E&H Presents Original Drama about Bishop Walter Russell Lambuth
The Rev. Ashley Calhoun, retired United Methodist pastor who served in the Holston Conference, will present an original drama about Bishop Walter Russell Lambuth, Tuesday, April 10 at 7:30 p.m.
The play is part of the continuing Emory & Henry College 175th anniversary celebration. The performance will be in Wiley Auditorium and is free of charge and open to the public.
Lambuth was born in China to Methodist missionaries and raised by relatives in Tennessee and Mississippi. After graduating from Emory & Henry in 1875 and earning theological and medical degrees at Vanderbilt, he began a career in missions that proved to be significant and far-reaching. Before returning to China to work as a medical missionary in 1877, he was ordained an elder in the Tennessee Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MECS).
His 10 years of work in China included founding an opium treatment center in Shanghai, opening of the Soochow Hospital, and establishment of what became the Rockefeller Hospital in Beijing. In 1887, he and his parents founded the MECS mission in Japan, and as superintendent of that mission, he turned from medical to educational and evangelistic work.
In 1891 the Walter and his wife returned to the United States where he became editor of the Methodist Review of Missions. From 1892 until 1910 he served as secretary of the board of missions, and began his work for ecumenical causes, including the Foreign Missions Conference of North America, the Ecumenical Missionary Conference of 1900, and the Edinburgh World Missions Conference of 1910. Under his leadership, Southern Methodists began missions in Cuba and Korea. In 1910 he was elected bishop of the church in Brazil and Africa. He opened mission work in the Belgian Congo and initiated missions to Russians and Koreans in Siberia and Manchuria.
Additional information may be obtained from the Office of Spiritual Life and the Rev. Mary K Briggs, Chaplain. Call 276-944-6836.
