Shailer Mathews: A Modernist’s Search for the Christian God

The liberal theologian, historian, and sociologist Shailer Mathews (1863-1941), dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School from 1908 to 1933, played a leadership role in the Social Gospel movement as well as advocating modernist thought. No enemy of science, he saw religion and science, including evolutionary theory and the higher criticism, as integral to making the universe intelligible to humankind. Although he did not agree that evolution could be trusted to bring about a better world, he transformed the Divinity School’s pedagogy into a pragmatic, action-oriented, empirical, and socio-historical bastion of inquiry to acquire the true meaning of the Christian faith. He aspired to the ideals of Christianity believing that they preserved the historical Christian identity.