The Prophetic Theology of James Luther Adams[1] by George Kimmich Beach April 18, 2022, Easter Sunday For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Ephesians 6: 12 [2] “Liberalism is dead, long live liberalism!” James Luther Adams arrested attention with this opener to a mid-life essay, playing off the ancient announcement of the monarch’s demise […]
Dialogue
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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 Covenantal Imagination brings together nineteen essays that lay out the many ways his thought is woven through and through with the rich concept of covenant, […]
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 available from the UUA InSpirit Bookstore, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or the author (gkbeach@aol.com). Is Adams still relevant? Current controversy over the meaning of classical […]
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 of these influential leaders and discuss the dynamics of that turbulent period. No Authority but from God (28 minutes). Personal reflections of both pro-Nazi and […]
“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 its origin in theme talks presented at The Point, a Unitarian Universalist family conference in Oklahoma in 2018. The three sermons here reproduced were presented […]
Fathers’ Day, June 21, 2020 With deep sadness we mark the death of the Reverend Dr. David Boynton Parke, on June 6, 2020. He fell while walking to the nearby home of his daughter, Robin, in Boston, Massachusetts, and died from his head injury a few days later. David had a long career in parish and interim ministry for Unitarian Universalist churches. During his retirement he became a member of the Board of Trustees and, […]
Peter Iver Kaufman: IF MEMORY SERVES “David doesn’t email,” Kim Beach emailed me. I had hoped to offer David Parke a partnership: he would respond to the Dialog prompt about JLA, and I would append my getting to know him through David’s admiration many years ago. That won’t be possible–at least the first part–but i suspect the Dialog series has room for a revised second part. If memory serves, Kim and I were waiting for […]
How James Luther Adams Became Important to Me and Why He Still Is by Judith Deutsch I first met JLA in 1975 in the home of Max Stackhouse (a theologian and social ethicist who was then a professor at Andover Newton Theological School) when Max invited some of his students to meet and talk with Jim. Other than Jim, I was the only Unitarian Universalist present. Max was my adviser and professor and, when […]
James Luther Adams—Luther to his family, JLA to his colleagues and students, Jim to his friends—profoundly influenced countless others. How and why this was so can best be known by what they say about him—his stories, his intellectual probes and moral passions. Here’s the first in an occasional series—statements by those who may or may not have known him personally– on his importance to them. We look forward to more installments in the series. […]
This is one of two responses to Professor Jared Aaron Farley’s 2019 James Luther Adams Forum on Religion and Society, presented at the University of New Mexico. —GKB Response to the James Luther Adams Forum Lecture The Rev. Angela Herrera, Senior Minister, First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque November 10, 2019 University of New Mexico Thank you so much to Dr. Farley for his thoughtful presentation. I’m honored to be invited as a respondent this […]
James Luther Adams noted that “the quality of Jesus’ words was matched only by the quality of his life. Indeed, if he had not possessed his power with words, we would not now know about the power of his life.” The Gospels of the New Testament are the primary source of what we know of Jesus’ life and words. My personal commentary on the Gospel of Mark, The Seminal Gospel: Forty Days with Mark, was […]
The Trump regime has brought us to the brink of disastrous war. Facing this crisis, will we as a religious community give witness to peace? The following address is as timely and challenging today as it was when first presented by John Howard Yoder in 1984. The text is transcribed from Yoder’s James Luther Adams Lecture at the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association, in Columbus, Ohio. Yoder (1927-1997), held professorships at the University […]
The liberal Christian outlook is directed to a Power that is living, that is active in love seeking concrete manifestation, and that finds decisive response in the living posture and gesture of Jesus of Nazareth.” — James Luther Adams I have asked myself, what do I make of the story of Jesus? What does it mean, and what does he mean to me? Seeking answers, not only about Jesus but about myself, I set out […]
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 Craigville, Massachusetts, in 1986. We have selected the text of “A Time to Speak: Conversations at Collegium” to inaugurate an ongoing series of conversations on […]
What’s in a name? Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed on Psyche as an incessant labor to cull out, and sort asunder, were not more intermixed. It was from out the rind of […]
Rosemary Radford Reuther Pacific School of Religion Response by Zayn Kassam, Claremont School of Theology Presented at Claremont School of Theology, Claremont CA, April 20, 2006 Read Rosemary Radford Reuther Forum Lecture with Response.