Charles E. Park papers, 1909-1959.

Charles Edwards Park (1873-1962). was born in Mahabaleshar, India to Congregational minister and missionary Charles Ware Park and Anna Marie (Ballantine) Park on March 14, 1873. Educated at Derby and Phillips Academy, Park graduated from Yale University with a BA in 1896 and then enrolled in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. He withdrew from the Divinity School in 1898 when he accepted his first ministerial position at the First Unitarian Church in Geneva, Illinois. Meadville Theological School granted Park an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree in 1916. Harvard University conferred an honorary doctorate on Park in 1932.

Park arrived in Hingham, Massachusetts in 1900 to serve two churches, the Second Society or Parish and the New North Unitarian Church or Third Congregational Society. In 1906, he was appointed the minister of First Church, Boston, where he served until 1946. On his retirement, at the age of 73, Park was named minister emeritus, remaining active at First Church. During his many years in the ministry, he also frequently preached at other churches throughout New England and in New York. Among the congregations he addressed were King's Chapel; First Parish, Cambridge; Appleton Chapel; Winchester Unitarian (M.A.); Peterborough Unitarian (N.H.); and Milton Academy.

Park was an exponent of Unitarian Christianity in his sermons, which were printed and distributed throughout his career. A 1924 mission sermon, "Why I Am a Liberal Christian," tells the story of Park's religious upbringing and the formation of his liberal Christian beliefs. He was drawn to the historical Jesus: "The type of sermon I’d rather read and write than any other," he told Time in 1946, "is one which has to do with the life and spirit … of Christ." He also returned repeatedly to the apostle Paul in his sermons and writings.

Park’s association with the Harvard Divinity School began in 1926, when he was hired by Dean William Learoyd Sperry as a part-time lecturer in "practical theology." He taught until 1943 and was a member of the Harvard College Board of Preachers.

As a lecturer and historian, Park gave talks on a range of subjects, including Massachusetts and church history, to church and community organizations. In 1947, he delivered the annual Minns Lecture at King’s Chapel, and his lecture, "Christianity: How It Came to Us, What It Is, and What It Might Be," was the first from the lecture series to be published. He was a cofounder of the Unitarian Historical Society in 1901, elected to the Colonial Society of Massachusetts in 1908, and joined the American Antiquarian Society in 1916.

Harvard University Press published his book of homilies, The Inner Victory: Two Hundred Little Sermons, in 1946. In 1951, Beacon Press published a collection of his sermons, Creative Faith. His last book, The Way of Jesus, appeared in 1956. Several of his essays and lectures were published in periodicals such as the American Journal of Theology, Unitarian Historical Society’s Proceedings, and Publications of the Society of the Descendants of the Colonial Clergy. Park also served as editor-in-chief of The Unitarian Christian, the magazine of the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship, from 1952 until 1958.

Park married Mary Eliot Turner in Geneva, Illinois on September 19, 1903. The couple had five children. Park died at the age of 89 in Boston on September 20, 1962.