Theodore P. Ferris

The Rev. Dr. Theodore Parker Ferris, the son of Walter Andrew and Eva (Parker) Ferris, was born in Port Chester, New York, on December 23, 1908. He received his A.B. from Harvard University in 1929 and B.D. from General Theological Seminary, NY, in 1933. Ordained deacon on June 11, 1933, he was ordained a priest on May 27, 1934. From 1933 until 1937 Ferris was assistant to the rector of Grace Church, New York, and at the same time served as fellow and tutor at General Seminary. From 1937 until 1942, he was rector of Emmanuel Church, Baltimore, and from 1942 until his death, he was the fourteenth rector of Trinity Church, Boston, Massachusetts.

Many of his publications were books of sermons. He published a book on preaching Go Tell the People (1951) in which he stated that "A sermon is by nature a disclosure, an unveiling, a revelation . . . to preach is to draw the curtain aside from the figure of Christ and to lose oneself in the folds of it." He was also author of This Created World, 1944; This is the Day, 1951; The Story of Jesus, 1953; "Exposition of the Acts of the Apostles" in The Interpreter’s Bible, 1954; When I Became a Man, 1957; The New Life, 1961; Book of Prayer for Everyman, 1962; What Jesus Did, 1963; and The Image of God, 1965. From 1943 until 1964 Dr. Ferris was an adjunct instructor in homiletics at the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was active in the ecumenical movement and an alternate delegate to the first assembly of the World Council of Churches at Amsterdam in 1948. As well, he was Delegate to the Episcopal Church's triennial General Convention in 1946, 1949, 1952, 1955, 1961, and 1967. Furthermore, he as a trustee of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. His honorary degrees included S.T.D. from General Seminary, 1961; D.D., Rollins College, 1944, Middlebury College., 1955, Boston University, 1958, Harvard College, 1969; and Mus.D., Westminster Choir Coll., Princeton, N.J., 1967. A bachelor, Dr. Ferris died in Boston on Nov. 26, 1972.

--www.philosophy-religion.org/diaconate/