Education
He studied under Edgar South Brightman at Boston University and began his teaching career at Berea College and the University of Southern California.
He studied under Edgar South Brightman at Boston University and began his teaching career at Berea College and the University of Southern California.
During his tenure at Boston University, he was responsible for the training of more African American Doctor of Philosophy students than any single university in the country. He was credited by Martin Luther King Junior., a student of his at Boston (as well as Coretta Scott King in later years), as being an important influence in Doctor 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 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.
As a theologian he helped develop Boston School of Personalism into a Christian social ethic at a time when social ethics was still a relatively new term.