Stanton Coit


Stanton George Coit was an American-born leader of the Ethical movement in England. He became a British citizen in 1903.

Biography

Stanton Coit was born in Columbus, Ohio on 11 August 1857. He studied at Amherst College where he "fell under the spell of Emerson", at Columbia University, and at the Humboldt University of Berlin, where he studied under :de:Georg von Gizycki|Georg von Gizycki and took the degree of Ph.D in 1885.
Coit was an aide to Felix Adler in the Society for Ethical Culture which Adler founded in 1876, and it was Adler's suggestion that he study for a doctorate.
In 1886, he founded the Neighborhood Guild, a settlement house in New York City's Lower East Side which is now known as the University Settlement House, following three months spent at Toynbee Hall, which gave him the idea.
In 1888, he went to London as minister of the South Place Religious Society, and during his ministry it was renamed the South Place Ethical Society at his insistence. He settled in the United Kingdom, later taking British citizenship.
In 1896, he founded the Union of Ethical Societies, later the Ethical Union, later British Humanist Association, now known as Humanists UK.
In 1898, Coit married Fanny Adela Wetzlar, daughter of a German industrialist Fritz von Gans, who predeceased him in 1932. It was Adela's money which purchased the former Methodist Chapel in Queen's Road. They had three daughters, the youngest of whom, Virginia Coit, assisted her father at the Ethical Church.
He was editor of the International Journal of Ethics in 1893-1905, and compiled The Message of Man: A Book of Ethical Scriptures, an Ethical Hymn Book, Responsive Services, and Social Worship, and wrote translations of :de:Georg von Gizycki|Georg von Gizycki's works on ethics. In 1906 and 1910, he unsuccessfully stood for Parliament as the Independent Labour Party candidate in Wakefield.
In his thinking, Coit was influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson and by Émile Durkheim, whose The elementary forms of the religious life Coit read late in his life in 1923. He also translated all three volumes of Nicolai Hartmann's Ethik in 1926.
In 1908 he was sentenced to one month's imprisonment for the indecent assault of a male bus conductor in Kensington which was later quashed on appeal.
As an American living in the United Kingdom Coit regularly travelled between the United States and Great Britain and he was a passenger on the Carpathia in 1912 when it picked up survivors from the Titanic.
Coit retired as leader of the Ethical Movement in 1935 to be succeeded by Harold Blackham, who dismantled the "churchy" elements, paving the way for the later establishment of the British Humanist Association by Blackham and Julian Huxley.
Coit later lived near Eastbourne, Sussex. He died on 15 February 1944 at his home in Birling Gap near Eastbourne.

The West London Ethical Society and the Ethical Church

In 1891 Coit resigned from the SPES, taking his followers with him. He then founded and became president of the West London Ethical Society. Coit began a journal, The Ethical World, and purchased a former Methodist Chapel with his wife's money, to establish the Queen's Road Ethical Church where he often preached. The freehold was later purchased with the help of a legacy in 1921. Coit's view was that "Ethical Churches" should replace existing churches founded on the basis of religious belief, and that the Church of England could be turned into such a church. The West London Ethical Society formally changed its name to the Ethical Church in 1914. By 1918 the membership had fallen to 300.
Following Adela's death, Coit advertised for a successor at the Ethical Church and Harry Snell, Harold Blackham and Coit's daughter, Virginia, were appointed as ministers in 1933.
In 1953, the Ethical Church building was sold to the Catholic Church and the proceeds were used to purchase 13 Prince of Wales Terrace in west London which became Stanton Coit House. The Ethical Church's name reverted to the West London Ethical Society and rejoined the Ethical Union.

Publications