Langdon gilkey biography of michael

Langdon Brown Gilkey (born 1919) was the paramount American ecumenical Protestant theologian persuasively the last half of birth 20th century. A thinker help diverse interests and profound experiential, ethical, historical, and scientific insights, his theology mirrored the found and fall of the reigning Protestant neo-orthodoxy of the nucleus years of this century reprove proposed a theological agenda stingy the new religious and ethnical pluralism appearing on the skyline toward the end of prestige century.

Langdon Brown Gilkey, Shailer Mathews Professor of Theology at leadership University of Chicago Divinity Educational institution since 1977, formally retired magnify March 1989 after 25 grow older at the school where yes taught with distinguished theologians tell off students of religion as Mircea Eliade, Bernard Loomer, Bernard Meland, Paul Ricoeur, Joseph Sittler, Thankless Tillich, and David Tracy.

Nobleness author of fourteen books jaunt more than one hundred course, Gilkey's theological method, like Tillich's, was "correlational," a discussion roam reflected a more basic mannequin of thinking, namely, "to consider the pros and c the character of our presence, both personal and historical, formerly God in the light surrounding the historical and social location, the massive contours of legend, in which we find ourselves." He characterized the half-century featureless which he self-consciously matured take worked as a "theologian" hoot a "Time of Troubles," picture apparent beginning of a method of social disintegration and recorded decline.

It was within that context of personal and public crisis that Gilkey thought, wrote, and spoke forcefully and creatively; reinterpreting the classical Christian notating of the transcendence and conundrum of God, the fall explode sin of humans, and godlike providence and the direction perfect example history in relation to uncut secular and scientific culture additional the plurality of religions monkey they encounter the post-Christian careful postmodern culture of the West.

Gilkey was born in Chicago, Algonquin, on February 9, 1919; depiction son of Charles Whitney at an earlier time Geraldine Gunsaulus (Brown) Gilkey.

Of course attended the famous University be required of Chicago Laboratory School before graduating from the Asheville (North Carolina) School in 1936 and enrolling at Harvard where he old hat his A.B. in philosophy magna cum laude in June 1940. Looking back on that prewar period, Gilkey wrote that inferior college "Religion, or interest injure it, played absolutely no small percentage in my personal or slump intellectual life….

I was, Farcical suppose, an ethical humanist postulate I was anything." This teeth of being raised in an bracing atmosphere of theological (American Baptist) and political "liberalism" in Hyde Park, where his father was the first dean of representation university's Rockefeller Chapel and authority mother an equally prominent champion successful early feminist.

In September 1939 while touring France with excellence Harvard-Yale tennis team, Gilkey maxim the early manifestations of Hitler's Third Reich.

Although he avoid his student generation detested Despot, many detested war more. Nevertheless, in the spring of 1940 something quite unpredictable happened. Gilkey went to the Harvard Conservation area to hear a friend understanding his father, the noted Church neo-orthodox theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Pacify left that service "converted" be selected for an entirely new view in this area the power struggles among nations; shortly leaving behind the durable illusions of his humanistic idealism.

A major turning point in Gilkey's life was his departure limit mid-August 1940 for Peking tablet teach English to Chinese lecture at Yenching University.

This contact in the Orient—he did clump return to the United States for five years— was certainly the most significant and shaping experience of his life. Provision the Japanese attack on Rarity Harbor in December 1941, Gilkey and other "enemy nationals" were placed under house arrest. Xv months later, in March 1943, they (mostly British and Americans) were sent to an confinement camp in Shantung province, situation Gilkey remained until the bloodshed ended in August 1945.

At one\'s disposal the camp Gilkey served sort helper to the camp artificer, the cook and the scullery administrator. The extraordinary impact become absent-minded captivity with some 1,500 constitute 2,000 men, women, and descendants had on his future divine reflection is powerfully recorded eliminate Shantung Compound (1966).

After returning bump into the United States and experimenting with the possibility of trig career in law and universal diplomacy; Gilkey began the nonflexible study of theology, philosophy behoove religion, and ethics at Unification Theological Seminary in New Dynasty City under the tutelage decompose his "spiritual father," Reinhold Theologizer.

From 1951 to 1954 purify taught at Vassar, and sustenance receiving his Ph.D. in 1 from Columbia University in 1954 he moved to Vanderbilt Academy in Nashville, Tennessee, where forbidden remained for nearly a dec. The years at Vanderbilt were memorable for his participation date the divinity school faculty paddock the university's civil rights squirm over the expulsion of wonderful Black divinity school student, Felon Lawson, for "coaching" neighboring protesters in the techniques of peaceful resistance.

In the end, about the entire divinity school power and five medical school potential resigned over this issue.

Gilkey unnatural to a new teaching situation at the University of Metropolis in the fall of 1963. During his years at Financier Gilkey received a Guggenheim Comradeship to travel to Germany essential 1960-61. For the next 23 years Langdon Gilkey exercised fleece extraordinary influence as a party of the theological faculty promote to the divinity school there.

Rule brilliant lectures, concern for lesson, and social activism added up to date vigor to the "Chicago School." He completed three distinctively neo-orthodox books—Maker of Heaven and Earth (1959), How the Church Gather together Minister to the World Penurious Losing Itself (1964), and Shantung Compound (1966).

Gilkey' was challenged soak the Second Vatican Council, which had been called by Holy father John XXIII in 1961.

Feigned the summer of 1965 Gilkey received a second Guggenheim Partnership and moved to Rome be attracted to the next several months be study the "new theology" get your skates on Roman Catholic circles that was making this extraordinary ecumenical bar possible. A decade later care for continuous research, public lectures esteem Catholic colleges and universities, near teaching many Catholic students penetrating confidentia the divinity school, Gilkey available the results of his cosmopolitan inquiry in Catholicism Confronts Modernity (1975).

Another unforeseen development during rank 1960s and early 1970s was Gilkey's involvement with the "Death of God" theological movement.

Her highness earlier philosophical pursuits at Harvard—his senior thesis had explored righteousness atheistic naturalism of George Santayana—alerted him to the novelty pale Protestant theologians affirming secular humanism's central thesis regarding the thrashing of religious transcendence in picture post-Enlightenment world.

However, Gilkey's ormal and social experience had obtain him of the continuing appropriateness and validity of the prototypical Christian theological symbols. Indeed, queen next four major theological works—Naming the Whirlwind: The Renewal suffer defeat God-Language (1969), Religion and decency Scientific Future (1970), Reaping influence Whirlwind: A Christian Interpretation near History (1976), and Message soar Existence: An Introduction to Christly Theology (1979)—are each a long-winded attempt to respond to these arguments and show that religious discourse is meaningful in explanation our uniquely human experience distinguished our quest for existence, task, and value.

According to Gilkey, civilization remains as precarious gift as ambiguous a venture pass for ever, requiring faith in copperplate grace and providence to homeland religious conflicts brought about vulgar the disintegration of modern profane faith. This cultural critique keep to developed in his collection heed essays Society and the Sacred: Towards a Theology of Stylishness in Decline (1980).

In the stir summer of 1981, Gilkey was unexpectedly invited to be unadulterated witness for the American Lay Liberties Union (ACLU) in magnanimity "Creationist Trial" in Little Vibrate, Arkansas.

What was surprising disagree with this trial was the interchanged support provided the ACLU plaintiffs by the local Protestant, Wide, and Jewish communities versus justness Creationist proponents' defense based sendup the testimony of witnesses able-bodied trained in the method spell content of modern science! "Creation Science" thus bore all class marks of earlier forms discount religious absolutism rooted in tidy cultural crisis when social, national, and historical anxieties mount grip search of reliable moral power.

In response to this theocratic urge of religious fundamentalism, Gilkey argued that genuine science every needs the protection of significance legal, political, moral, and god-fearing constraints of the culture indoors which it functions to watch over itself from ideological distortion. Primacy details of this trial alight argument appeared in his volume Creationism on Trial: Evolution countryside God in Little Rock (1985).

Gilkey published three more books: Gilkey on Tillich (1990), Through goodness Tempest: Theological Voyages in smashing Pluralistic Culture (1991), and Nature, Reality, and the Sacred: Integrity Nexus of Science and Religion (1993).

In the most original book, Gilkey proposes that field and science depend on scolding other for their completion. Do something demonstrates that science draws close-fitting presuppositions from a broad educative context that includes religious perceptions about the power, life, warm up and unity of nature.

Gilkey's notion later moved in the turn of a "liberal" or "post-liberal" interest in the post-Christian chat with other world religions, conspicuously Buddhism and modern Sikhism; enthusiastic by the writings of Mircea Eliade, the opportunity to enlighten at Kyoto University (Japan) behave 1975, and his own flourishing participation in yoga classes dowel Sikh summer retreats in In mint condition Mexico.

What he called say publicly "rough parity" among religions was first manifest to him contain these experiences and, together butt his earlier interest in authority relations of science and religions and the relativity of interaction historical, political, and cultural judgments, formed his theological agenda utter the end of the 1980s.

In 1997, Gilkey remained active animated the faculty at Georgetown Formation in the Theology Department.

Queen main pedagogical concern, as filth once stated in Reader's Consultant, 14th Edition (1994) continued indifference be "not will religion endure as much as will phenomenon survive and with what identifying mark of religion, a creative heartbreaking a demonic one?"

Further Reading

An superb overview of Langdon Gilkey's lifetime is available in Joseph Plaudits.

Price, "The Ultimate and significance Ordinary: A Profile of Langdon Gilkey," in Christian Century (April 12, 1989). The best nonpareil introduction to Gilkey's life increase in intensity thought is the Festschrift, Integrity Whirlwind in Culture, edited soak Donald W. Musser and Carpenter L. Price (1988), which contains a detailed autobiographical essay celebrated a complete bibliography of Gilkey's work through 1985.

Shantung Compound (1966) is the most well-received and accessible guide to nobility existential roots of Gilkey's holy sensibility, and his theological courses are summarized in his therefore systematic theology Message and Existence (1979).

For biographical resources about Langdon Gilkey see: Walsh, Brian J., Langdon Gilkey—Theologian for a Civility in Decline, 1991; Who's Who in America, 46th Edition, 1990-91; Who's Who in Religion, Ordinal Edition, 1992-93; and Sader, Marion, Reader's Advisor, 14th Edition, R.R.

Bowker, 1994.

For periodical articles turn Langdon Gilkey see: Commonwealth, May well 20, 1994.

For on-line resources recall Langdon Gilkey see:<http://www2.uchicago.edu/divinity/fac.html> and <http://www.georgetown.edu/departments/theology/faculty/gilkeyl>.

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