John Wesley Hill

Hill was born on May 8, 1863, in Kalida, Ohio. Hill's father was John Wesley Hill (1831–1913). Hill's mother was Elizabeth Hughes Hill (1838–1926). Hill attended Ohio Northern University and then took classes at the Methodist Boston Theological Seminary.^[2]

While still taking classes Hill became the pastor of a church in Eggleston Square in Boston. He went on to lead churches in Ogden, Utah; Helena, Montana; and Minneapolis, where he organized and built the Fowler Episcopal Methodist Church. He went on to positions in Fostoria, Ohio, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he was appointed chaplain to the Pennsylvania state senate. Around 1905 he moved to the Janes United Methodist Church in Brooklyn, and then to the Metropolitan Temple at 7th Avenue and West 13th Street in New York City.^[3]

Hill was known for mixing politics and religion, campaigning for example with William H. Taft in 1908. In 1927 he touted the campaign of Illinois governor Frank Orren Lowden for the Republican nomination for president.^[4]

Hill was also active in civic organizations. In the 1910s Hill was a vice-president of the American Civic Association.^[5] During World War I Hill was involved with several organizations campaigning for peace and world governance, serving as general secretary of the World's Court League 1915-6 (and editor of their publication, The World's Court) and president of the International Peace Forum. Hill published through the Peace Forum a debate he participated in on May 7, 1913, with Dr. Bouck White on the question "Resolved: That socialism is a peril to the state and the church" (with Hill affirming the proposition). Inez Milholland was the moderator.

Hill was the chancellor of Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee, from 1916 to 1936.

Hill wrote Twin City Methodism: A History of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn. (1895), Abraham Lincoln: Man of God (1920), and If Lincoln Were Here (1925).