Historian of liberal theology in the modern period and professor at the Chicago School of Theology, Bernard Eugene Meland (1899-1993) articulated a postmodern and postliberal theological vision in a constructive mode. A theologian of culture, his radical empiricism incorporated aesthetic dimensions of experience both in construing the meaning of "God" and in interpreting theological method.

Bernard E. Meland was born June 28, 1899, in Chicago, Illinois. His parents were Erick Bernhard and Elizabeth Hansen Meland. He acquired skills as a carpenter and a spirit sensitive to the ambiguity of life and appreciative of what he called its problematic good. After a period of military service in 1918, he received a bachelor's degree at Park College (Missouri) in 1923. Study at the University of Illinois at Champaign (1923-1924) and at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago (1924-1925) followed.

He transferred to the Divinity School of the University of Chicago and took a Bachelor of...