Stanton George Coit was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

-born leader of the Ethical movement in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. He became a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 citizen in 1903.

He was born in Columbus, Ohio

Columbus, Ohio

Columbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...

; studied at Amherst

Amherst College

Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...

, at Columbia

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, and at the Humboldt University of Berlin

Humboldt University of Berlin

The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...

, where he took the degree of Ph.D.. In 1886 he founded the Neighborhood Guild, a settlement house in New York City's Lower East Side

Lower East Side

The Lower East Side, LES, is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by Allen Street, East Houston Street, Essex Street, Canal Street, Eldridge Street, East Broadway, and Grand Street....

 which is now known as the University Settlement House

University Settlement House

University Settlement Society of New York is located at 184 Eldridge Street on New York's Lower East Side...

. Coit was also an aide of Felix Adler in the Society for Ethical Culture.

In 1888, he went to London as minister of the South Place Ethical Society

South Place Ethical Society

The South Place Ethical Society, based in London at Conway Hall, is thought to be the oldest surviving freethought organisation in the world, and is the only remaining Ethical society in the United Kingdom...

 (SPES). He married and settled there, later taking British citizenship. He founded and became president of the West London Ethical Society, began a journal, The Ethical World, and preached in the Queen's Road (Bayswater

Bayswater

Bayswater is an area of west London in the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to the west . It is a built-up district located 3 miles west-north-west of Charing Cross, bordering the north of Hyde Park over Kensington Gardens and having a population density of...

) Ethical Church. Coit's view was that "Ethical Churches" should replace existing churches founded on the basis of religious belief, and that the Church of England

Church of England

The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

 could be turned into such a church.

He was editor of the International Journal of Ethics in 1893-1905, and compiled The Message of Man: A Book of Ethical Scriptures (1902), an Ethical Hymn Book (1905), Responsive Services (1911), and Social Worship (1913), and wrote translations of Georg von Gizycki's works on ethics. In 1906 and 1910, he stood for parliament

Parliament of the United Kingdom

The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...

 as the Independent Labour Party

Labour Party (UK)

The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

 candidate in Wakefield

Wakefield

Wakefield is the main settlement and administrative centre of the City of Wakefield, a metropolitan district of West Yorkshire, England. Located by the River Calder on the eastern edge of the Pennines, the urban area is and had a population of 76,886 in 2001....

. He retired as leader of the Ethical Movement in 1935 to be succeeded by Harold Blackham, and later lived near Eastbourne

Eastbourne

Eastbourne is a large town and borough in East Sussex, on the south coast of England between Brighton and Hastings. The town is situated at the eastern end of the chalk South Downs alongside the high cliff at Beachy Head...

, Sussex

Sussex

Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...

.

Publications

• Die ethische Bewegung in der Religion (1890)
• National Idealism and a State Church (1907)
• National Idealism and the Book of Common Prayer (1908)
• Woman in Church and State (1910)
• The Soul of America (1913)

External links

• Works by Stanton Coit at Project Gutenberg
  Project Gutenberg
  Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...