Edgar Louton

The Reverend Ed Louton
Louton c. 1984
Born	Edgar Myron Louton (1933-12-13) December 13, 1933 Grosse Pointe, Michigan, U.S.
Alma mater	Columbia International University
Years active	1958 - present
Notable work	The Crisis of Christian Credibility in South Africa (1980)
Spouse	Barbara Ann Hughes ​ (m. 1958)​
Children	4
Relatives	Adam Oster (great-grandfather)

Edgar Myron “Bud” Louton (/luːtɪn/ LOO-tin; born December 13, 1933) is an American missionary. He was ordained by the Assemblies of God in 1956 and began his own ministry in 1958. Today, he remains one of the longest ordained ministers in the organization and one of the longest-serving Pentecostal missionaries, in a career spanning seven decades.

Early life

Louton in 1951

Edgar Myron Louton was born on December 13, 1933 in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, the second of three children of Albert and Louise Rettinger Louton. His paternal family were Arkansas farmers, while his maternal family were immigrants from Austria-Hungary to Detroit, descended from Adam Oster.

His two sisters were Evelyn Phyllis (1931 - 2014), a missionary, and Lois Joy (1950 - 2011), who worked at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

Ministry

Louton’s parents became missionaries to South Africa in 1951. After graduating from John Garlock’s Bible Institute in Brakpan in 1955, Louton attended Central Bible College and Fuller Theological Seminary, mostly by correspondence while on the mission field, and later earned a Master of Arts degree from Columbia International University, a private Christian university in Columbia, South Carolina.

He returned to the United States in 1956, where he was ordained and began his own mission work in Hout Bay, Cape Town in 1958. He then worked for six years among the Basuto people, spending part of the time in Basutoland. During the late 1950s, Louton’s visits back to the Midwestern United States were frequent. The media had a positive sentiment toward Louton through the 1960sand into the late 1970s. In the press he was first praised as an “outstanding young missionary,” and later as a “veteran missionary.”

During the early years of his ministry, he befriended Nicholas Bhengu, who Time called the “Black Billy Graham.” Bhengu, who had been working as a court interpreter, was hired on occasion to interpret Louton’s sermons. However, Louton soon gained proficiency in Northern Sotho.

In 1965, upon returning to South Africa from the United States, Louton was appointed Northern Transvaal district superintendent. He held the position until 1970.

He vocally opposed Apartheid and cut ties with his organization over this in 1980, after his publication of an anti-Apartheid academic paper entitled The Crisis of Christian Credibility in South Africa. He resumed his mission work in the country in 1988, lecturing at a mission college near Kruger National Park until 2008.

Louton's ministry has been endorsed by large churches in the Midwestern United States.

Personal life

Louton married Barbara Ann Hughes, the daughter of the Reverend Ralph P. Hughes on February 1, 1958. The couple has four children.