author

Lyford P. (Lyford Paterson) Edwards

1882–1984

An Episcopal priest and sociologist, he wrote one of the early classic studies of revolution, tracing how upheavals move through recognizable stages. His work also ranged into early Christian history, showing a mind equally at home in religion and social theory.

1 Audiobook

The Transformation of Early Christianity from an Eschatological to a Socialized Movement A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Literature in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

The Transformation of Early Christianity from an Eschatological to a Socialized Movement A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Literature in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

by Lyford P. (Lyford Paterson) Edwards

About the author

Born in 1882, Lyford Paterson Edwards was an American Episcopal priest and scholar whose writing crossed the boundaries between religion, history, and sociology. His early major work, The Transformation of Early Christianity from an Eschatological to a Socialized Movement (1919), was a University of Chicago doctoral dissertation in church history.

He is best known for The Natural History of Revolution (1927), a sociology study that examines revolutions as patterned social processes rather than isolated explosions. The book became his most widely remembered work and is still noted as part of the wider Chicago School conversation about the causes and course of revolution.

Edwards lived a remarkably long life, dying in 1984. Evidence of his lasting academic footprint survives at Bard College, where a professorship bears the names Lyford Paterson Edwards and Helen Gray Edwards.