Arthur Roy Eckardt

Background

Arthur Eckardt was born on August 8, 1918 in Brooklyn, New York, United States, into the family of Frederick William and Anna (Fitts) Eckardt.

Education

Eckardt graduated from Brooklyn College magna cum laude. He received a master's degree from the Divinity School of Yale University and a doctorate from Columbia University.

Career

Dr. Eckardt, a clergyman in the United Methodist Church who at different times in his career used his full name, Arthur Roy Eckardt, wrote 18 books and many articles on moral philosophy and the theology of politics, some of them with his wife, Alice. His books included ''Black-Woman-Jew: Three Wars for Human Liberation'' (1989), ''Elder and Younger Brothers: The Encounter of Jews and Christians'' (1968) and ''Christianity and the Children of Israel'' (1948).

Dr. Eckardt was chairman of the religious studies department for most of the 31 years that he was at Lehigh, from 1951 to 1982. While there, he spent 10 years editing the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. In 1979 President Jimmy Carter named Dr. Eckardt a special consultant to the President's Commission on the Holocaust and from 1981 to 1986 he served on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council as special adviser to the chairman, Elie Wiesel.

Before joining Lehigh, he was a visiting professor at the City University of New York and an assistant professor at Duke University and Lawrence College. He was a senior associate fellow of the Center for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies and a Maxwell Fellow at Oxford University. Eckardt also served as the editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion and as a member of the international committee of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as well as a member of other committees.

Achievements

• Arthur Eckardt was greatly famous for his books "Christianity and the Children of Israel", "Black-Woman-Jew", "Reclaiming the Jesus of History: Chrislology Today", and "Encounter with Israel: A Challenge to Conscience." U.S. president Jimmy Carter named Eckardt a special adviser to the President’s Commission on the Holocaust in 1979.

Works

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• book

  • How to Tell God from the Devil

    (How to Tell God From the Devil is the first book to depic...)

    1995
  • Elder and Younger Brothers 1967
  • Sitting in the Earth and Laughing 1992
  • The surge of piety in America 1958
  • Black-Woman-Jew: Three Wars for Human Liberation 1989
  • Christianity In Israel 1971
  • Christianity and the Children of Israel 1948
  • The Theologian at Work 1969
  • Your people, my people: The meeting of Jews and Christians 1974

Religion

In frequent letters to newspaper opinion pages, Dr. Eckardt spoke out against Christian teachings that he found anti-Semitic, and in 1989 he and his wife criticized Pope John Paul II for what they said were ''anti-Judaic'' doctrines voiced outside the presence of Jews. That complaint was challenged by a Roman Catholic leader of Catholic-Jewish relations.

Connections

Arthur Roy Eckard married Alice Eliza Lyons on September 2, 1944. They had two children - Paula Jean and Stephen Robert Eckardt.

Father:

Frederick William Eckardt

Mother:

Anna (Fitts) Eckardt

Spouse:

Alice Eliza Lyons

Daughter:

Paula Strock Eckardt

Son:

Stephen Robert Eckardt