James Thayer Addison


James Thayer Addison was a priest in the Episcopal Church. His career included serving as an Episcopal Church missionary, as a professor in the Episcopal Theological School, as a military chaplain during World War I, and as a prolific writer.

Early life and education

Addison was born on March 21, 1887 in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.
Addison’s father was The Rev. Charles Morris Addison who was an Episcopal parish priest and author. His mother was Ada Thayer Addison.
From 1900 to 1905, Addison attended and graduated from the Groton School. He graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1909. Immediately after graduating from Harvard, Addison went to China where he taught for a year in St. John's University, Shanghai.
After his year in Shanghai, Addison returned to the United States and entered the Episcopal Theological School. He graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity degree 1913. Right after graduating, Addison was ordained a deacon in the Episcopal Church on June 7, 1913. As soon as he was ordained deacon, he went as a missionary to Oklahoma where he was ordained a priest on December 13, 1913.
During his time in Oklahoma, 1913-1915, Addison was minister in charge of St. Mark’s Church, Nowata, Oklahoma and in Claremore, Oklahoma. Both of these churches were in Indian Territory. Addison’s bishop, Theodore Payne Thurston, said that the two stations under Addison’s charge “are not only continuing their good record, but are improving upon it.”

Career as professor

After his service in Oklahoma, Addison joined the faculty of the Episcopal Theological School as a lecturer in the History of Religion and Missions, 1915-1918. As such, “he held the only professorship of missions in any Episcopal Church seminary.”
On December 18, 1917, Addison married Margaret Beecher Crocker. They had two daughters: Helen Crocker and Martha Lothrop.
In 1918, Addison temporarily left the Episcopal Theological School to serve as chaplain of the First Gas Regiment, A.E.F. in World War I. At the end of the War in 1919, he returned to his teaching position. He remained in his teaching position until 1940.
After returning from his service as military chaplain, Addison was promoted from lecturer to assistant professor of the History of Religion and Missions.
In 1922, the Episcopal Theological School began a plan of its professor of History of Religion and Missions to a place in the mission field six months every three years. Under this plan, Addison went to China in 1922. He spent the months of March, April and May 1922 teaching at Boone University, Wuchang. Addison resumed teaching his regular courses in the fall of 1922.
In 1926, Addison was promoted to full professor in 1926. He held this position until 1940 when he resigned.
During the academic year of 1932-33, Addison served “as acting Master of Kirkland House” at Harvard University.
In 1940, Addison resigned his position as professor in the Episcopal Theological School in 1940 to take a position with the National Council of the Episcopal Church. During his twenty-five years teaching, Addison had “studied and taught at different times in Japan, China, Egypt, and Lebanon.”

Career as Episcopal Church executive

In 1940, Addison became vice president of the National Council, and director of the Church's Overseas Department. As such, he supervised the Episcopal Church's missionary work in China, Japan, the Philippines, Brazil, Puerto Rico, and other overseas fields.
A 1941 newspaper article called Addison “one of the outstanding present-day authorities on Christian missions in the Episcopal church.” He was also “a leading American authority on Islamic problems.”
In February 1944, at the Annual Meeting of the National Council of the Episcopal Church, the question arose whether to use legacies received by the church to pay off debts or for current missionary work. Bishop Peabody of New York moved that the legacies be used to pay off debts. Addison spoke against the motion saying that “it is sounder to use these legacies actually in the mission field.”
On April 7, 1944, the Archbishop of York arrived in New York City. As representing the Episcopal Church, Addison met him.
On April 25–27, 1944, the National Council of the Episcopal Church, Addison read several “cable and radio-grams” from the Chinese Church. They proposed opening a second St. John’s University in Free China to enable students living in Free China to attend St. John’s without having to go to the St. John’s University located in a Japanese controlled area. While in favor of the proposal, Addison’s motion was that it be endorsed but not founded by the National Council. The National Council endorsed the idea with a token gift of $2,000.
In 1947, poor health compelled Addison to resign his position as vice president of the National Council and executive of the Overseas Department. The Episcopal Church magazine The Living Church, in is report of Addison’s retiring wrote that his travel and study “bore full fruition in planning” the missionary program of the Episcopal Church.
In retirement, Addison continued writing. When he died, he had just completed writing his final book, War, Peace, and the Christian Mind. It was published posthumously.

Honors, positions and tributes

Addison was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.
In Addison’s honor, the James Thayer Addison Fellowship Fund was established. Its income is “to be used for the training of young men and women, members of the Anglican Communion, natives of areas formerly or now a part of the overseas work of the Protestant Episcopal Church, who desire to serve the Church as Church workers, clerical or lay, among their own people.”
Addison was awarded a Doctor of Divinity honorary degree by the Virginia Theological Seminary in 1931.
For many years, he served as a trustee of the American University in Cairo, Egypt.

Illness and Death

On February 8, 1942, while Addison was serving as vice-president of the National Council of the Episcopal Church in charge of Missions, “he suffered a severe heart attack.” The prognosis was “favorable.”
Addison died of a heart attack on February 13, 1953 at his home in Boston, Massachusetts at the age of sixty-five.
His body was cremated with the cremains being placed in the columbarium of Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts, US.
Addison was survived by his wife Margaret, their two daughters, Mrs. Robert M. Hatch, wife of the suffragan bishop of the Diocese of Connecticut, Mrs. Samuel N. McCain Jr., wife of an Episcopal Church missionary in Hawaii, and five grandchildren.

Eulogy

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Henry Knox Sherrill, wrote, “Dr. Addison had many talents. He was a scholar with unusual insight and precision. He wrote clearly and persuasively But most of all he was a consecrated disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. In all that he did so effectively, there was the warmth of deep and single-hearted conviction.”
The Episcopal Church magazine The Living Church, in its report of Addison’s death, wrote the following:
Dr. Addison's missionary convictions were summed up in his classic work, Our Expanding Church. In it he said, “From our point of view, then, as members of a Christian Church in a Christian land, missions mean pioneering. They are the Church in action on the frontiers of religion. Like all pioneering movements missions are a sign of the Church's vitality. The Church is... first and foremost an expeditionary force, an organized body charged with a stirring and difficult campaign. It is a Church militant represented on every front and on every frontier. And among all who are commissioned in that Church by baptism there should prevail the sense of urgent mission, the spirit of unresting advance.”

Works

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Articles