Bliss, William Dwight Porter

BLISS, WILLIAM DWIGHT PORTER: American Protestant Episcopalian; b. at Constantinople Aug. 20, 1856. He was educated at Robert College, Constantinople, Phillips Academy, Andover Mass., Amherst College (B.A., 1878), and Hartford Theological Seminary (1882). He was ordained to the Congregational ministry, but after holding pastorates in Denver, Col., and South Natick, Mass., he entered the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1885, and was ordered deacon in 1886 and ordained priest in the following year. He was minister at Lee, Mass., in 1885–87, and was then successively rector of Grace Church, South Boston (1887–90), Linden, Mass. (1890), Church of the Carpenter, Boston, Mass. (1890–94), Church of Our Savior, San Gabriel, Cal. (1898–1902), and Amityville, L. I. (since 1902). He has taken an active interest in social reform, and in 1889 organized the first Christian Socialist Society in the United States, and has since been its secretary, while he has been president of the National Social Reform League since 1899, and was the Labor candidate for lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts in 1887. He has also been secretary of the Christian Social Union since 1891, and in 1905 was a member of the United States Labor Department on the Unemployed. In theology he is a radical Broad-churchman. He edited The Dawn (1889–96), The American Fabian (1895–96), The Civic Councillor (1900), and the Encyclopedia of Social Reform (New York, 1898; 1908); and has written Hand-Book of Socialism (London, 1895).