James Thompson Bixby

James Thompson Bixby (July 30, 1843 - December 26, 1921^[1]) was a United States Unitarian minister and writer.

Biography

He was born at Barre, Massachusetts, and graduated from Harvard College (1864) and Harvard Divinity School (B.D., 1870).^[1] He entered the ministry, and served as a minister for Unitarian churches in Watertown, Massachusetts (1870–74), Belfast, Maine (1875-79), and Meadville, Pennsylvania (1879–83).^[2] In Meadville, he was also professor of the philosophy of religion in the Meadville Theological School from 1879 to 1883.^[3]

In 1883, he went abroad for study and travel, receiving the degree of Ph.D. at the University of Leipzig in 1885,^[3] having also attended the universities at Jena and Heidelberg. He served as a minister in Yonkers, New York (1887-1903).^[2] He retired in 1903, and spent his last years in Yonkers.^[1]

He lectured on the philosophy of religious at the Lowell Institute, Boston, in 1876 and 1883. He was a member of the Authors' Club and Authors' League of America.^[2] He was interested in founding theology on a scientific basis, and his studies of comparative religion also found expression in his writings. In his later life, he wrote on immortality for Bibliotheca Sacra and Biblical World.^[1]

Works

• Similarities of Physical and Religious Knowledge (1876; 2nd ed. under the title Religion and Science as Allies, 1889)
• James T. Bixby (December 1897). "Babism and the Bab". The New World; A quarterly review of religion, ethics, and theology 6 (24): 722–750.
• The Crisis in Morals; Examination of Rational Ethics in the Light of Modern Science (1891; 2nd ed. under the title, The Ethics of Evolution, 1900)
• The New World and the New Thought (1902)
• The Open Secret (1912)
• What is Bahaism? (1912)

References

1. Francis Albert Christie (1936). "Bixby, James Thompson". Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
2.  Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1920). "Bixby, James Thompson". Encyclopedia Americana.
3.  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Thurston, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Bixby, James Thompson". New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.