He graduated in 1880 at Brown University (where he then taught mathematics for a year), and at 1884 at Newton Theological Seminary, and from 1884 to 1889 was pastor of the State Street Baptist Church of Springfield, Massachusetts.

Faunce was a guest preacher at Central Congregational Church in Providence, Rhode Island.

[1] He was Lyman Beecher lecturer at Yale University in 1907-08 and was prominent in the work of the Religious Education Association.

His writings include numerous contributions, chiefly to religious periodicals, and the volumes The Educational Ideal in the Ministry (1909) and What Does Christianity Mean?

Later that year, Brown's student center was renamed Faunce House in his honor, at the request of John D. Rockefeller Jr., who contributed $600,000 toward its renovation.