1. George Sherwood Eddy was an American Protestant missionary, administrator and educator.
27 Facts About Sherwood Eddy
1. 2.
Sherwood Eddy authored numerous works and traveled extensively to promote dialogue and understanding between missionaries and local communities, particularly in Asia and the Middle East.
3.
Sherwood Eddy played a role in establishing networks of Christian intellectuals across different regions.
4.
George Sherwood Eddy was born on January 19,1871, to George Alfred Eddy and Margaret Louise Norton at Leavenworth, Kansas.
5.
Sherwood Eddy's father was a businessman and was active in civil affairs, and his family had roots in the Northeastern United States.
6.
Sherwood Eddy married Alice Maud Harriet Arden on November 10,1898.
7.
Sherwood Eddy had had a religious experience in 1889 at the Northfield conference.
8.
Sherwood Eddy 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.
9.
Sherwood 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.
10.
Sherwood Eddy then attended Princeton Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1896.
11.
Sherwood Eddy was one of the first of sixteen thousand student volunteers who emerged from the leading universities of the US and Europe to serve as Christian missionaries across the world.
12.
Sherwood Eddy served as its secretary for the next 15 years.
13.
In 1897, Sherwood Eddy took a ship from Madras to Calcutta where he met and debated Swami Vivekananda on Christianity and Hinduism.
14.
Whilst in India, Sherwood Eddy attempted to convert Hindus to Christianity; in order not to offend the high caste Hindus, he converted to vegetarianism.
15.
Sherwood Eddy 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.
16.
Sherwood Eddy is known for his works with the Oxford Group evangelical group, a predecessor to Alcoholics Anonymous.
17.
In 1931, Sherwood Eddy stopped his career with the YMCA where he had spent 35 years as a volunteer.
18.
Sherwood Eddy 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.
19.
In 1949, Sherwood Eddy moved to Jacksonville, Illinois, and taught at Illinois College and MacMurray College.
20.
In 1897, Sherwood Eddy experienced a personal and spiritual crisis that profoundly changed his vision of missionary work.
21.
Sherwood Eddy understood that his argumentative, apologetic approach could not be very successful because it created a defensive attitude among his listeners.
22.
Sherwood Eddy was among the first to understand the aspirations of colonized peoples for self-determination and the need to appoint local leaders to lead local churches.
23.
Sherwood Eddy was the only non-Indian present at its founding conference in Serampore.
24.
Sherwood Eddy appears there as a pioneer of ecumenism between Protestant churches; although this had been the YMCA's policy since their inception, the merger of actual churches in India was one of the first achievements of this type ever.
25.
Sherwood Eddy was celibate all his life, he eschewed all medical care and relied on his belief in the healing powers of God.
26.
Sherwood Eddy stated that he had seen God working miraculously in response to prayer.
27.
Sherwood Eddy wrote other works which were published in England and India.