William Dwight Porter Bliss

Background

William Bliss was born on August, 20, 1856, in Istanbul (then Constantinople), Turkey to the family of the missionaries, Edwin Elisha Bliss and Isabella Holmes Porter.

Education

William Dwight Porter Bliss was educated at Robert College, Constantinople and Phillips Academy, Andover. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Amherst College in 1878 and his Doctor of Divinity from the Hartford Theological Seminary in 1882.

Career

In 1890, William Dwight Porter Bliss founded the Church of the Carpenter, in Boston, of which for four years he was the rector. Other pastorates were at San Gabriel, California, 1898; Amityville, Long Island, 1902-1906, and West Orange, New Jersey, 1910-1914.

Bliss’s activities in social service covered a broad range. His lecture trips carried him to almost every State of the Union. In 1887, he was the Labor Party candidate for lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts; in 1894 national lecturer for the Christian Socialist Union and in 1899 president of the National Social Reform Union. From 1907 to 1909 he was an investigator for the United States Bureau of Labor and from 1909 to 1914 he was connected with Dr. Josiah Strong's American Institute of Social Service.

Bliss's labors as writer, compiler, and editor were, when considered in the light of his other activities, prodigious. In 1891, he published collections of the social writings of Ruskin and Mill under the titles The Communism of John Ruskin and Socialism, by John Stuart Mill, and also an abridgment of Thorold Rogers's Six Centuries of Work and Wages. In collaboration with Dr. Strong he produced Studies in the Gospel of the Kingdom and for a year (1895-1896) edited a monthly periodical, The American Fabian.

During the World War Bliss was in charge of educational work among interned French and Belgian soldiers in Switzerland. From 1921 to 1925 he was rector of St. Martha's Church in New York City. Toward the end of his pastorate his health failed. He died, after a lingering illness, in St. Luke's Hospital, and his funeral was held in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

William Bliss was founder of the first Christian Socialist Society in the United States in 1889, and in the same year started a propagandist periodical, The Dawn, which he edited until 1896. He also produced the Handbook of Socialism (1896), the Encyclopedia of Social Reform (1897), and the third volume of Social Progress, a Year Book (1906).

Achievements

• William Dwight Porter Bliss is remembered is as an important American social reformer and organizer of Christian Socialist societies. He is honored together with his comrade Richard Theodore Ely with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the United States Episcopal Church on October 8.

Works

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• book

  • What Is Christian Socialism? 1895
  • The New Encyclopedia of Social Reform 1902
  • A Handbook of Socialism 1895
  • The communism of John Ruskin 1891
  • History of Women in Trade Unions 1974
  • Socialism in the Church of England 1888
  • British supplement to The new encyclopedia of social reform 1908
  • Six Centuries of Work and Wages: A History of English Labor 1884

Religion

As a Congregationalist William Bliss was for a time pastor of a church in Denver and later in South Natick, Massachussets. In 1886, he joined the Episcopal Church and for the years 1887-1890 was the rector of Grace Church, South Boston.

Politics

In the late 1880s Bliss became deeply interested in Christian Socialism, a movement intent upon applying the teachings of Jesus to the social dislocations caused by industrialization and urbanization. Bliss organized the first United States Christian Socialist Society in 1889 and edited its publication, The Dawn. He unsuccessfully ran for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1887 on the Labor Party ticket.

Views

From his youth Bliss was deeply influenced by the Christian Socialist doctrines of Maurice and Kingsley, of which he continued an active exponent for the remainder of his life. He believed what he professed; he was a missionary who carried his religion into the workaday world.

Membership

William Dwight Porter Bliss was a creator of the Society of Christian Socialists and a member of the American Institute of Social Service.

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  Society of Christian Socialists , United States

• American Institute of Social Service , United States

Personality

Bliss was an omnivorous reader and a tireless propagandist. Much of his editorial work, however, was too hurried to take first rank in scholarship. He was impatient to get things done; if the product was honest and a contribution to human welfare, it would do. Unaggressive, but persistent, he preached his gospel of social salvation to all who would listen or read, and did it with a sheer disregard of personal consequences. He died a poor man. Bliss is best remembered for his moral force, his passion for justice, his crystalline sincerity and perfect disinterestedness.

Interests

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Frederick Denison Maurice, Charles Kingsley

Connections

On June 30, 1884, in London Bliss married Mary Pangalo of Constantinople.

Father:

Edwin Elisha Bliss

Mother:

Isabella Holmes Porter

Sister:

Isabella Porter Bliss Dwight

Sister:

Laura Arixene Bliss Ward

Sister:

Mary Abigail Bliss Dwight

Wife:

Mary Pangalo

supporter:

Richard Ely

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: Volume 212
  2011