Shailer Mathews

Shailer Mathews
Born	(1863-05-26)May 26, 1863 Portland, Maine, US
Died	October 23, 1941(1941-10-23) (aged 78) Chicago, Illinois, US
Academic background
Alma mater	Colby College
Influences	Hans Delbrück William Rainey Harper Ignaz Jastrow Herbert Spencer Adolph Wagner
Academic work
Discipline	Theology
School or tradition	Baptism modernism personalism Social Gospel theological liberalism
Institutions	University of Chicago
Influenced	Richard R. Wright Jr.

Shailer Mathews (1863–1941) was an American liberal Christian theologian, involved with the Social Gospel movement.

Career

Born on May 26, 1863, in Portland, Maine, and graduated from Colby College. Mathews was a progressive, advocating social concerns as part of the Social Gospel message, and subjecting biblical texts to scientific study, in opposition to contemporary conservative Christians. He incorporated evolutionary theory into his religious views, noting that the two were not mutually exclusive. He remained a devout Baptist for his entire life, and helped establish the Northern Baptist Convention, serving as its president in 1915. Mathews was a prolific author, served as president of the Chicago Society of Biblical Research twice (in 1898–1899 and 1928–1929), and also served as dean of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago (from 1908 to 1933). An endowed chair in his honor, the Shailer Mathews Professorship at the University of Chicago Divinity School, has recently been held by Franklin I. Gamwell and Hans Dieter Betz. He died on October 23, 1941. His ashes are interred in the crypt of First Unitarian Church of Chicago.

Select publications

• The Social Teachings of Jesus, 1897
• A History of New Testament Times in Palestine, 1899
• The French Revolution, 1900
• The Messianic Hope in the New Testament, 1905
• The Church and the Changing Order, 1907
• The Social Gospel, 1909
• The Gospel and the modern Man, 1910
• The Social Teaching of Jesus, 1910
• Scientific Management in Churches, 1911
• The Individual and the Social Gospel, 1914
• The Spiritual Interpretation of History, 1916
• Patriotism and Religion, 1918
• The Validity of American Ideals, 1922
• The Faith of Modernism, 1924
• Jesus on Social Institutions, 1928
• The Atonement and the Social Process, 1930
• The Growth of the Idea of God, 1931
• Immortality and the Cosmic Process, 1933
• Christianity and Social Process, 1934
• Creative Christianity, 1935
• New Faith for Old: An Autobiography, 1936
• The Church and the Christian, 1938
• Is God Emeritus? 1940

See also

• Ernest DeWitt Burton

References

Bibliography

• Jelks, Randal Maurice (2012). Benjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of the Movement: A Biography. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-6987-1.
• Leonard, Bill J. (2005). Baptists in America. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-50171-2.
• Lindsey, William D. (1997). Shailer Mathews's Lives of Jesus: The Search for a Theological Foundation for the Social Gospel. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-3507-6.
• Muray, Leslie A. (2005). "Explorations in Personalist Organicism". In Allan, George; Allshouse, Merle F. (eds.). Nature, Truth, and Value: Exploring the Thinking of Frederick Ferré. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. pp. 39–52. ISBN 978-0-7391-1262-5.
• Schwarke, Christian (1993). "MATHEWS, Shailer". In Bautz, Traugott (ed.). Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) (in German). Vol. 5. Herzberg: Bautz. cols. 1011–1013. ISBN 3-88309-043-3.
• "Shailer Mathews". Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2018. Retrieved May 22, 2019.
• Smith, Kenneth (1959). Shailer Mathews: Theologian of Social Process (Thesis). Durham, North Carolina: Duke University.
• University of Chicago (2007). "Guide to the Shailer Mathews Papers, 1892–1942". Chicago: University of Chicago. Retrieved May 22, 2019.
• Wurster, Stephen H. (1972). "Abstract of The 'Modernism' of Shailer Mathews: A Study in American Religious Progressivism, 1894–1924". Church History. 41 (4): 530–531. doi:10.2307/3163885. ISSN 1755-2613. JSTOR 3163885. S2CID 146684320.

External links

• Photograph of Shailer Mathews
• Mathews House
• History of New Testament Times in Palestine Macmillan Company, 1899
• Guide to the Shailer Mathews Papers 1892-1942 at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center