This Week in Texas Methodist History  February 2

Dallas First Methodist Welcomes Radical Christian Socialist, February 1946

The city of Dallas achieved a reputation as one of the most right wing cities in America in the aftermath of World War II.  Local politicians and the Dallas Morning News conflated racial justice with communism and railed against both.

It is therefore; just a little surprising that in February, 1946, First Methodist Dallas hosted one of the most prominent radical Christian Socialists of the era.  The speaker was Sherwood Eddy (1871-1963).  Eddy was born into a wealthy family in Leavenworth, Kansas, and enjoyed fine educational opportunities at Phillips Academy and Yale University.  He had a religious experience in 1889 and although he trained as an engineer, went to Union Theological Seminary.  This led him not to ordination, but to work in the Student Volunteer Movement and the YMCA.  His father’s death in 1894 left him independently wealthy.  He then went to Princeton Seminary, graduating in 1896.  That same year he went to India as a lay missionary with the YMCA’s Student Volunteer Movement.  He mastered the Tamil language and gained the confidence of  Tamil leaders in the anti-colonial movement.  He was eventually appointed to responsibilities beyond India and traveled to China, Japan, the Philippines, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Egypt, Palestine, and czarist Russia. 

He enthusiastically embraced the Russian Revolution and made 15 trips to the Soviet Union.  Those trips resulted in his 1934 book, Russia Today:  What Can We Learn from it?

In 1931 he ended his work with the YMCA and became a member of the Fellowship of Christian Socialists, a group that believed individualist capitalism to be incompatible with the Gospel of Christ.   In 1936 he put his socialistic ideas into practice with agricultural co-ops in Mississippi which were also supported by Eddy’s friend, Reinhold Niebuhr. 

The cooperatives included agricultural operations, a store, credit union, pasteurization plant, educational program, a library, and religious service---all conducted on an interracial basis.   The cooperatives lasted until 1956. 

A man such as Eddy, who had been an apologist for the Soviet show trials and a “fellow traveler” if ever there was one would be an unlikely choice to draw a crowd in Dallas, but that is what happened. 

The crowd at Dallas First Methodist was estimated at 2200 on a Thursday night when he spoke on the topic, “What Christ Means to Me.” 

The appearance was the kickoff for the Dallas District’s implementation of the denominational Crusade For Christ.   The denomination had set a goal of 1,000,000 souls saved, and the Dallas District was using Eddy’s appearance to push the home visitation campaign scheduled for March 4.

Members of the Dallas District Crusade Committee included, Harold F. Boss, Jack V. Folsom, Dave Lacy, Marvin Malone, Roy Farrow, Robert A. Bell, W. J. Evans, and J. B. Oney. 

Just three years later, in 1949, Eddy reduced his travel schedule by moving to Jacksonville, Illinois and joining the faculty of Illinois College and MacMurray College.   He died in Jacksonville on Nov. 4, 1963.