New Essay
The Prophetic Theology of James Luther Adams
by George Kimmich Beach
Read the new essay on the prophetic theology and thought of James Luther Adams, by George Kimmich Beach, President of James Luther Adams Foundation and editor of three collections of Adams’s essays.
“Liberalism is dead, long live liberalism! James Luther Adams arrested attention with this opener to a mid-life essay.
His theology lays the intellectual groundwork for a new religious liberalism, transformed in ways that carry it beyond its Enlightenment-formed consciousness—a consciousness prioritizing the rational, the universal, and the individual. In his Post-modern version these priorities become, respectively, the voluntary, the historical, and the communal.”
The faith of a church or of a nation is an adequate faith only when it inspires and enables people to give of their time and energy to shape the various institutions — social, economic, and political — of the common life.”
James Luther Adams
WHAT'S NEW
William Everett, who was James Luther Adams’s teaching assistant in his final year at Harvard and is a member of the Board of James Luther Adams Foundation, now brings a number of his essays into a volume that lifts up the many strands of covenantal thought in his work. A
Newly Republished Edition: (San Diego: Reader’s Magnet Press, 2021, 381 pages) In this book Adams’s leading editor and interpreter provides a comprehensive synthesis of his thought. The book is organized around Adams’s major themes, giving theological context to the numerous anecdotes that made his rhetoric irresistible. This new edition is
The 2020/2021 James Luther Adams Forum was a success! After more than a yearlong delay due to Covid-19, the Forum was held on October 29, 2021 at the University of Virginia. You can read and/or watch below Charles Mathewes’ timely and deeply probing lecture “The Future of American Christianity after
Based on newly processed home movies by James Luther Adams, never shown before, of Germany’s most prominent Christian leaders of the 1930s. A film about the church and the Nazis. James Luther Adams, professor emeritus of Christian ethics, and George Huntston Williams, professor emeritus of church history, recount their personal remembrances
“An unexamined faith is not worth having,” said James Luther Adams. What, then, is a faith worth having? The essay below links three sermons on transcendence, a foundational element in any faith tradition and for this reason, central to theology—that is, critical and creative reflection on religion. This work had
Who was James Luther Adams and why is he important for those who care about the fate of liberalism—liberal religion and liberal democracy alike—in this age of anxiety? For an answer there is no better place to begin than Adams’s own dialogues at a gathering of the Collegium Association, at
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