Emmanuel Movement - Religious Background: Worcester and McComb

Religious Background: Worcester and McComb

Elwood Worcester (1862–1940) was the originator of the Emmanuel movement philosophy. He was raised in an educated middle-class family which fell into poverty as a result of business reversals and the death of Worcester's father. After high school, Worcester went to work at a railway claim-department office. One day, while alone in the office, he had an experience of the room filling with light and heard the words, "Be faithful to me and I will be faithful to you." After discussing the experience with his priest, Algernon Crapsey, he became convinced that he was called to the ministry. At the time he was supporting his family, but he later entered Columbia University on scholarship and earned a bachelor's degree with highest honors.

As a candidate for orders Worcester was required to attend a recognized seminary, in spite of his own conviction that he would be better prepared by attending a German university. He was able to satisfy the requirements for the first two years of General Seminary in New York by studying the texts and passing examinations. He then graduated from the Seminary after only one year of full-time attendance and immediately left for Germany to enter the University of Leipzig. After an initial year devoted to classical studies, he spent two years studying with Franz Delitzsch, foremost Hebraist of the day, and psychologists Wilhelm Wundt and Gustav Theodor Fechner. In his autobiography, Worcester recalled that the liberal German academic tradition, which "tends to weaken and remove the false opposition which has grown up between the things of the mind and the things of the Spirit," was the inspiration for much of his later work.

After his ordination in 1891, Worcester became chaplain and professor of psychology and philosophy at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. His indecision between academic and parish work was resolved by a call to a historic parish in Philadelphia, St. Stephen's. One of his parishioners at St. Stephens was noted neurologist S. Weir Mitchell, who became a close friend and a source of guidance in the application of depth psychology to ministry. After 8 years Worcester moved on to Emmanuel Church in Boston. The next year he was joined by Samuel McComb as associate rector. McComb (1864–1938) was raised in Belfast, Ireland and educated at Oxford. He had been a professor of church history at Queens University in Ontario and served as minister of Presbyterian churches in England and New York City, before being ordained in the Episcopal Church. A popular speaker and an excellent writer, he became the primary spokesman for the movement during its active years.