James Luther Adams

Who was James Luther Adams?

James Luther Adams, an American professor at Harvard Divinity School, Andover Newton Theological School, and Meadville Lombard Theological School, and a Unitarian parish minister, was the most influential theologian among American Unitarian Universalists in the 20th century.

Adams was born in Ritzville, Washington, the son of James Carey Adams, a farmer and itinerant Plymouth Brethren preacher. In his family and in church, the Day of Judgment was constantly considered a very real possibility. When Adams was 16, his father became extremely ill, and Adams left school to work on the Northern Pacific Railroad to help support the family. He did well there and rose in management but dropped from this job to attend the University of Minnesota. After he graduated in 1924, he went on to the Harvard Divinity School to become a Unitarian minister. In his education, he moved from "premillenarian fundamentalism" to "scientific humanism" and then to liberal Christianity.

After graduation from Harvard, Adams served as minister of the Second Church, Unitarian in Salem, Massachusetts, from 1927 to 1934, and the First Unitarian Society in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, from 1934 to 1935.