Series 8 - Clippings, Memos and Reports

Claris Edwin Silcox (1888-1961) was a Congregational/United Church minister, a scholar, writer and a church administrator. He was born in Embro, Ontario, to a prominent Congregational family. He attended primary and secondary schools in Paris, Ontario before earning a B.A. in English and History at the University of Toronto in 1909. He then attended Brown University (Rhode Island), earning an M.A. While there, he served for three years as General Secretary of the Brown Christian Association. From 1912-1914 he was a student of theology at Andover Seminary (Massachusetts) earning an S.T.B. degree and serving as an Assistant Minister at Central Church (Boston) from 1912-1913. He married Ethel Audrey Smith of Toronto in 1914, and was ordained that same year. He served for eleven years at Congregational churches new Newport, R.I. (1914-1920), Fairfield, Conn. (1920-1921), and Forest Hills Gardens, N.Y. (1923-1925). He then joined the staff of the Inquiry (formerly called National Conference on the Christian Way of Life). In 1927 he made "The Fairfield Experiment", a study on prejudices between religions, and in 1929 conducted the first seminar on religious differences at Columbia University. From 1929-1930 he was engaged in a survey on the relations between the Y.M.C.A. and the churches in Latin America. He returned to Canada in 1930 where he undertook a 3-year study of the causes and consequences of the Church Union Movement. The Institute of Social and Religious Research then appointed him director of a study of the relations of the three major religious groups in the United States and Canada, and the results of this study were published in 1934. He was the General Secretary of the Social Service Council of Canada, 1934-1940 during which time he prepared the way for the formation of the Canadian Council of Churches. He was Director of the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews, 1940-1946. From 1941-1943 he was editor of Food for Thought, the official publication of the Canadian Association of Adult Education. Queen's University awarded him his doctorate in divinity in 1939. He married Helen Crescentia Tully in 1948, his first wife, Audrey having predeceased him. He wrote, edited, preached, and lectured until his death in 1961.