Background
Charles Parkhurst was born on October 29, 1845 in Sharon, Windsor County, Vermont, United States. He was a son of Chester and Sarah Ann (Barnard) Parkhurst.
Charles Parkhurst was born on October 29, 1845 in Sharon, Windsor County, Vermont, United States. He was a son of Chester and Sarah Ann (Barnard) Parkhurst.
After preliminary education in the country schools, Charles Parkhurst began the study of the law at an early age. He was admitted to the bar, and practised for five years at Claremont, New Hampshire. Becoming convinced that his proper vocation was the Methodist ministry, he began his preparation for college at Kimball Union Academy, Meriden, New Hampshire, being at the same time actively engaged in preaching.
Charles Parkhurst received his first preacher's license in 1873, joined the Vermont Conference in 1875, was ordained deacon in 1877, and in 1879, the year after his graduation from Dartmouth College, was advanced to elder's orders. After two years spent in the study of Theology at Andover Seminary he transferred to Boston University and supplied the Methodist Church at Auburndale while a student in the theological department. The next ten years he spent in prominent appointments in the Vermont and New Hampshire conferences. In 1888 he was called from his pastorate in Dover, New Hampshire, to the editorship of Zion's Herald, a weekly newspaper owned and controlled by the Wesleyan Association of Boston and devoted to the promotion of the interests of the Methodist Church in New England.
Attention to Charles Parkhurst's literary ability had been attracted by his articles in the religious papers, especially by those written during a tour in Europe. He entered upon his editorship at the age of forty-three, in the prime of his physical and mental maturity, and maintained the paper as one of the foremost religious journals of the entire country for thirty - one years until April 1919, when he resigned. During the major part of his term of office he had no associate editor and his paper, whose leading articles he always wrote, became largely his personal organ. He took few vacations and set strict limits to his outside appointments, so that Zion's Herald was in a peculiar sense his life work. He had the courage of his convictions, marked qualities of religious and intellectual leadership, and a rare discernment of the vital issues of the day. His successor, in an article occasioned by Parkhurst's death, enumerated five outstanding issues of his editorship.
These were the vigorous espousal of the temperance cause, social and industrial reforms: the area plan for episcopal supervision within the Methodist Church, the rights of colored members of that communion, with the appointment of colored bishops, and the reunion of Methodism North and South. All these questions, highly controversial in their nature, he handled with such wisdom that much advance was made. To these at least one other issue of great importance should be added. The period of his editorship was a time of theological transition resulting from the advance of science and the application of historical and critical methods to the study of the Bible. Parkhurst presented to his readers the sure results of modern scholarship and interpreted them in such a way that those questions which caused turmoil in other communions were to a considerable degree avoided. With him the essence of religion was moral and spiritual rather than dogmatic.
Charles Parhurst was fearless in his discussion of Methodist doctrine and discipline, his view of the church was broad. Charles Parkhurst died on February 27, 1921.
On January 2, 1868, Charles Parkhurst married Lucia A. Tyler of Sharon, Vermont. They had one son and one daughter.