Centennial Corner: Mildred Bangs Wynkoop

The centennial of Mildred Bangs Wynkoop's birth was marked September 9 by a theological symposium held at Point Loma Nazarene University. Her story illuminates two themes in Nazarene history: the ministry of ordained women and the story of Nazarene theology. Wynkoop's parents, immigrants from Norway and Switzerland, met Phineas Bresee on their honeymoon and became charter members of Seattle First Church. One of her earliest memories was hearing Bresee preach at district assembly. H. D. Brown, a Nazarene patriarch, was a family friend. Mildred Bangs entered Northwest Nazarene College and traveled in its collegiate quartet with president H. Orton Wiley on the weekends. Two years later, she followed Wiley to Pasadena College, where she met Ralph Wynkoop. They married in 1932. John Goodwin ordained Wynkoop in 1934. Wiley invited Wynkoop into theological life and shaped her theological agenda. As America's leading exponent of Arminian theology by 1950, Wiley understood that the Nazarenes were oriented to the Protestant Reformation through the Anglican tradition. Stimulated by Wiley, Wynkoop's brother, Carl Bangs, became a world authority on the Dutch reformer James Arminius and Arminianism's spread in England and America. Her interests, however, focused on John Wesley and his relevance for theological life today. Wynkoop taught at various colleges and seminaries in the U.S. and Japan, and served the Wesleyan Theological Society as president. In John Wesley: Christian Revolutionary, Wynkoop showed how the Wesleyan tradition's founder held together two strains torn apart by American fundamentalism: personal piety and social compassion. She urged a return to Wesley's classic formulation. She provided a thoughtful account of her church's basic theology in Foundations of Wesleyan-Arminian Theology. This talented author also penned an admirable college history in The Trevecca Story, beginning with an analysis of the school's theological roots. Six years of missionary service in Taiwan and Japan stimulated Wynkoop's creative thinking on how to best communicate the theology of holiness—a process that resulted in A Theology of Love, a reinterpretation of the Wesleyan message for her time. Influenced by early role models like Elsie Wallace, a pastor of Seattle First Church and the most prominent pastor on the early Northwest District, and by Olive Winchester, theologian and academic dean at Northwest Nazarene College, Wynkoop walked through the doors of ministry that opened to her. Following her death, the ashes of this distinguished professor were scattered on the grounds of Nazarene Theological Seminary. Holiness Today, November/December 2005

 

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