Brunner, Edmund De Schwinitz

(1889-1973) Receiving his B.A., Ph.D., and B.D. degrees from Moravian College and Seminary, Edmund de S. Brunner was, in order, a pastor, Moravian church representative on the Rural Church Commission of the Federal Council of Churches, Director of Rural Investigations of the Institute for Social and Religious Research, and professor at Columbia University Teachers College (retiring in 1955). He lectured in rural sociology and also taught in Australia and New Zealand and at Western Connecticut State College (1957-1967). He held numerous appointed assignments, some at the federal level. He is best known for his study of the role of the church in the rural community. He wrote or cowrote many books, including The Protestant Church as a Social Institution (Harper 1935, with H. Paul Douglass), American Society: Urban and Rural Patterns (Harper 1955, with Wilbur C. Hallenbeck), The Study of Rural Society (Houghton Mifflin 1935, with John H. Kolb [reprinted 1952]). He was president of the Rural Sociological Society (1945). He delivered the first of the Religious Research Association series of lectures in honor of H. Paul Douglass (Review of Religious Research 1[1959]:3-16, 63-75).

—Hart M. Nelsen