Henry Nelson Wieman
| Henry Nelson Wieman | |
|---|---|
| Fields | Theology/Philosophy |
| Institutions | Occidental College University of Chicago Divinity School University of Southern Illinois |
| Alma mater |
Park University San Francisco Theological Seminary Harvard University |
| Known for | Naturalistic religion, Empirical Theology |
| Influences | Alfred North Whitehead, John Dewey, Henri Bergson, William Ernest Hocking, Ralph Barton Perry |
| Influenced | Bernard E. Meland, Bernard Loomer, Loyal Rue, Karl E. Peters, Jerome A. Stone |
| Notable awards | UUA Award for Distinguished Service to the Cause of Liberal Religion. |
Henry Nelson Wieman (1884–1975) was an American philosopher and theologian. He became the most famous proponent of theocentric naturalism and the empirical method in American theology and catalyzed the emergence of religious naturalism in the latter part of the 20th century. His grandson Carl Wieman is a Nobel Laureate.
Wieman studied at Park College in Missouri, graduating in 1907. In 1910, he graduated from the San Francisco Theological Seminary and then moved to Germany for two years to study at the universities in Jena and Heidelberg. In Germany, he studied under the theologians Ernst Troeltsch and Adolf von Harnack, as well as the philosopher Wilhelm Windelband, but none of these had any significant impact on Wieman.
Wieman moved back to the United States and spent four years as a Presbyterian pastor in California before moving to Harvard to do a doctorate in philosophy under the tutelage of William Ernest Hocking and Ralph Barton Perry, which he received in 1917. At Harvard, Wieman became interested in the work of John Dewey, as well as the work of Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead.
After Harvard, Wieman started teaching at Occidental College. In 1927, as one of America's only Whitehead experts, Wieman was invited to the University of Chicago Divinity School to give a lecture explaining Whitehead's thought. Wieman's lecture was so brilliant that he was promptly hired to the faculty as Professor of Christian Theology, and taught there for twenty years, and for at least thirty years afterward Chicago's Divinity School was closely associated with Whitehead's thought. He retired in 1949.
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