Charles (Alexander Force) Deems was born on December 4, 1820, in Baltimore, Maryland.

He was a Methodist minister, educator, and author. He started to study law at Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa. Before his graduation in 1839, he turned to the ministry and he taught school and preached in New York City. He served as a professor of humanistic studies at the University of North Carolina (1842-1847) and professor of natural sciences at Randolph-Macon College, Virginia (1847-1848). From 1850 until 1854 he served as president of Greensboro Female College, N.C. In 1859, he was admitted to the North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. In 1865, he went to New York to establish a short-lived religious and literary newspaper, The Watchman. In 1866, he established and became the pastor of the non-denominational Church of the Strangers, which in 1870 occupied the former Mercer Street Presbyterian Church, purchased and given to Deems by business magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877). He remained there until his death. In 1853, he received an honorary D.D. degree from Randolph-Macon College and an LL.D. degree from The University of North Carolina in 1877. The Charles F. Deems Lectureship in Philosophy was founded in his honour in 1895 at New York University by the American Institute of Christian Philosophy.

In 1843, he married Anna "Annie" Marie Disosway (1816–1901). He died on November 18, 1893, in New York, New York.