Henry S. Huntington

Last updated

Henry Strong Huntington Jr. (1882-1981), was a Presbyterian minister who advocated the healthful advantages of nudism. He established the Burgoyne Trail Nudist Camp near Otis, Massachusetts. He was editor of the magazine, The Nudist . He was also an advocate of eugenics.

Contents

Clerical career

Huntington was born in Gorham, Maine, where his father was a Congregational church minister. He graduated from Yale University in 1904 and was ordained as a minister in 1911 at the Auburn Theological Seminary, and became the minister of the Hope Presbyterian Church in Watertown, N.Y. [1]

After his ordination he became survey secretary of the Presbyterian Synod of New York. During World War I, Huntington was a member of the American Red Cross Commission in Palestine. After the war, he became active in the Interchurch World Movement and from 1919 to 1925 he was associate editor of the periodical, Christian Work.

Nudism

Huntington first encountered the nudist movement on a trip to Germany in 1926. His interest continued after later trips to Britain, France and, a further visit to Germany. In 1929, he joined the American League for Physical Culture, an early promoter of organized nudism in the United States. He helped to prepare the league's statement of principles and standards. This statement became the American nudist movement's statement on the meaning and philosophy of nudism.

In 1931, Huntington was elected the first president of the International Nudist Conference, an American group, which later became the National Nudism Organization, and in 1933 he became the first editor of The Nudist magazine, [2] later called Sunshine and Health. In the same year, Huntington, with an associate, the Revd Ilsley Boone, established the Burgoyne Trail Nudist Camp near Otis, Massachusetts. This was one of the first nudist camps in the United States. [3] [4] [5] [6]

In 1932, Huntington addressed the first nudist convention held in the United States, this convention took place in Highland, NY, At that convention Huntington said that "the goodness of man and the possible satisfactoriness of life make the nudist feel that God is a very kind and friendly being.” [1] He later described his forest frolicking with similarly minded friends as “poetry incamate”. [7]

In 1934 he attended the International Nudist Conference in Akron, Ohio at which Ilsley Boone was the president, Huntington was introduced as the editor of the magazine, The Nudist. [2] [8]

Eugenics

Huntington's brother, Ellsworth Huntington, was a Yale University geographer and member of the American Eugenics Society (AES). In 1925 the AES authorized the establishment of three committees, one of which was the Committee on Cooperation with Clergymen. Of the three, it was this one that would become one of the largest and most well-funded of the fourteen standing committees of the Society. The AES named Ellsworth's brother the Revd Henry Huntington to head the clergymen's committee. [7]

It was left to Henry Huntington to develop a program and draft religious leaders into the committee. Huntington had an innate intellectual restlessness which led him to exotic travels and many odd jobs before his editorship at the Christian Work magazine in the early 1920s.

Huntington had been interested in eugenics for some time, and (perhaps under the influence of his brother Ellsworth) had devoted considerable time to studying the major theorists of the movement. He wrote the pamphlet, Baptist Babies, published by the Northern Baptist Convention. This tract was sent to every Baptist minister in the convention. The pamphlet described the eugenics program and made a plea for payments given per child to defray the costs of bearing and raising children, specifically for the clergy. [7]

While in Palestine with the Red Cross Commission in 1916, he wrote to the eugenicist and biologist, Charles Davenport to request copies of the Eugenics Record Office's Record of Family Traits, noting that he was "intensely interested in the practical implications of eugenics” and believed that “we can educate the people here and educate them within a generation” about its importance.

In a letter to potential members of the AES's Committee on Cooperation with Clergymen, Huntington repeated these educational hopes and described the committee as a forum to "work out methods of forwarding the teaching of eugenics through the churches” and to locate “new opportunities for the usefulness of the churches" in the eugenics campaign. By 1927, Huntington had convinced thirty-nine prominent ministers to join the Committee on Cooperation. [7]

Later life

In 1938, Huntington resigned his ministry, declaring himself a humanist and an agnostic; he eventually joined the Philadelphia Ethical Society. [1]

Huntington died in February 1981 at the Unitarian-Universalist House in Philadelphia, where he lived. He was 99 years old. [9] He was survived by two daughters, Alice Allen of Amherst, Mass., Mary of Hightstown, N.J., three sons, Henry S. of Dedham, Mass., Thomas F. of Princeton, N.J. and David C. of Ann Arbor, Mich., 13 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. [1]

Published works

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Naturism</span> Practice and advocacy of social nudity

Naturism is a lifestyle of practicing non-sexual social nudity in private and in public; the word also refers to the cultural movement which advocates and defends that lifestyle. Both may alternatively be called nudism. Though the two terms are broadly interchangeable, nudism emphasizes the practice of nudity, whilst naturism highlights an attitude favoring harmony with nature and respect for the environment, into which that practice is integrated. That said, naturists come from a range of philosophical and cultural backgrounds; there is no single naturist ideology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander Campbell (minister)</span> Scots-Irish American ordained minister (1788–1866)

Alexander Campbell was an Ulster-Scots immigrant who became an ordained minister in the United States and joined his father Thomas Campbell as a leader of a reform effort that is historically known as the Restoration Movement, and by some as the "Stone-Campbell Movement." It resulted in the development of non-denominational Christian churches, which stressed reliance on scripture and few essentials.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baptist General Convention of Texas</span> Baptist body in Texas

The Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT), more commonly known as the Texas Baptists, is a Baptist Christian denomination in the U.S. state of Texas. It is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention and the Baptist World Alliance. Texas Baptist offices are located in the city of Dallas, though convention staff are located across the state. According to a denomination census released in 2023, it claimed 2,038,53 members and 5,375 churches

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Huntington</span>

James Otis Sargent Huntington (1854–1935) was an American Episcopal priest and professed monk who founded the Order of the Holy Cross, a Benedictine monastic order for men, whose mother house is now located in West Park, New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Association for Nude Recreation</span> American naturism advocacy organization

The American Association for Nude Recreation (AANR) is a naturist organization based in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ilsley Boone</span> American social nudity advocate, publisher, editor, and theologian

IlsleySilias Boone (1879–1968) was a charismatic speaker, a powerful organizer, a magazine publisher and the founding father of the American Sunbathing Association (ASA)—later reorganized as the American Association for Nude Recreation (AANR). As a publisher he distributed the first nudist magazine in the United States. That publication eventually led to a challenge to the U.S. Postal Service's ban against sending obscene materials through the mail. Boone took his challenge all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court which struck down the ban.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christian naturism</span> Practise of naturism or nudism by Christians

Christian naturism is the practise of naturism or nudism by Christians.

The Federal Council of Churches, officially the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, was an ecumenical association of Christian denominations in the United States in the early twentieth century. It represented the Anglican, Baptist, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, Methodist, Moravian, Oriental Orthodox, Polish National Catholic, Presbyterian, and Reformed traditions of Christianity. It merged with other ecumenical bodies in 1950 to form the present day National Council of Churches.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ligon Duncan</span> American pastor and scholar

Jennings Ligon Duncan III is an American Presbyterian scholar and pastor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Episcopal Diocese of Virginia</span> Diocese of the Episcopal Church in the United States

The Diocese of Virginia is the largest diocese of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, encompassing 38 counties in the northern and central parts of the state of Virginia. The diocese was organized in 1785 and is one of the Episcopal Church's nine original dioceses, with origins in colonial Virginia. As of 2018, the diocese has 16 regions with 68,902 members and 180 congregations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fundamentalist–modernist controversy</span> Christian religious issue

The fundamentalist–modernist controversy is a major schism that originated in the 1920s and 1930s within the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. At issue were foundational disputes about the role of Christianity; the authority of the Bible; and the death, resurrection, and atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Two broad factions within Protestantism emerged: fundamentalists, who insisted upon the timeless validity of each doctrine of Christian orthodoxy; and modernists, who advocated a conscious adaptation of the Christian faith in response to the new scientific discoveries and moral pressures of the age. At first, the schism was limited to Reformed churches and centered around the Princeton Theological Seminary, whose fundamentalist faculty members founded Westminster Theological Seminary when Princeton went in a liberal direction. However, it soon spread, affecting nearly every Protestant denomination in the United States. Denominations that were not initially affected, such as the Lutheran churches, eventually were embroiled in the controversy, leading to a schism in the United States.

Joseph Harrison Jackson was an American pastor and the longest serving President of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.

Otis Moss III is the pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. He espouses black theology and speaks about reaching inner-city black youth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caleb Saleeby</span> English physician and writer (1878–1940)

Caleb Williams Saleeby FRSE was an English physician, writer, and journalist known for his support of eugenics. During World War I, he was an adviser to the Minister of Food and advocated the establishment of a Ministry of Health.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the Puritans from 1649</span> History of a protestant group

From 1649 to 1660, Puritans in the Commonwealth of England were allied to the state power held by the military regime, headed by Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell until he died in 1658. They broke into numerous sects, of which the Presbyterian group comprised most of the clergy, but was deficient in political power since Cromwell's sympathies were with the Independents. During this period, the term "Puritan" becomes largely moot, therefore, in British terms, though the situation in New England was very different. After the English Restoration, the Savoy Conference and Uniformity Act 1662 and Great Ejection drove most of the Puritan ministers from the Church of England, and the outlines of the Puritan movement changed over a few decades into the collections of Presbyterian and Congregational churches, operating as they could as Dissenters under changing regimes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.</span> American Christian denomination (1895-)

The National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., more commonly known as the National Baptist Convention, is a Baptist Christian denomination headquartered at the Baptist World Center in Nashville, Tennessee and affiliated with the Baptist World Alliance. It is also the largest predominantly and traditionally African American church in the United States and the second largest Baptist denomination in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Ungewitter</span> German writer and naturism advocate

Richard Ungewitter was a German naturist and pioneer of the Freikörperkultur movement and one of its first organizers. There was a völkisch element in Ungewitter's ideas.

Elton Raymond Shaw (1886–1955) was a churchman, author and publisher, lecturer and educator, campaigner in the prohibition and temperance movement and a naturist.

<i>Sunshine & Health</i> Nudist magazine

Sunshine & Health was an American nudist magazine published from 1933 until 1963. It has been described as the "flagship magazine" of the nudist movement in the US. It was published monthly, and sold at newsstands as well as being distributed by subscription through the mail.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 ENNIS, THOMAS W. (17 February 1981). "HENRY S. HUNTINGTON, PIONEER OF NUDISM IN U.S., 99". The New York Times . Retrieved 2016-07-24.
  2. 1 2 "Shivering Nudists Don Clothes at Convention" . Joplin Globe. 13 October 1934. p. 4. Retrieved 2016-07-24 via Newspaper Archive.
  3. Drew 2012, p. 253.
  4. "Pastor says Nudist Cult Place to Spend Week-End" . Muscatine Journal And News Tribune. 15 September 1933. p. 14 col A. Retrieved 2016-07-24 via Newspaper Archive.
  5. ALLAN, DAVID G. (7 March 2008). "In the Berkshires, Turning Back the Clock". The New York Times . Retrieved 2016-07-24. nudi
  6. Green 2012, p. 108.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Rosen 2004, pp. 235-.
  8. Stern, Max (11 November 1933). "Nudism Magazine Assailed" . Hammond Times. p. 1 col B. Retrieved 2016-07-24 via Newspaper Archive.
  9. "Nudism advocate dies at 99". Gettysburg Times. 17 February 1981. p. 2.

Further reading