Summer Connection 2020

KINGDOM
COMMUNITY:
our legacy,
our future
“ABout the year 1850,
a movement was set
on foot in the Illinois
Annual Conference of
the Wesleyan Methodist
denomination to
establish an institution
of learning somewhere
in the State of Illinois.
“ The originators of the scheme were mostly
men who had but little of this world’s
goods and prized learning for the power
that they saw it gave others, rather than from
any extensive realization of its benefits in
themselves. They were real reformers and were
especially interested in the anti-slavery struggle
which was then at its height.
“They saw with deep concern the children
of anti-slavery fathers and mothers, who
were sent to college, where nothing was
said against human bondage, soon losing
their parents’ principles and concluding
that if slavery were as bad as they had
been taught at home to regard it, the
teachers they had learned to reverence
and love would say something about it.
Their purpose… was not so much to start
a denominational, sectarian school, as to
provide a place where their principles,
by them prized and early taught to their
children, should not be smothered out
by being held in silence by those who
taught or destroyed by the active, despotic
teaching of the times. Wheaton, offering
the most favorable terms, was chosen as
the seat of this school. Preparations for
building began by the founders kneeling
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