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.

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