{{short description|Metropolitan Methodist minister}} {{Infobox person | name = Edwin Harvey | image = | caption = | birth_name = | birth_date = 1856 | birth_place = Chicago | death_date = 1926 | death_place = | death_cause = | resting_place = | resting_place_coordinates = | nationality = | other_names = | known_for = Leader in the Holiness Movement | education = | employer = | occupation = Methodist minister | title = | height = | term = | predecessor = | successor = | party = | boards = | spouse = | partner = | children = | parents = | relatives = | signature = | website = | footnotes = }}
'''Edwin Harvey''' (1865–1926) was an American Methodist minister and leader in the holiness movement.<ref name="Kostlevy2000">{{cite journal |last1=Kostlevy |first1=William |title=The Burning Bush Movement: A Wisconsin Utopian Religious Community |journal=Wisconsin Magazine of History |date=2000 |volume=83 |issue=4}}</ref> His emphasis on communal living led to the foundation of the Metropolitan Methodist Mission, which supported the Burning Bush Colony in Texas.<ref name="Ingersol2021">{{cite web |last1=Ingersol |first1=Stan |title=F. M. Messenger—From Radical to Conservative Holiness |url=https://www.pbusa.org/index.php/201903-stan |publisher=Church of the Nazarene |access-date=16 June 2021 |language=English |quote=He gravitated toward the Metropolitan Church Association, a group of strident, legalistic holiness people who sat in judgment on virtually everyone else. Led by Edwin Harvey of Chicago, the MCA embraced a demonstrative religion and judged undemonstrative religion as “dead.”}}</ref><ref name="Kostlevy2000"/><ref name="BurgessBurgess2010">{{cite book |last1=Burgess |first1=Stanley M. |last2=Maas |first2=Eduard M. van der |title=The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements: Revised and Expanded Edition |date=3 August 2010 |publisher=Zondervan |isbn=978-0-310-87335-8 |language=English}}</ref>
== Early life == Edwin Harvey was raised in a pious Methodist home in Chicago.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/> His father Daniel Harvey "was a deliveryman in Chicago, and supplemented his income each summer by selling household products, such as cooking utensils, to downstate farm families." While doing this, Daniel Harvey distributed Gospel tracts to those with whom he conversed.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/>
Edwin Harvey started his career operating a chain of hotels in the same city.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/> He had an experience of the New Birth and shortly thereafter, he began to teach theology classes, eventually becoming the secretary of Chicago's Methodist youth organization.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/> Harvey became passionate about evangelism, which he learned from his father.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/>
In the 1880s, Harvey began to hold prayer meetings in Methodist homes throughout Chicago, where he met Marmaduke Mendenhall Farson.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/> At the Des Plaines Camp Meeting in 1884, Farson had a conversion experience, too, after which Harvey and Farson became close friends who worked together in Christian evangelism.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/>
In 1890, Edwin Harvey married Gertrude Ford.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/>
== Work in the Rocky River Conference of the M.E. Church == In 1890, Edwin Harvey and Marmaduke Farson built a church in the Rocky River Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/> While Farson served as the pastor, Edwin Harvey became the Sunday School superintendent.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/>
In 1894, Edwin Harvey acquired property in the northwest side of Chicago and constructed the Metropolitan Methodist Mission church for US$50,000.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/> The mission offered cooking and sewing classes and a tent revival was held, in which five hundred people approached the altar and prayed at the mourner's benches there.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/>
The Sunday School directed by Edwin Harvey had a weekly average attendance of 800 children, with many being immigrants of Norwegian, Swedish and German backgrounds.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/> The Metropolitan Methodist Mission became characterized for the aid its provided to immigrants.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/> Harvey earned respect in the Methodist community and the Des Plaines Camp Meeting chose Edwin Harvey as its secretary.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/> Beverly Carradine (1848-1931), an evangelist and social reformer from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South was welcomed to preach at the Metropolitan Methodist Mission.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/> He was known for his preaching on dress standards and attacked gambling.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/> His preaching led to many of those who attended Metropolitan Methodist Church to seek an experience of entire sanctification.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/>
== Intentional community == The Metropolitan Church Association held a camp meeting in 1902 in Buffalo Rock, Illinois.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/> There, Gertrude Harvey offered to sell her home and donate the proceeds to the Metropolitan Church Association;<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/> she sold her wedding ring, silk dresses, and fancy hats as well.<ref name="Kostlevy2010">{{cite book |last1=Kostlevy |first1=William |title=Holy Jumpers: Evangelicals and Radicals in Progressive Era America |date=19 May 2010 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-988855-9 |language=English |quote=Dismissing the older holiness hermeneutic that had understood entire consecration of wealth to imply a figurative commitment, Edwin Harvey, adopting a position also held by Martin Wells Knapp, began urging Christians to surrender all to God above immediate living expenses. For her part, Gertrude Harvey sold her wedding ring, silk dresses, and fancy hats and began to question the legitimacy of owning an elegant home.}}</ref> Others followed suit, which resulted in over US$100,000 being donated to the Church.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/> The Metropolitan Church Association's ministry expanded to include a Bible college, orphanages, missionary training home, and several churches.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/> Many of those who sold their homes moved to the Bible college, which was the initial thing that helped in the formation of the communitarian character of the Metropolitan Church Association.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/> In 1904, the ''Burning Bush'', which had a circulation of over 100,000, taught a community of goods.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/> Edwin Harvey and Gertrude Harvey said that in the last days, God was calling people to lay "down their money and their reputations and their lives."<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/> Harvey himself sold the eleven hotels he owned, which gave the Metropolitan Church Association a considerable amount of capital.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/>
After the Metropolitan Church Association moved its base to Waukesha, Harvey "left the actual direction of the community in the experienced hands of F.M. Messenger as superintendent."<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/> Harvey, who served as the secretary-treasurer, was known as a "softhearted man" for his welcoming of any poor person, orphan, or alcoholic into the community.<ref name="Kostlevy2000"/><ref>{{cite book |last1=Barker |first1=Eugene Campbell |last2=Bolton |first2=Herbert Eugene |title=Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 50 |date=1947 |publisher=Texas State Historical Association |page=335 |language=English |quote=All business of this community was carried on in the name of the Metropolitan Institute, of which Farson was president and Edwin Harvey, secretary-treasurer.}}</ref>
== References == {{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harvey, Edwin}} Category:1865 births Category:1926 deaths Category:Clergy from Chicago Category:Methodist ministers Category:Methodist theologians Category:19th-century Methodists Category:History of Methodism in the United States