Keener, Rev. John Christian

Submitted by Mike Miller

  Rev. John Christian Keener, bishop of the Methodist Episcopal church South, was born in Baltimore, February 7, 1819. His father, the late Christian Keener, was in his day a man of mark and one of the best-known Methodists of that city. The son was a pupil at Wilbraham academy, and when Dr. Wilbur Fisk was principal, became a member of the first class. He was graduated in 1835. Shortly after his graduation he was converted and entered mercantile life, but, abandoning his secular prospects, he went south, entered the ministry, and was admitted into the Alabama conference in 1843. In a few years he was sent to New Orleans, then a post of danger, and yet of honor because of its importance. He spent a score of years there in the pastorate and presiding eldership. In 1866 he was elected editor of the New Orleans "Christian Advocate," and in 1870 he was elected to the episcopacy. Bishop Keener has been a student, not only of theology, but also of general literature. He has a delicate perception of literary beauty; and while the careful discriminations in his sermons satisfy the hearer of thoughtful preparation, the neat turns of expression, well-chosen words and chaste adornments prove him to be at once the enemy of slovenliness of style and a friend to the unaffected graces of speech. He is a preacher of profit; but while true in any case that full benefit can be gained from a sermon by the attentive hearer only, it is specially true when compactness of thought and a terse rhetoric distinguish it. The Bishop resides in a suburb of New Orleans; but, like his colleagues, "travels" through every part of the church. Superintendency in Methodism is not diocesan but general. Bishop Keener is deeply interested in the mission of southern Methodism in Mexico, and beyond doubt its development and present promising condition are largely due to the attention and personal labor which he has bestowed upon it.

Biographical and Historical Memoires of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 484. Published by the Goodspeed Publishing Company, Chicago, 1892.