DEEMS, CHARLES (ALEXANDER) FORCE (1820- 1893), American clergyman, was born in Baltimore (Md.) on Dec. 4, 182o. He graduated at Dickinson college in 1839, and in 1841 became agent for the American Bible Society in North Carolina. He taught at the University of North Carolina and at Randolph-Macon college, was for four years (1850-54) presi dent of the Greensboro (N.C.) Female college, and preached in a number of Southern churches. In 1868 he founded in New York city the undenominational Church of the Strangers, where he remained till his death on Nov. 18, 1893. With Phoebe Cary, one of his parishioners, he compiled Hymns for All Christians (1869) ; he also was the author of many books. For ten years he edited Christian Thought, organ of the American Institute of Christian Philosophy, of which he was one of the founders and president and through which the Charles F. Deems lecture ship in philosophy was established at New York university.
See the memoir (1897), in part autobiography, in part the work of his sons; and the memorial number of Christian Thought (Feb.