Joshua Soule

Joshua Soule
Methodist Episcopal bishop
Born	August 1, 1781 Bristol (now Bremen), Maine
Died	March 6, 1867 Nashville, Tennessee

Joshua Soule (August 1, 1781 – March 6, 1867) was an American bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church (elected in 1824), and then of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

Born to Joshua and Mary (Cushman) Soule at Broad Cove in Bristol (now Bremen), Maine, Soule was the fifth child in a Norman-English family. He was the great-great-grandson of George Soule from Eckington, England, who in 1620 arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts as a Mayflower Pilgrim, eventually becoming a prominent Duxbury landowner. In the autumn of 1781, not long after the Joshua Soule's birth, the Soules moved to Avon where his father, a former sea captain from Duxbury, was an original settler along the Sandy River.

Although his parents were strict Presbyterians, the adolescent Joshua Soule converted to the Methodist Episcopal faith in 1797, joining the New England Annual Conference in 1799.

He became known as a "Boy Preacher," and an opponent of Calvinism, Unitarianism and Universalism. Tall, dignified and able, Soule was ordained, both deacon and elder, by Bishop Richard Whatcoat. He was appointed a presiding elder at the age of 23, placed in charge of the state of Maine. He also served as a book agent for the M.E. Church. In 1820, he was elected bishop, but declined consecration because the General Conference had adopted a policy he could not approve. He did accept episcopal consecration upon being elected again in 1824.