Joseph Pomeroy Widney, M.A., M.D., LL.D., D.D. (December 26, 1841 — July 4, 1938) was a polymathic pioneer American physician, medical topographer, scholar-educator, clergyman, entrepreneur-philanthropist, proto-environmentalist, prohibitionist, philosopher of religion, controversial racial theorist and prolific author who served as the second President of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California and as the founding dean of the USC School of Medicine, and who was one of the co-founders and first general superintendents of the Church of the Nazarene, and the primary founder of the Los Angeles County Medical Association. One of the "most conspicuous Southern Californians of his generation", Widney was a cultural leader in Los Angeles for nearly seventy years and the "mystic seer in residence and prophet of Southern Californian Anglo-Saxonism."

In March 1939 the newly-built Crippled Children's High School (located at 2302 S Gramercy Place, Los Angeles) was re-named the Dr Joseph Pomeroy Widney High School. This school is for those aged 13 to 22 with special educational needs. The historic Widney Hall Alumni House (now located at 635-650 Child's Way at the University of Southern California) Widney Hall, the university's original building, was declared a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument (No. 70) on 16 December 1970. The University of Southern California honours its distinguished graduates by presenting the Widney Alumni Award.

Widney and the Church of the Nazarene

During the summer of 1895, Widney had changed his plans to study for a year in the East and had remained in Los Angeles. With characteristic decisiveness, these two fast friends determined to form a new organization in which their program of a church home for the poor might be fully carried out. They announced a service for Sunday, 6 October 1895, in Red Men's Hall located at 317 South Main Street in Los Angeles, a short distance from the Peniel Mission. A Los Angeles Times reporter gave us the only extant firsthand account of this meeting. The leaders, he wrote, "announced that although no name had been decided upon for the new denomination, its work was to be chiefly evangelistic and its government congregational." (see Smith 85) Bresee declared that the only thing new in the movement was its determination to preach the gospel to the needy, and to give that class a church they could call their own.

After three weeks of independent meetings in the Red Men's Hall, on 30 October 1895, Bresee and Widney formally organised the Church of the Nazarene, the west coast ancestor of the denomination that now bears that name, with 82 charter members. While several distinguished Methodists joined, most of the membership, however, was made up of recent converts from the poorer sections of Los Angeles. On the day of organization Widney preached on the words of Christ, "Follow me." Widney "pointed out that the essence of Christianity was not to receive a creed or to observe church forms and rituals, but simply to accept the Christ life, to make Christ himself the Lord of one's heart. After an interesting reference to the novelist Tolstoy's recent decision to abandon his high position and go to serve the peasants of a Russian village, Widney attempted to explain why a new denomination was required. The reason, he said, was that the machinery and the methods of the older churches had proved a hindrance to the work of evangelizing the poor."

Widney also explained the choice of a name for the new denomination:

The word "Nazarene" had come to him one morning at daybreak, after a whole night of prayer. It immediately seemed to him to symbolize "the toiling, lowly mission of Christ." It was the name which Jesus used of himself, Widney declared, "the name which was used in derision of Him by His enemies," the name which above all others linked Him to "the great toiling, struggling, sorrowing heart of the world. It is Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, to whom the world in its misery and despair turns, that it may have hope.

At the outset Widney and Bresee saw this church as -

"the first of a denomination that preached the reality of entire sanctification received through faith in Christ. They held that Christians sanctified by faith should follow Christ's example and preach the gospel to the poor. They felt called especially to this work. They believed that unnecessary elegance and adornment of houses of worship did not represent the spirit of Christ but the spirit of the world, and that their expenditures of time and money should be given to Christlike ministries for the salvation of souls and the relief of the needy. They organized the church accordingly. They adopted general rules, a statement of belief, a polity based on a limited superintendency, procedures for the consecration of deaconesses and the ordination of elders, and a ritual. These were published as a Manual beginning in 1898. They published a paper known as The Nazarene and then The Nazarene Messenger."

Among the first to be ordained by the new church was Joseph P. Widney. Bresee and Widney were appointed to life tenure as pastors and superintendents in the infant denomination, but their power was "more personal than legal."

However, late in 1898, Widney resigned from the Church of the Nazarene. Apparently, the growing frequency of services of great emotional power at the tabernacle became at last too much for him. Smith reports, "It happened that one night, after a great "outpouring of the Spirit," some of the most prominent members of the church went to the altar. Several were overcome completely, and a good deal of noise and confusion resulted. Widney, a quiet-mannered man, decided that he could not be happy any longer amidst such scenes." According to Smith, "there is no evidence at all of any hard feelings between Bresee and Widney. Their parting was most friendly." Additionally, according to Frankiel, there were theological differences between Widney and the Church of the Nazarene. Widney "believed in gradual spiritual growth rather than an identifiable experience of [entire] sanctification." In October, 1898, delegates from the various churches voted to accept the resignation Widney and Bresee from their lifetime tenure, and to limit the term of office for general superintendents to one year. Shortly afterward Widney returned to the Methodist church as a minister and was appointed to the church's City Mission of Los Angeles (formally organized in 1908), where he ministered to thousands over the next several years.