Eddy, G[eorge] Sherwood (1871-1963)

American Student Missionary Leader and Evangelist

Born in Leavenworth, Kansas, Eddy was educated at Yale, Union Theological Seminary, and Princeton Theological Seminary. Inspired by Dwight L. Moody’s appeal to a Northfield (Massachusetts) student conference and by the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM) watchword “the evangelization of the world in this generation,” he promoted the student missionary cause on American and Canadian college campuses as an SVM secretary in 1893 and 1894. He went to India in 1896 as a secretary for the SVM and YMCA under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and from 1911 he served as the YMCA’s chief evangelist in Asia. With the outbreak of World War I, he returned to Europe as a YMCA secretary with British and American armies.

“The war did something to me,” Eddy recalled in 1934; “I could never be quite the same again.” Emerging as a pacifist and socialist, he promoted a radical social gospel during the years before his retirement from the YMCA in 1931. From 1921 to 1957 he led the influential Fellowship for a Christian Social Order, a liberal organization that hosted traveling seminars for American leaders to England, Europe, and the Soviet Union in search of Christian solutions to the reformation of industrial capitalism. He also helped to organize the Christian Socialist Delta Cooperative Farms in 1936, a project in Mississippi that provided land for families of evicted tenant farmers. His latter-day explorations of psychic evidence for life after death are described in his book You Will Survive after Death (1950).

Susan Billington Harper, “Eddy, G(eorge) Sherwood,” in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 193-194.

This article is reprinted from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, Macmillan Reference USA, copyright © 1998. Gerald H. Anderson, by permission of Macmillan Reference USA, New York, NY. All rights reserved.

Bibliography

Digital

Eddy, Sherwood. The Supreme Decision of the Christian Student: or, The Choice of a Life Work. Chicago: The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 1895.

_____. The Opportunity of the Hour. New York: Student Volunteer Movement, 1900.

_____. India Awakening. New York: Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada, 1911.

_____. How China’s Leaders Received the Gospel. New York: The Foreign Department of the International Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association [1912].

_____. The New Era in Asia. New York: Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada, 1913.

_____. The Students of Asia. New York: Student Volunteer Movement for Missions, 1915.

_____. Suffering and the War. London: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1916.

_____. With Our Soldiers in France. New York: Association Press, 1917.

_____. The Right to Fight: The Moral Grounds of War. New York: Association Press, 1918.

_____. Everybody’s World. New York: George H. Doran Company, 1920.

_____. America: Its Problems and Perils. New York: George H. Doran Company, 1922.

_____. Facing the Crisis: A Study win Present Day Social and Religious Problems. New York: Association Press, 1922.

_____. The New World of Labor. New York: George H. Doran and Company, 1923.

_____. Russia: A Warning and a Challenge. New York: George H. Doran and Company, 1923.

_____. The Challenge of Russia. New York: Farrar and Rinehard, 1931.

_____. The Challenge of the East: Asia in Revolution. New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1932.

_____. A Door of Opportunity, or An American Adventure in Cooperation with Sharecroppers. New York: Association Press, [1937].

_____. Revolutionary Christianity. Chicago: Willett, Clark, and Company, 1939.

_____. I Have Seen God Do It. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1940.

_____. God in History. New York: Association Press, 1947.

Primary

Eddy, Sherwood. Studies in the Epistles and Revelation of St. John. London: [Association Press], 1910.

_____. How to Find God. Calcutta: Association Press, 1919.

_____. The Supreme Decision of the Christian Student. New York: Interchurch World Movement of North America, 1920.

_____. Doubt. New York: Association Press, 1921.

Eddy, Sherwood and Kirby Page. The Abolition of War. New York: G. H. Doran, 1924.

Eddy, Sherwood. Jesus Christ: What is His Significance? New York: G. H. Doran, 1924.

_____. Youth and World Problems. New York: G. H. Doran, 1924.

_____. Victory over Temptation: How Christ Helps a Man to Achieve Character. New York: G. H. Doran, 1924.

_____. Religion and Social Justice. New York: G. H. Doran, 1927.

_____. The World’s Danger Zone. New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1932.

_____. The Challenge of Europe. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1934.

_____. A Pilgrimage of Ideas: or, The Re-Education of Sherwood Eddy. London: Allen and Unwin, 1935.

_____. Europe Today. New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1937.

Eddy, Sherwood and Kirby Page. Creative Pioneers: Building a New Society through Adventurous Vocational and Avocations on the Frontiers of Industrial Relations, the Political Movement, the Co-operative Movement, and Race Relations, and Socialized Religion. New York: Association Press, 1937.

Eddy, Sherwood. The Kingdom of God and the American Dream. New York: Harper, 1941.

_____. A Century with Youth: A History of the Y.M.C.A. from 1844 to 1944. New York: Association Press, 1944.

_____. I Have Seen God Work in China: Personal Impressions from Three Decades with the Chinese. New York: [Association Press], 1944.

_____. A Portrait of Jesus: A Twentieth Century Interpretation of Christ. London: Allen and Unwin, 1945.

_____. You Will Survive After Death. Evanston, IL: Clark Publishing Company, 1950.

Secondary

Nutt, Rick L. The Whole Gospel for the Whole World: Sherwood Eddy and the American Protestant Mission. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1998.

Portrait

Duke University Library Digital Collection.