Shailer Mathews

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