The American Protestant social ethicist John Coleman Bennett (1902-1995) was a leading Christian thinker of the century who applied ethical principles to urgent issues of modern society.

John Coleman Bennett was born on July 22, 1902, in Kingston, Ontario, to American parents. He was educated at Williams College, Massachusetts, Oxford University, and Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

Academic Career

Bennett spent his entire career as a seminary teacher, beginning at Union Seminary in 1927. From 1930 to 1938 he taught at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York. In 1931 he married Anna Louesa McGrew; they had two sons and a daughter. Bennett's first book, Social Salvation (1935), was followed by Christianity--And Our World (1936). The former set forth his lifelong conviction that the problems of society must be an integral part of Christian thinking; the latter championed the existence of a universal or "common" morality upon which specifically Christian ethics builds and to which...