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