Gordon Kaufman

Who was Gordon Kaufman?

Gordon D. Kaufman was the Mallinckrodt Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, where he taught since 1963. He lectured widely, and taught at universities across the United States, and also in India, Japan, South Africa, England, and Hong Kong. Kaufman was an ordained minister in the Mennonite Church for 50 years, and he was also the subject of two Festschriften. He was a past president of the American Academy of Religion and of the American Theological Society, as well as a member of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies. Kaufman was the author of over 12 books which have had a dramatic impact on how many in the mainline have considered the question of God language and religious naturalism. Among these are An Essay on Theological Method, God The Problem, Theology for a Nuclear Age, and In the Face of Mystery. This work earned him the 1995 American Academy of Religion Award for excellence among constructive books in religion.

He participated for many years in the discussions on Religious Naturalism at the The Highlands Institute for American Religious and Philosophical Thought and the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science