Bowman, Thomas

BOWMAN, THOMAS: The name of two contemporary American bishops.

1. Methodist Episcopal bishop; b. at Berwick, Pa., July 15, 1817. He was educated at Dickinson College (B.A., 1837), and two years later entered the Baltimore conference of the Methodist ministry. He taught in the grammar-school of Dickinson College in 1840–43, and five years later founded Dickinson Seminary, Williamsport, Pa., of which he was the president until 1858, when he was chosen president of Asbury (now De Pauw) University, Greencastle, Ind. In 1864–1865 he was also chaplain of the United States Senate. He resigned the presidency of Asbury University in 1872, when he was elected bishop, and since that time has officially visited all the conferences of his denomination in the United States, Europe, India, China, Japan, and Mexico.

2. Bishop of the Evangelical Association; b. in Lehigh township, Northampton County, Pa., May 28, 1836. He studied at the Vanderveers Seminary, Easton, Pa., and entered the ministry of the Evangelical Association. He was pastor in the eastern Pennsylvania conference 1859–75, and was presiding elder of the same conference 1870–75. He has been a bishop since 1875, and since 1896 principal of the Union Biblical Institute at Narpersville, Ill., which is the theological seminary of the Evangelical Association. He characterizes his theological position as "Arminian-evangelical." He has published a revision of the catechism of his Church, also an account of the disturbance in the Evangelical Association.