Rooted in Mission, Rooted in Our City

Like the unseen roots of SPU’s venerable campus trees, the University’s 125-year history could easily go unappreciated.

“The memory of an institution’s history can go through cycles,” says Free Methodist scholar Howard Snyder. “First and second generations celebrate the impulse of its founding. Another generation says ‘That was then, this is now’ — and there’s a tendency to forget. Over time, history is rediscovered by younger people who say ‘Why haven’t we heard this?’”

Snyder’s new book Rooted in Mission: The Founding of Seattle Pacific University 1891–1916 was commissioned by School of Theology Dean Doug Strong to serve as a definitive history of Seattle Pacific’s earliest years. Snyder — the visiting director of the Manchester Wesley Research Center in Manchester, England — invites us to rediscover the people, prayers, and proposals of SPU’s origins, before it was a university or even a college.

It’s a story, Strong writes in his introduction, of “adventurous educational pioneers, motivated by Wesleyan Holiness faith,” who establish a “seminary,” a term that then referred to a school for children and adolescents. That small school eventually became a university, keeping pace with Seattle’s expansion into a world-class city.

Snyder pays particular attention to SPU’s Free Methodist founders — Nils Peterson, Hiram Pease, John Norton, Alexander and Adelaide Beers, and B.T. and Ellen Roberts (the founding couple of the Free Methodist denomination, whose lives Snyder celebrated in an earlier biography).

“They believed they were doing God’s work,” says John Glancy, director of SPU’s 125th anniversary celebration. “And, as Snyder illustrates, they were.”

Glancy worked with retired University Librarian Bryce Nelson to assemble historic images of Seattle’s progressive-era growth, bringing the time period to life. Nelson says readers will marvel at how, between the turn of the century and 1916, the rural farms and woods of Queen Anne Hill became neighborhoods. “As the city explodes, in the middle of those changes there’s a school taking root.”

Snyder recounts the rise of landmarks like Alexander Hall, the original “Red Brick Building”; Peterson Hall, built for $9,000; and the Ladies’ Dormitory, later known as Tiffany Hall. He offers perspective on Seattle Seminary’s support of Prohibition; explains how “Pacific” landed between “Seattle” and “College”; examines economic crises that the school suffered and survived; and vividly depicts missionary trailblazers — such as Clara Leffingwell, who “swept over the Free Methodist Church like a flame of fire, setting missionary interest ablaze wherever she went.”

Snyder’s book, says SPU Archivist Adrienne Thun Meier ’04, “shows how what was important to SPU’s founders — their focus on being ecumenical, on character formation, and on broad education that goes beyond missions and ministry — is what SPU still does today.”

It’s to SPU’s advantage, Snyder says, that it be grounded in what God has done and in what God promises to do. Snyder hopes Rooted in Mission will reveal, especially for those who experience only a four-year “slice” of SPU’s history, the richness of its heritage. The following photographs, many of which are included in the book, offer glimpses of that heritage brought to life.

Rooted in Mission is available at the SPU Bookstore — call 206–281–2137 to purchase a copy.