Gustafson, James M.

James Moody Gustafson was born December 2, 1925, in Norway, Michigan to John O. (a minister), and Edith (Moody) Gustafson. He attended North Park Junior College from 1942 to 1943. From 1944 to 1946 he was in the U.S. Army, and served in the Corps of Engineers in Burma and India. Gustafson received his B.S. degree from Northwestern University in 1948, a B.D. from Chicago Theological Seminary and University of Chicago in 1951, and a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1955.

He was ordained in the United Church of Christ in 1951 and served as pastor in Northford, Connecticut from 1951 to 1954. During 1954-1955 he was the assistant director of a Carnegie Foundation funded study of Protestant Theological Education in America, directed by H. Richard Niebuhr. He became an instructor at Yale University in 1955 and served on the faculty for seventeen years, both in the Divinity School and the Department of Religious Studies. Gustafson moved to the University of Chicago in 1972, where he was a professor of theological ethics in the Divinity School and served on the Committee on Social Thought. In 1988 he became the Henry R. Luce Professor of Humanities and Comparative Studies at Emory University where his primary responsibility was to conduct seminars for faculty members from all schools and departments. Before retiring in 1998 after 43 years of teaching and research, he was Woodruff Professor of Comparative Studies and of Religion.

In addition to his teaching career, James Gustafson authored twelve books, co-authored and edited several more, and published scores of articles in journals in the United States and abroad, mainly in the area of ethics -- theological and applied. His principal systematic work is Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective, 2 vols., University of Chicago Press, 1981 and 1984. He was twice a Guggenheim fellow. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in which he served as an officer, and has received more than ten honorary degrees, including one from Uppsala University in Sweden.

Gustafson married Louise Roos on September 3, 1947. They have four children. He now resides in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.

Source: Contemporary Authors Online. The Gale Group, 2001; and biographical information provided by James M. Gustafson.