Biography of Frank Fay Eddy, Unitarian Minister

I've been doing some searching for older Unitarians and have found one in some online news clippings. This one in particular is more of the modern Unitarian-Universalist bent. In fact, he served in both Unitarian and Universalist churches.

Frank Fay Eddy, born in 1870 in Charlott, Michigan, the son of Dennis and Harriet J. Eddy (brother of Ion, b. 1858. He earned a Bachelors in Divinity from Tufts University on June 21, 1899, and was a Unitarian minister in Halifax, NS, Salt Lake City, Utah and Eugene and Salem, OR. (Which means Unitarians were either more adventurous or in great demand at the time.) The Universalist Register of 1898 lists him as a registered minister in that faith as of 1896 in Neenah, Wisconsin. He resigned as pastor of the First Universalist Church in Waterville, Maine in late 1898. By 1905, he was living in Salt Lake City. He was in Wisconsin in 1908, where he had a son, Pylter with his wife Fanny (Gefford) Eddy (who was from Canada) on Sept. 1, 1896.

The "Pacific Unitarian" in March, 1921 reported that he had not preached "for some time" but was returning to active ministry in March, 1921 as pastor of churches in Eugene AND Salem at once. That August, he attended the Harvard Summer School of Theology. That same journal notes that he "develops every possible point of contact with student life" with students from the nearby University of Oregon, "and chooses his sermon themes to meet the problems in the mind of the thoughtful collegean."

He left the ministry around 1927 to become a freelance writer and publicist. He also tried his hand at ranching for about ten years before working as a reporter for the Bellingham Herald in Washington State, according to an article in the Eugene Register-Guard on Oct. 31, 1929. In 1928, he ran in the Republican (!) primary for Assessor. Not sure if he won or not.

Eddy and his wife and both appear in the 1930 Census for Eugene, OR, and the 1940 Census puts him in Port Orford, Curry, OR. (with their grandson, Arthur, b. ca. 1923, living with them) He died on May 30, 1940. She is mentioned in news reports as late as March, 1958. They had a child in Oakland, ME on July 16, 1900, but it's unclear if that child survived.

A 1905 article in a Catholic paper takes him to task, though (in a rather snarky manner) saying of Eddy's preaching about nature, "There is no need of scripture to enter into the usual Unitarian sermon. Unitarianism does not pretend to be a religious religion. It would not be displeased to be called a nature religion. Reflecting that Rev. Eddy has only recently returned from the forests, it might not be amiss to call it an out-of-door religion.

Therefore we are not astonished at the confession he makes of the inadequacy of the Bible to reach out and grasp the sublime ideas of the man turned loose upon nature. It's true that the stones preach sermons and the mountains proclaim the majesty of God. But ... these literary treats fail to fulfill the command for divine worship on the Sabbath." That article, and others, nonetheless acknowledge that he was an amazing orator and great writer of sermons.

At Easter services in 1905, Eddy, preaching at First Unitarian Church in Salt Lake City, said of Jesus' resurrection: "When the spirit fled from the broken body of Jesus on the cross, to my mind, his life ended as absolutely as that of any man who arrives at the helm of death, and ends what we call mortal life. Some here may believe in the resurrection of Christ as a fact of stupdendous significance in human history. Others, like myself, may look upon it as a fondly cherished legend and as an unsubstantial basis for religious truth. Some may hold to the theory of bodily resurrection and others to that of a purely spiritual resurrection. it all depends on the temper of our minds and the light in which we view the evidence. But it is possible for us to consider a rising of Christ that will involve us in no sea of difficulties, about which there can be no wide difference of opinion. I speak  of that spriit of life which we have learned to call Christ-like, which is countless ages older than Christ and has been lived by an innumerable host of noble men and women, pagan and Christian, since his death."

On the Apostle Paul, Eddy wrote (in the July 3, 1906 edition of the Deseret News) "I think of him a very much mistaken man, and I cannot but regard it as a misfortune to humanity that he succeeded in imposing his thought so mightily on the plastic early churches. The theology which was quarried out of the mine of Paul's thought is to my mind a misfortune. I certainly do not believe Paul to have been in any peculiar sense inspired. As for his conversion probably he had been long thinking about the new sect of Christians and on his way to Damascus suffered a sunstroke and superstition did the rest."

In one 1927 sermon, he spoke against American and British imperialism. Oh, how nothing changes. :-)