Wilbur Fisk Tillett (1854–1936) was an American Methodist clergyman and educator.
Early life Wilbur Fisk Tillett was born August 25, 1854, in Henderson, North Carolina,Kenneth Wilson, Methodist Theology, Continuum, 2011, p. 90 which at that time was in Granville County (later Vance). He was named for the early 19th-century Methodist theologian Willbur Fisk. His father was an itinerant Methodist minister in North Carolina, John Tillett (1812–1890).
Tillett graduated from Randolph–Macon College in 1877 and from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1880.
Career Tillett spent the bulk of his teaching career at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He was Professor of Systematic Theology and Dean of the Theological Faculty after 1884 and vice chancellor after 1886.John E. Fisher, They Rode with Forrest and Wheeler: A Chronicle of Five Tennessee Brothers' Service in the Confederate Western Cavalry, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1995, p. 247 During his tenure, he invited Booker T. Washington to speak at Vanderbilt on the topic, "How can a young Southern man help in the lifting up of the Negro race?".Booker T. Washington, The Booker T. Washington Papers: 1904-06 (Vol. 8); Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1979, p. 491
Tillett argued that the United States had been established by God himself to usher in the Kingdom. Moreover, he argued that the emancipation of black slaves as a result of the American Civil War of 1861–65 had been good for white Southern men as it had turned them into self-reliant hard workers instead of idle planters.Henry Goldschmidt, Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 100
Death Tillett died on June 4, 1936, in Nashville.
Bibliography The White Man of the New South (in The Century Magazine, No. 33, 1886-1887).LeeAnn Whites, Civil War as a Crisis in Gender: Augusta, Georgia, 1860-1890, Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2000, p. 265 Southern Womanhood as Affected by the War (in The Century Magazine, November 1891).Google Books Our Hymns and Their Authors (1900).Google Books The Date and Authorship of the Book of Daniel (1900).Google Books Personal Salvation (1902).Google Books Modern Archaeology and the Old Testament (1903).Google Books A Statement of the Faith: World Wide Methodism (1906).Google Books Theological Seminaries and Teacher Training: A Discussion of the Preacher's Relation to the Sunday School and the Young Life of the Church (1910).Google Books Hymns and Hymnwriters of the Church (1911). Methodism and Higher Education in Tennessee (1913).Google Books Dr. George H. Detwiler, Pastor and Preacher (1914).Google Books Providence, Prayer and Power: Studies in the Philosophy, Psychology and Dynamics of the Christian Religion (1926).Google Books The South's Greatest Teacher of Boys: An Appreciation of the Character and Work of the Late Professor William Robert Webb of Tennessee (1928).Google Books Henry Beach Carré: An Appreciation of the Character and Life Work of One of Vanderbilt University's Noblest Sons and One of the Christian Church's Wisest Moral and Religious Leaders (1928).Google Books A Heaven Within the Hearts of Men: A Tribute of Appreciation and Love to Benjamin Newton Duke.Google Books
Secondary source Lester Hubert Colloms, Wilbur Fisk Tillett, Christian educator (Cloister Press, 1949).Google Books
References
External links Wilbur F. Tillett at the Tennessee State Library and Archives