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Sherwood Eddy
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Sherwood Eddy
George Sherwood Eddy (1871–1963) was an American Protestant missionary, administrator and educator. He authored numerous works and traveled extensively to promote dialogue and understanding between missionaries and local communities, particularly in Asia and the Middle East. He played a role in establishing networks of Christian intellectuals across different regions. His contributions to Protestant communities in the United States and abroad have been recognized as influential. From the 1930s onwards, he became a Christian socialist.
George Sherwood Eddy was born on January 19, 1871, to George Alfred Eddy and Margaret Louise Norton at Leavenworth, Kansas. His father was a businessman and was active in civil affairs, and his family had roots in the Northeastern United States. Eddy attended Phillips Andover Academy, and graduated Yale College with a degree in engineering in 1891. Eddy married Alice Maud Harriet Arden (1873–1945) on November 10, 1898. They were the parents of two children, Margaret and Arden. After Alice's death, he married Catherine Louise Gates in 1946.
Eddy had had a religious experience in 1889 at the Northfield conference. Therefore, after completing his engineering training he attended Union Theological Seminary (1891–1893) in New York. He also enlisted in the Student Volunteer Movement, which sought to "evangelize the world in this generation" and worked on the staff of a local Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). In 1893-1894 he served as a traveling secretary for the Student Volunteer Movement in the United States. Eddy's father died in 1894, leaving him an inheritance that made him financially independent and enabled him to work for the causes he believed in without concern for finances. He then attended Princeton Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1896. In spite of his theology studies he always kept to his line to serve as a committed layman and a missionary.
Eddy was one of the first of sixteen thousand student volunteers who emerged from the leading universities of the U.S. and Europe to serve as Christian missionaries across the world. In 1896, he went to India and worked at the YMCA-organized Indian Student Volunteer Movement. He served as its secretary for the next 15 years. In 1897, Eddy took a ship from Madras to Calcutta where he met and debated Swami Vivekananda on Christianity and Hinduism. Whilst in India, Eddy attempted to convert Hindus to Christianity; in order not to offend the high caste Hindus, he converted to vegetarianism.
Working among the poor and outcasts of India, he mastered the Tamil language and served as a traveling evangelist among the students and masses of southern India beginning in Palamcottah. In 1911, he was appointed secretary for Asia by the International Committee, and he divided his time between evangelistic campaigns in Asia and fund-raising in North America. He spent the next 15 years doing student evangelistic work across Asia—from China, Japan, and the Philippines, through the Near East to Turkey, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, and then to czarist Russia—and made 15 trips to the Soviet Russia. He admired the Soviet system and refused to believe reports of famine; in 1937, he agreed that the victims of Stalin's show trials were traitors as charged. His was criticized as a "fellow traveler."
From 1915 to 1917, he was itinerant secretary of the YMCAs with the British and American armed forces in France. In 1916, he received two honorary degrees, one from Wooster College and the other from Yale University. From 1921 to 1957, he conducted training courses for religious, political and business leaders in England and America; he addressed 1,500 American leaders. He is also known for his works with the Oxford Group evangelical group, a predecessor to Alcoholics Anonymous.
In 1931, Sherwood Eddy stopped his career with the YMCA where he had spent 35 years as a volunteer. He had become a member of the Fellowship of Socialist Christians which was organized in the early 1930s by Reinhold Niebuhr and others on the left. Later it changed its name to Frontier Fellowship and then to Christian Action. The main supporters of the Fellowship in the early days included Eddy, Eduard Heimann, Paul Tillich and Rose Terlin. In its early days the group thought capitalist individualism was incompatible with Christian ethics. Although not under Communist control, the group acknowledged Karl Marx's social philosophy.
In 1936, he founded and led with the Reverend Sam H. Franklin the Delta and Providence Cooperative Farms in Bolivar County, Mississippi, and Holmes County, Mississippi, in 1939, respectively. The farms helped southern sharecroppers out of their economic plight (caused in part by side effects of the New Deal's Agricultural Adjustment Administration). Eddy drew considerable support from his friend, the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who once called the farms "the most significant experiment in social Christianity now being conducted in America."
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Sherwood Eddy
George Sherwood Eddy (1871–1963) was an American Protestant missionary, administrator and educator. He authored numerous works and traveled extensively to promote dialogue and understanding between missionaries and local communities, particularly in Asia and the Middle East. He played a role in establishing networks of Christian intellectuals across different regions. His contributions to Protestant communities in the United States and abroad have been recognized as influential. From the 1930s onwards, he became a Christian socialist.
George Sherwood Eddy was born on January 19, 1871, to George Alfred Eddy and Margaret Louise Norton at Leavenworth, Kansas. His father was a businessman and was active in civil affairs, and his family had roots in the Northeastern United States. Eddy attended Phillips Andover Academy, and graduated Yale College with a degree in engineering in 1891. Eddy married Alice Maud Harriet Arden (1873–1945) on November 10, 1898. They were the parents of two children, Margaret and Arden. After Alice's death, he married Catherine Louise Gates in 1946.
Eddy had had a religious experience in 1889 at the Northfield conference. Therefore, after completing his engineering training he attended Union Theological Seminary (1891–1893) in New York. He also enlisted in the Student Volunteer Movement, which sought to "evangelize the world in this generation" and worked on the staff of a local Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). In 1893-1894 he served as a traveling secretary for the Student Volunteer Movement in the United States. Eddy's father died in 1894, leaving him an inheritance that made him financially independent and enabled him to work for the causes he believed in without concern for finances. He then attended Princeton Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1896. In spite of his theology studies he always kept to his line to serve as a committed layman and a missionary.
Eddy was one of the first of sixteen thousand student volunteers who emerged from the leading universities of the U.S. and Europe to serve as Christian missionaries across the world. In 1896, he went to India and worked at the YMCA-organized Indian Student Volunteer Movement. He served as its secretary for the next 15 years. In 1897, Eddy took a ship from Madras to Calcutta where he met and debated Swami Vivekananda on Christianity and Hinduism. Whilst in India, Eddy attempted to convert Hindus to Christianity; in order not to offend the high caste Hindus, he converted to vegetarianism.
Working among the poor and outcasts of India, he mastered the Tamil language and served as a traveling evangelist among the students and masses of southern India beginning in Palamcottah. In 1911, he was appointed secretary for Asia by the International Committee, and he divided his time between evangelistic campaigns in Asia and fund-raising in North America. He spent the next 15 years doing student evangelistic work across Asia—from China, Japan, and the Philippines, through the Near East to Turkey, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, and then to czarist Russia—and made 15 trips to the Soviet Russia. He admired the Soviet system and refused to believe reports of famine; in 1937, he agreed that the victims of Stalin's show trials were traitors as charged. His was criticized as a "fellow traveler."
From 1915 to 1917, he was itinerant secretary of the YMCAs with the British and American armed forces in France. In 1916, he received two honorary degrees, one from Wooster College and the other from Yale University. From 1921 to 1957, he conducted training courses for religious, political and business leaders in England and America; he addressed 1,500 American leaders. He is also known for his works with the Oxford Group evangelical group, a predecessor to Alcoholics Anonymous.
In 1931, Sherwood Eddy stopped his career with the YMCA where he had spent 35 years as a volunteer. He had become a member of the Fellowship of Socialist Christians which was organized in the early 1930s by Reinhold Niebuhr and others on the left. Later it changed its name to Frontier Fellowship and then to Christian Action. The main supporters of the Fellowship in the early days included Eddy, Eduard Heimann, Paul Tillich and Rose Terlin. In its early days the group thought capitalist individualism was incompatible with Christian ethics. Although not under Communist control, the group acknowledged Karl Marx's social philosophy.
In 1936, he founded and led with the Reverend Sam H. Franklin the Delta and Providence Cooperative Farms in Bolivar County, Mississippi, and Holmes County, Mississippi, in 1939, respectively. The farms helped southern sharecroppers out of their economic plight (caused in part by side effects of the New Deal's Agricultural Adjustment Administration). Eddy drew considerable support from his friend, the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who once called the farms "the most significant experiment in social Christianity now being conducted in America."
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