Huston Smith, World Religions Expert, Dies at 97

In the World

Scholar of religion and seeker of the Divine across all the world's beliefs, Huston Smith died Dec. 30, 2016, at his home in Berkeley, California. He was 97, and succumbed to a long illness.

Dr. Smith was born in 1919 in China to Methodist missionary parents. He first came to major public focus in the 1950s with his ground-breaking TV series, "The Religions of Man" (see vintage footage on his website). The program resulted in his classic textbook, The World's Religions, which has sold 3 million copies and is still in wide use today in colleges, seminaries and local churches. Four decades later, he was discovered by new generations when Bill Moyers featured him in a five-part PBS series, The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith,

Ordained in the Methodist Church, a predecessor of The United Methodist Church, Dr. Smith had planned to become a missionary like his parents. While in college in the United States, however, he became acquainted with mysticism and Vedanta, one of six schools of Indian religious philosophy. His exposure to Eastern religions changed the course of his life, according to his personal website, HustonSmith.net. 

His website reports that he studied Vedanta from 1947 to 1959 under Swami Satprakashananda at the St. Louis Vedanta Center, during which time he also hosted his television series. His Vedanta studies led him into a pattern of researching religion from within the belief system itself by learning from a master. While this experiential practice reflected the way the disciples learned from Jesus, it also drew criticism at times from Dr. Smith's academic peers, who asserted he lacked scholarly objectivity. Dr. Smith persisted, using the same type of field participation to study Zen Buddhism, Sufism, and other faiths, always intent upon experiencing spiritual union with God.

Dr. Smith achieved many academic honors over the course of his life and career. His personal website reports that Dr. Smith was Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, Syracuse University. For 15 years he was Professor of Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and for a decade before that he taught at Washington University in St. Louis. Most recently he served as Visiting Professor of Religious Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He held twelve honorary degrees and was author or co-author of 14 books, including Why Religion Matters, which won the 2001 Wilbur Award from the Religion Communicators Council for that year's best book on religion. His last book, written with Phil Cousineau in 2012, was And Live Rejoicing: Chapters from a Charmed Life — Personal Encounters with Spiritual Mavericks, Remarkable Seekers, and the World's Great Religious Leaders

Beyond his scholarly endeavors, Dr. Smith was known personally as a warm and fun-loving man with a gentle humor, according to testimonials on his website. Many of his personal contributions often went known to the general public, but had a profound effect on world events. Among them, according to his website:

  • "In the mid-1950s he brought Martin Luther King Jr. to lecture at a segregated Washington University in St. Louis, thus helping to break the color barrier. 
  • "He was the 'adult' in the group at Harvard with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass) during the Harvard Psychedelic experiments, warning that the drug experience might point the way [to the Divine], but was not the goal.
  • "He helped get the Dalai Lama to the United States [after the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader escaped Chinese occupation].
  • Dr. Smith "helped the Native American Church get legal status for their sacred peyote rites."

While his high regard for all the world's religions often drew criticism from fundamentalists, Dr. Smith never left Christianity, and continued to worship in Methodist and United Methodist churches throughout his life.

In 2009, the Rev. David Alan Bard, now a United Methodist bishop in Michigan, wrote upon the publication of Smith's autobiography, Tales of Wonder: Adventures Chasing the Divine:

"He has practiced Christian faith for ninety years. He writes of himself: Of most of the things that happened to me, had they not happened, I would still be the same person. Erase Christianity from my life, though, and you will have erased Huston Smith (Tales of Wonder, p. 97). Huston Smith clearly sees himself as a Christian. He can articulate succinctly what he thinks is required for [a] person to be Christian. What is the minimum requirement to be a Christian? If you think Jesus Christ is special, in his own category of specialness, and you feel an affinity to him, and you do not harm others consciously, you can consider yourself a Christian." (Tales of Wonder, p. 109).

For all the millions of words he wrote and spoke in his nearly century-long life and career, Huston Smith's commitment to the reality of God may have been best exemplified in a succinct 2013 statement published on his personal website:

"An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and their fellow atheists

"An increasing number of physicists are now beginning to say that the world looks more like a big thought [rather] than a big thing.

"Thought requires a thinker. Where does that leave you atheists?

"Huston Smith, January, 2013"

A veteran religion journalist and certified spiritual director, Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor and Founder of United Methodist Insight.