Smith, Wilfred Cantwell (1916–2000)

Biography

Born in Canada, Smith obtained his early education at the University of Toronto, followed by 2 years studying theology at Westminster College, Cambridge, and as a research student in oriental languages at St. John's College, Cambridge. Joined by his wife, Muriel, Smith then accepted an appointment with the Canadian Overseas Missions Council based primarily at Forman Christian College in Lahore in prepartition India, in what is now Pakistan, where he taught Indian history. Smith's 5 years in India were formative in many ways. The warm friendships that he formed with colleagues of varying religious orientations—Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh—manifested the complex and deeply personal nature of religious and cultural difference, thereby demonstrating the inadequacy of the common but facile Western view of religious life as competing belief systems. The Indian years also deepened Smith's interest in the nature of historical process, particularly as the ground for moral and sociopolitical life. This entailed an initial attraction to Marxism, later recanted in the interest of a less dogmatic and more nuanced understanding of history. Smith returned to North America after World War II and completed his PhD in oriental languages at Princeton University.

In 1949, Smith was appointed to McGill University's faculty of divinity in Montréal where, 2 years later, he became the first director of the University's Institute of Islamic Studies. This institute embodied Smith's unique vision for scholarship at the interface of different religious traditions: faculty and students drawn in equal numbers from the West and from throughout the Muslim world, working on common subjects. This vision spoke to the two key dimensions in engaging religious pluralism and diversity: the differences between religious traditions and the differences within any one tradition.

In 1964, Smith was invited to expand this vision to global horizons by becoming the director of Harvard University's Center for the Study of World Religions. The center was not itself a teaching institution but provided a nexus for the teaching of world religions at Harvard, chiefly at the Divinity School, but increasingly, under Smith's leadership, in the faculty of Arts and Sciences. The center provided residential space for faculty and students, facilitating both formal and informal interactions and continuing Smith's recognition that the study of religious life is chiefly a matter of persons in conversation.

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