Donald G. Bloesch

Donald G. Bloesch (May 3, 1928, Bremen, Indiana – August 24, 2010) was a noted American evangelical theologian. For more than 40 years, he published scholarly yet accessible works that generally defend traditional Protestant beliefs and practices while seeking to remain in the mainstream of modern Protestant theological thought. The ongoing publication of his Christian Foundation Series, has brought him recognition as an important American theologian.

He characterized himself a "progressive evangelical" or "Ecumenical orthodox" criticizing the excesses of both the theological left and right. He often decried the abandonment of traditional values among liberals, but also the ugly, reactionary habits of some conservatives.

His own denomination, in which he was an ordained minister, is the United Church of Christ. He was raised in the Evangelical and Reformed Church, now merged with the UCC, in which his father and both his grandfathers were also ordained ministers. The "E and R" was a representative of evangelical pietism, a movement that emphasized personal piety, a discerning, educated laity, a reliance on Scripture, and an acceptance of the mystical side of Christianity.

Bloesch's pietistic background and personal spiritual life lay at the heart of understanding his theology and how Christianity is to continue into the future. In his view, much of American Protestantism has entrenched itself into narrow intellectually based definitions of doctrine which omit, exclude and even prohibit the mystical element as the governing element of the faith (i.e., the action of the Holy Spirit). Much of his critique is in fact directed at his own denomination, the United Church of Christ; he worked with a conservative lobbying group, the Biblical Witness Fellowship, to protest against its more liberal theological and ethical streams.

From 1957 until his retirement in 1992, he was a professor of theology at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, where he continued as a professor-emeritus. The Theological Seminary's library serves as the repository of his papers.

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