Name Charles Potter Role Author | Died 1962 | |
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Books The Lost Years of Jesus Re, The Faiths Men Live by, Technique of Happines, The great religious leaders, The Preacher and I: An | ||
American Unitarian Minister, Theologian and Author: Charles Francis Potter Interview
Dr Charles Francis Potter (October 28, 1885 – October 4, 1962) was an American Unitarian minister, theologian and author.
Contents
- American Unitarian Minister Theologian and Author Charles Francis Potter Interview
- Longines chronoscope with dr charles francis potter
- Scopes Trial
- Education
- Humanism
- Humanism as religion
- Published works
- References
In 1923 and 1924, he became nationally known through a series of debates with Dr. John Roach Straton, a fundamentalist Christian. The subjects, which Dr. Potter called "part of a crisis in theology," were the infallibility of the Bible, evolution, the Virgin Birth, the divinity of Christ, and the Second Coming
Longines chronoscope with dr charles francis potter
Scopes Trial
In 1925 he was adviser on the Bible to Clarence Darrow in his defense of John Thomas Scopes, a schoolteacher who was charged with teaching evolution in his classes.
Education
He was born in Marlborough, Massachusetts, where his father was a shoe-factory worker, and received his education at Bucknell University, Brown University and Newton Theological Institution.
Dr. Potter began his career as a Baptist minister. He resigned his position in 1925 because, he explained, even a liberal pulpit did not afford all the necessary freedom of expression. The next year he was professor of comparative religion at Antioch College.
Humanism
From 1927 to 1929, Dr. Potter served as the minister of the Fourth Universalist Society in the City of New York, a liberal Christian congregation on Manhattan's Upper West Side. In 1929, his increasingly progressive ideas led him to found the First Humanist Society of New York, whose advisory board included Julian Huxley, John Dewey, Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann. Together with Dewey, Potter was also one of the original 34 signees of the first Humanist Manifesto in 1933. Potter was also the founder, in 1938, of the Euthanasia Society of America.
Humanism as religion
"Humanism is not the abolition of religion," he was quoted as saying., "but the beginning of real religion. By freeing religion of supernaturalism, it will release tremendous reserves of hitherto thwarted power. Man has waited too long for God to do what man ought to do himself and is fully capable of doing." It was to be, he said, "a religion of common sense; and the chief end of man is to improve himself, both as an individual and as a race."