James Monroe Buckley

James Monroe Buckley (December 16, 1836 – February 10, 1920) was an American physician, author, minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church and editor of the Christian Advocate. He was a driving force behind the establishment of the first Methodist hospital in the world and a leading opponent of the ordination of women and women's suffrage in the United States.

Early life and education

James Monroe Buckley was born on December 16, 1836 in Rahway, New Jersey to John and Abby L. (née Monroe) Buckley. His father was a native of England and a Methodist Episcopal minister who died soon after James was born.

He was educated at Pennington Seminary and Wesleyan University, although he withdrew during his second year for health reasons and continued with private instructors. He later received honorary degrees from Wesleyan, Emory and Henry College, and Syracuse University.

Ministry Buckley became a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1859, preaching several churches in New Hampshire (185963), Detroit (186366), and Brooklyn and Stamford, Connecticut (186680).

Buckley served as a delegate to the General Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church from 1872 to 1912. During the Conferences, Buckley took a leading role, and the General Conference was sometimes referred to as "Dr. Buckley in Session." In one Conference, he is said to have taken the floor seven hundred times.

He was also a delegate to international ecumenical conferences in London (1881), Washington (1891), and Toronto (1911), and a member of the Church's Board of Foreign Missions, serving as its president for three years.

Hospital administrator From 1882 to 1917, Buckley served as a president of the Methodist Episcopal Hospital in Brooklyn, the first Methodist hospital in the world. He had advocated for the hospital through his editorial work on the accidental death of a church organist and served on its board for thirty-five years. Buckley also served as president of the board for the New Jersey State Village for Epileptics and New Jersey Hospital for the Insane. Buckley also debated the topic publicly, including with Anna Howard Shaw, a leading suffragist and fellow physician who had been ordained by the Methodist Protestant Church as the first female Methodist minister. According to Schmidt, women were not allowed licenses to preach in the Methodist Episcopal Church by the General Conference until Buckley's death in 1920.

Buckley also opposed women's suffrage, writing The Wrong and Peril of Woman Suffrage.

Personal life Buckley was married three times; all three of his wives died.

Selected works

Two weeks in the Yosemite Valley (1872) Christians and the theater (1875) Oats or Wild Oats (1885) The Land of the Czar and the Nihilist (1886) Faith-healing, Christian science and kindred phenomena (1892) Travels in three continents, Europe, Africa, Asia (1894) A history of Methodists in the United States (1896) The fundamentals and their contrasts (1906) The Wrong and peril of woman suffrage (1909) Theory and practice of foreign missions (1911) Constitutional and parliamentary history of the Methodist Episcopal church (1912)