Arkansas Theological Chautauqua School

In 1904 Bishop William Montgomery Brown of Arkansas called for an institution of higher learning to be known as the “School of Theology of the Diocese of Arkansas.” It was to be established at the State University, Fayetteville, to educate a group of “competent men who can and will work at the beginning on small salaries.” The school attracted men over thirty who were excused from the study of Latin and Greek. Bishop Brown described the school as “a kind of institution which has no fixed organization or name or laws. It simply exists, and does as it pleases. And yet it is one of the most interesting and variously useful things in the Diocese . . . It is, in fact, a kind of ecclesiastical hash made up of a good deal of the several things which usually bear these names. It meets once a year, not always at the same place or the same time, for it is in every sense of the term, a movable feast.” There remain no existing records of the school, but it appears to have produced at least twenty-two men for the ordained ministry. It ceased to exist in 1913. It was also known as the “Arkansas Theological Chautauqua School” and “Bishop Brown's Pet.”