Lyman Pierson Powell


Lyman Pierson Powell was an American Episcopal clergyman and college president.

Biography

He was born in Farmington, Delaware. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 1890, studied at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia Divinity School where he graduated in 1897. He was ordained a priest in 1898. He became president of Hobart College and of William Smith College in 1913.
He died in Morristown, New Jersey at the Morristown Memorial Hospital on February 10, 1946.
Charles S. Macfarland wrote a biography of Powell in 1947.

Christian Science

Powell wrote a critical book, denouncing Christian Science in 1907. The book is notable for describing Christian Science as "neither Christian nor scientific." Powell's own biographer, Charles S. Macfarland, wrote that this first book on the subject "it was clear, had been written in a spirit of extreme irritation."
He later radically changed his position, became friendly to Christian Science, and wrote a supportive biography of Mary Baker Eddy in 1930. This change seems to have been gradual, apparently as a result of interactions with Christian Scientists. Before writing the new book, Powell told Macfarland, "Mary Baker Eddy should be made known to the world - through the medium of one who was neither her disciple nor her enemy." He traveled to Boston, and despite his previous negative book, the Mother Church gave him access to their extensive archives; perhaps in hope that the biography would rebut the recent criticisms of Edwin Franden Dakin.
The new book became an authorized biography printed by the Christian Science Publishing Society and was sold in Christian Science Reading Rooms.
Ernest Sutherland Bates, a critic of Christian Science, negatively reviewed Powell's 1930 biography commenting "His method of vindicating Mrs. Eddy is simply to ignore all the charges against her including those which he himself has made." Bates noted that Powell's criticisms of Eddy that he made in 1907 such as the accusations of indebtedness to Phineas Quimby do not appear in his later biography.

Publications