Switch to EncyclopediaClose XHERRON, GEORGE DAVIS: 1862-1925.
"George Davis Herron (Jan. 21, 1862-Oct. 9, 1925), clergyman, lecturer, and writer, was born at
Montezuma, Ind., of devoutly religious
parents of Scotch origin, William and Isabella
(Davis) Herron. His childhood he describes as obsessed with
premonitions of a religious world mission, out of which, perhaps, grew the vivid and
passionate conviction of messiahship and of an imminent kingdom of heaven on earth
which in changing forms dominated his mature life. He attended the preparatory
department of Ripon College, Ripon, Wis., from 1879 to
1882, working at the printer's trade to secure funds. In 1883 he married Mary Everhard and
entered the ministry. His further education consisted of reading and independent
reflection.
"Herron first attracted public notice in 1891 when as pastor of the First Congregational
Church of Lake City,
Minn., he addressed the
state Association of Congregational Ministers, meeting at Minneapolis, upon the theme: 'The Message of Jesus to Men of
Wealth.' This address, published that same year, was an earnest and moving
appeal for the application of Christian ethics to business, and resulted in
Herron's being called to the pastorate of the First Congregational
Church of Burlington,
Ia. Seventeen months
later a professorship of applied Christianity was founded for his occupancy in
Iowa College (later Grinnell) by Mrs. E. D.
Rand of Burlington. During the six years of his service Iowa College
became the center of nation-wide interest because of his attempt to translate
Christianity into social, political, and economic terms. He brought to this work a
fervor and eloquence which attracted students and impressed many men and women of
insight and influence. His scathing criticism of existing institutions aroused
bitter antagonism, however, and ultimately alienated many of his most loyal
supporters.
"As a consequence, he resigned his professorship in 1899. Joining the Socialist party, he tried to organize within it a
'social crusade,' which should give religious character to the
movement. Mrs. E. D. Rand and her daughter, Carrie
Rand, cooperated with him in various undertakings to this end in Chicago and in New York. Partly through his influence the Rand School of Social
Sciences was founded in New York City in 1906 by Mrs.
Rand. In March 1901 his wife divorced him
for 'cruelty culminating in desertion,' and was given for the
support of herself and the five children the personal fortune of Carrie
Rand, amounting to sixty thousand dollars. On May 25, 1901, he and Carrie Rand
were married in New York City by a ceremony, wherein 'each chose the other as
companion,' thus dramatizing his avowed opposition to 'all
coercive institutions.' He was at once deposed from the ministry and
shortly afterward took up permanent residence with his wife and her mother upon an
estate near Fiesole, Italy …
"Like many Socialists, he viewed the World War at its outbreak as the
capitalist catastrophe prophesied by Karl Marx. Later, however,
he became violently anti-German, abandoned his pre-war platform, and broke with the
Socialist party for its tolerance of Germany and of Bolshevism, trying even to divert from the Rand
School the funds of the Rand estate. America's entrance into the
war he envisioned as a 'sacred crusade' wherein 'for the
first time in the earth's annals, a great and powerful people has gone to
war for humanity' … Of Woodrow Wilson he
wrote an extravagant eulogy, Woodrow Wilson and the
World's Peace (1917). During the negotiations for
peace he appears to have had a large place in the confidence of the German
emissaries and of President Wilson. He influenced the German
representatives to trust Wilson's power to enforce
upon the Allies conditions favorable to Germany… Early in the Russian Revolution he seems to have been
favorable to the Bolshevists but he soon became alienated from their program.
President Wilson's appointment of
Herron and William Alien White as
America's representatives to the abortive Prinkipo Conference aroused a
storm of protest in the American press, based chiefly upon
Herron's views regarding marriage. When the terms
of peace became known he was inevitably discredited with both radicals and
conservatives and was bitterly hated in Prussia. He turned to Italy as a final Utopian hope and in 1920 published in periodicals of Europe and America his
'ecstatic confidence' that Italy would become a 'more
Christly society than the world has yet known.' On the death of his second
wife in 1914, he married Friede B.
Schoeberle. His books are for the most part collections of sermons and
lectures, or reprints of articles in American and European periodicals …
His war papers, two volumes of which were sealed for twenty- five years, were
deposited in the Hoover Library of Stanford University. He died
at Munich, Bavaria, in his sixty-fourth year …"
Condensed from C. M. S., Dictionary of American Biography,
Vol. VIII.
- The Larger Christ. Chicago,
1891.
Search "The Larger Christ" by HERRON, GEORGE DAVIS: 1862-1925. in:
Close X - The Message of Jesus to Men of Wealth. New
York, 1891.
Search "The Message of Jesus to Men of Wealth" by HERRON, GEORGE DAVIS: 1862-1925. in:
Close X - The Call of the Cross; Four College Sermons.
New York, 1892.
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Close X - A Plea for the Gospel. New York,
1892.
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Close X - The New Redemption: a Call to the Church to Reconstruct
Society According to the Gospel of Christ. New
York, 1893.
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Society According to the Gospel of Christ" by HERRON, GEORGE DAVIS: 1862-1925. in:
Close X - The Christian Society. Chicago,
1894.
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Close X - The Christian State: a Political Vision of Christ: a Course
of Six Lectures Delivered in Churches in Various American Cities.
New York, 1895.
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of Six Lectures Delivered in Churches in Various American Cities" by HERRON, GEORGE DAVIS: 1862-1925. in:
Close X - Social Meanings of Religious Experiences.
New York, 1896.
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Close X - Between Caesar and Jesus. New
York, 1899.
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Close X - Why I Am a Socialist. Chicago,
1900.
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Close X - Wagner and Parsifal. 1903.
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Close X - The Day of Judgment. Chicago,
1904.
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Close X - From Revolution to Revolution: Address in Memory of Paris
Commune, 1871. Chicago, 1907.
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Commune, 1871" by HERRON, GEORGE DAVIS: 1862-1925. in:
Close X - Woodrow Wilson and the World's Peace.
New York, 1917.
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Close X - The Menace of Peace. New York,
1917.
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Close X - Germanism and the American Crusade. New
York, 1918.
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Close X - Greater War. New York, 1919.
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Close X - The Defeat in the Victory.
London, 1921.
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Close X - The Revival of Italy. London,
1922.
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Close X - War and Peace Under Socialism.
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