Ernest Sutherland Bates

Ernest Sutherland Bates (14 October 1879 – 4 December 1939) was an American academic and writer. He taught English and philosophy at Oberlin College from 1903 to 1905, the University of Arizona until 1915, and the University of Oregon from then until 1925.

After Oregon he became literary editor of the Dictionary of American Biography. He was also associate editor of Modern Monthly and a contributor to the Saturday Review of Literature.

Bates was the co-author, with John V. Dittemore, a former director of the Christian Science church, of Mary Baker Eddy: The Truth and the Tradition (1932), which traces the early history of Christian Science and the life of its founder, Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910). According to historian Ralph Henry Gabriel, writing in 1933, the book "comes very close to being a definitive history of a strangely paradoxical woman."

Early life and education

Bates was born in Gambier, Ohio, to Cyrus Sutherland and his wife, Lavern Bates. He obtained his A.B. and master's from the University of Michigan, and his PhD in 1908 from Columbia University.

Bibliography

• American Faith: Its Religious, Political, and Economic Foundations (1940)
• The Story of the Supreme Court (1936)
• The Story of Congress, 1789–1935 (1936)
• with John V. Dittemore, Mary Baker Eddy: The Truth and the Tradition (1932)
• (ed.), The Bible: Designed to be Read as Living Literature (1936)
• Life of the Bible (The Biography of the Bible)
• (ed.), Pocket Bible
• The Four Gospels
• Hearst, Lord of San Simeon (co-author) (1936)
• This Land of Liberty (1930)
• The Pageant of the States
• The Friend of Jesus (1925; poetry, published in the UK as The Gospel According to Judas)

Further reading

• "Ernest Sutherland Bates papers, 1908–1912", Arizona Archives Online.