Background

Alec Whitehouse was born on February 27, 1915, in Huddersfield, England, United Kingdom. He grew up in Shelley.

Education

Alec Whitehouse went to St John's College, where he took a distinguished degree in mathematics. In 1936 he earned a Master of Arts degree from Cambridge University. In 1940 Whitehouse gained a Master of Arts degree and Bachelor of Letters degree from Oxford University.

Career

Alec Whitehouse was ordained in 1940 a minister of the Elland Congregational Church. He remained there for four years, and in 1944 became a chaplain and tutor at Mansfield College, Oxford. He next went to the University of Durham, where he was a reader in divinity for nearly twenty years, served as principal of the St. Cuthbert’s Society for five years, and was pro-vice-chancellor and warden for four years.

His last posts were at the University of Kent at Canterbury, where he was a master of Eliot College while also teaching theology until his retirement in 1977. Although his work focused on academic life and the church, he also wrote or contributed to several books, the most notable of which is Christian Faith and Scientific Attitude (1952).

He was also the author of Order, Goodness, Glory (1960), The Authority of Grace (1980), and Creation, Science, and Theology: Essays in Response to Karl Barth (1981).

Achievements

• Alec Whitehouse contributed greatly both to the academic world and to the Congregational Church. He was most noted for helping to craft the 1972 Declaration of Faith merging the Congregational and Presbyterian churches. His best-known book was Christian Faith and the Scientific Attitude.

Works

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• book

  • Christian Faith and the Scientific Attitude 1952
  • Order, Goodness, Glory 1960
  • The Authority of Grace 1980
  • Creation, Science, and Theology: Essays in Response to Karl Barth 1981

Religion

Alec Whitehouse was a prominent member of the Congregational Church.

Views

Alec Whitehouse was one of few English theologians of his generation deeply influenced by Karl Barth. He delivered the concluding sermon of the centenary symposium on Karl Barth at Oxford in 1986.

Connections

Alec Whitehouse was married first to Mary Kent Smith, who died in 1971. In 1974 he married Audrey Lemmon, who died in 2003. He had three stepdaughters.

late spouse:

Mary Kent Smith

late spouse:

Audrey Lemmon

References

• Contemporary Authors
  2011