of the world, India, South America, Africa, and became one of the most celebrated figures in nineteenth-century Methodism.

Then came the move. East-central Indiana in the eighteen nineties was experiencing a natural gas boom that transformed small towns almost overnight. Upland, with its reserves of cheap fuel and a local booster culture eager to attract institutions, made an offer. Under president Thaddeus Reade, Taylor relocated from Fort Wayne to Upland in eighteen ninety-three, settling onto the campus it still occupies.

Over the twentieth century Taylor drifted away from mainline Methodism and toward evangelical Christianity, becoming interdenominational and increasingly conservative in its theological identity. Today it is considered one of the leading evangelical liberal arts colleges in the United States, consistently drawing students who want the full campus experience of a residential liberal arts college with a distinctly faith-integrated curriculum. The eighteen forty-six founding date makes it one of the oldest evangelical colleges in America.