Smith, Huston (b. 1919)

Huston Smith is a public intellectual known for his work on comparative religion, notably for his book The World's Religions. Throughout his career, Smith has sought to educate the English-speaking world about religions, to foster respect for religious traditions, and to dialogue with modern Western science.

[Page 1188]Smith was raised by Methodist missionary parents in a rural town near Suzhou, China. In addition to the Christianity of his parents, he was introduced to Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, and indigenous traditions. After primary education in China, he attended college in the United States. At the University of Chicago, he adopted the naturalistic theology of his mentor, Nelson Wieman, and married Wieman's daughter, Eleanor Kendra Wieman.

After graduating, Smith taught at Denver University, Washington University (St. Louis, Missouri), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Syracuse University, and the University of California, Berkeley. While in St. Louis, he became a follower of Swami Satprakashananda and the Vedanta Society. He also hosted several television series, and two of these turned into publications. “The Religions of Man” later became The World's Religions, and “The Search for America” became a book by the same name and included chapters cowritten with Eleanor Roosevelt and Paul Tillich. Toward the end of his career, he starred in Bill Moyer's television series on world religions titled The Wisdom of Faith With Huston Smith.

As a public intellectual and curious inquirer, Smith met and learned from several spiritual luminaries, including the 14th Dalai Lama, Gerald Heard, Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, Thomas Merton, Frithjof Schuon, D. T. Suzuki, and Alan Watts. Driving these encounters was Smith's commitment to ecumenism, which for him involves developing respect for other religions’ capacity to foster spiritual development. Accordingly, Smith is not a comparativist; rather, he elucidates the experiences and values of different religions. To enrich his scholarship, Smith became a practitioner of Vedanta, Rinzai Zen, and Sufi Islam, for more than a decade in each tradition. This led him to perennial philosophy and the teaching that all great religions converge at the infinite transcendent and at the deepest inward self.

Smith has been a public advocate for diverse people, religions, and religious practices. For example, as a Christian in the Civil Rights Era, he marched on Selma and participated in the March on Washington. Inspired by his encounters with indigenous peoples in Australia and the Americas as well as his experimentation with drugs, Smith testified to Congress to remove the ban on peyote for Native Americans, cowrote One Nation Under God and wrote Cleansing the Doors of Perception (books about the religious use of hallucinogenic plants).

Throughout his career, Smith has engaged in dialogue with Western scientists. He has urged them to embrace science's inherent openness and limitations to develop more holistic theories. In short, Smith argues that religious worldviews and experiences do not have to be invalidated by modern science.