Walter George Muelder

Walter George Muelder (1907–2004) was an American social ethicist, public theologian, ecumenist, and Methodist minister. He studied under Edgar S. Brightman at Boston University and began his teaching career at Berea College and the University of Southern California. He served as Dean of Boston University School of Theology from 1945 to 1972, and was known as the "Red Dean" because of his socialist and pacifist leanings.

The Reverend Walter George Muelder
Born	March 1, 1907 Boody, Illinois, US
Died	June 12, 2004 (aged 97) Boston, Massachusetts, US
Ecclesiastical career
Religion	Christianity (Methodist)
Academic background
Alma mater	Knox College Boston University
Thesis	Individual Totalities in Ernst Troeltsch's Philosophy of History (1933)
Doctoral advisor	Edgar S. Brightman
Influences	Borden Parker Bowne[1] Edgar S. Brightman[1] Harry Emerson Fosdick[1] Mahatma Gandhi[1] Max Horkheimer[1] William James[1] Albert C. Knudson[1] Karl Mannheim[1] Rudolf Otto[1] Kirby Page[1] James Bissett Pratt[1] Walter Rauschenbusch[1] Paul Tillich[1] Ernst Troeltsch[1]
Academic work
Discipline	Philosophy theology
Sub-discipline	Ethics
School or tradition	Boston personalism[2] Christian socialism Social Gospel[1]
Institutions	Berea College University of Southern California Boston University
Influenced	Stanley Hallett Martin Luther King Jr.[3]

Muelder was born on March 1, 1907, in Boody, Illinois, to the Methodist minister Epke Muelder and Minne Muelder.[4] Epke Mueller was a social gospeller who had studied at Boston University under Borden Parker Bowne and Albert C. Knudson.[1] Walter Muelder completed his undergraduate education at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, in 1927 before earning a Bachelor of Sacred Theology degree and a Doctorate of Philosophy in philosophy at the Boston University School of Theology in 1930 and 1933 respectively.[5] His doctoral dissertation, written under the supervision of Edgar S. Brightman, was titled Individual Totalities in Ernst Troeltsch's Philosophy of History.[5]

As a theologian he helped develop the Boston school of personalism into a Christian social ethic at a time when social ethics was still a relatively new term. As an ecumenist he was involved in forming early social statements of the World Council of Churches. During his tenure at Boston University, he was responsible for the training of more African-American PhD students than any single university in the country. He was credited by Martin Luther King Jr., a student of his at Boston (as well as Coretta Scott King in later years), as being an important influence in King's pilgrimage to nonviolence as a philosophy of social change. Among his major works are Foundations of the Responsible Society (1959) and Moral Law and Christian Ethics (1966). He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Muelder died on June 12, 2004, in Boston, Massachusetts.[3]

References

Footnotes

1. Dorrien 2011, p. 308.
2. Dorrien 2011, p. 306.
3. Davies 2005, p. 1750.
4. Davies 2005, p. 1749; Dorrien 2011, p. 308.
5. Davies 2005, p. 1749.

Bibliography

• Davies, Mark Y. A. (2005). "Muelder, Walter George (1907–2004)". In Shook, John R. (ed.). The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers. 3. Bristol, England: Thoemmes Continuum. pp. 1749–1751. ISBN 978-1-84371-037-0.
• Dorrien, Gary (2011). Social Ethics in the Making: Interpreting an American Tradition. Chichester, England: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4443-9379-8.

Further reading

• Blackwell, Michael Dwayne (1995). Pacifism in the Social Ethics of Walter George Muelder. Lewiston, New York: Mellen University Press. ISBN 978-0-7734-2283-4.
• Burrow, Rufus, Jr. (1999). Personalism: A Critical Introduction. St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press. ISBN 978-0-8272-3055-2.