Jerome A. Stone
| Jerome A. Stone | |
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| Fields | Theology/Philosophy/Ethics |
| Institutions | Kendall College William Rainey Harper College Meadville Lombard Theological School |
| Alma mater | University of Chicago, PhD 1973 |
| Known for | history of Religious Naturalism |
| Influences | Paul Tillich • John Dewey • Henry Nelson Wieman • Bernard Meland |
Jerome A. Stone is an American author, philosopher, and theologian. He is best known for helping to develop the religious movement of Religious Naturalism. Stone is on the Adjunct Faculty of Meadville Lombard Theological School; is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at William Rainey Harper College; is in Preliminary Fellowship with the Unitarian Universalist Association; and is a member of the Highlands Institute of American Religious and Philosophical Thought (HIARPT) and the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS).
Stone grew up in Connecticut and Rhode Island, the son of a Protestant pastor. Though his family was of modest means he had access to a broad range of books. His father taught him respect for other religions early on. He was educated in the aesthetic and moral dimensions of church life. Instead of oppressive moralism, he was given a vision of moral integrity, service and a sense of the numinous.
At the age of sixteen he left home, an early entrant to the University of Chicago. After a year of graduate studies, he transferred to Andover Newton Theological School outside of Boston, MA. His Mdiv thesis was done there on Paul Tillich’s Concept of God as the Ground of Being. He then continued his graduate training at the University of Chicago Divinity School, completing his doctorate there in 1973. His doctorate thesis was done on The Secular Experiences OF Transcendence: The Contributions of Bernard Meland, H. Richard Niebuhr and Paul Tillich. During this time he served as pastor at three Congregational and United Church of Christ churches. He helped organize the Danville Council on Human Relations which is said to have become the seed bed for the first Head Start program to receive funding.
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