Shinn, Asa
Shinn, Asa, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was born in New Jersey, May 3,1781. He was converted at the age of seventeen years, and in his twentieth year entered the itinerancy in the Baltimore Conference. In 1824 Mr. Shinn took a prominent part in the discussion of lay representation in the Methodist Episcopal Church; and when the discussion culminated in the disciplining of a number of the advocates of the measure, he withdrew from the Church, and identified himself with the lay-representation movement. He took an active part in the organization of the Methodist Protestant Church, and received the most important offices in the gift of his constituents. He was frequently elected president of the Annual Conference, and twice (1838 and :1842) president of the General Conference. In 1834 he was elected, with Rev. Nicholas Snethen, editor of the Methodist Protestant of Baltimore. Owing to an accident received in his youth, and overstrain of work and care, he had four attacks of insanity- in 1813, 1819,1828, and 1843. From the last he never recovered, but was sent to an asylum in Philadelphia, and then to another in Brattleborought Vt., where he died, Feb. 11,1853. He was a strong and effective speaker and a ready. and forcible writer. He published, Essay on the Plan of Salvationa (Baltimore, 1813; 2d ed. Cincinnati, -1831): — The Benevolence and Rectitude of the Supreme Being (Baltimore, 1840; 12mo). He also wrote a series of articles in the Mutual Rights. See Sprague, Annals of the Amer. Pulpit, vii, 360; Simpson, Cyclop. of Methodism, s.v.
