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Doctoral student in Germany, parish priest, colleague of Walter Rauschenbusch, seminary professor, and once again parish priest in New York and Winter Park, James Bishop Thomas's career connected with several of the social, intellectual, and cultural currents of his times.

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Earlier Years
Born on March 21, 1871, in Petaluma, California, Thomas was the descendant of a long line of ministers back to colonial times. He attended Rutgers, Union Theological Seminary, and the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, graduating in 1895. In July 1895 he married Myra Harris Mott-Smith in Honolulu; her father, John Mott-Smith, had been a dentist, businessman, editor, and government official for the Republic of Hawaii. The couple would have five daughters, one of whom died at an early age.

His ministry began with an unorganized congregation in Cohasset, Massachusetts, which became St. Stephen's, a self-supporting mission (1895-98). He also worked with the families of fishermen and lobstermen, mostly of Portuguese descent.

Germany and Its Political Culture
He then studied in Germany (1998-1901), first in Berlin ( 1898-99), where he heard Adolf Harnack lecture, and then in Halle, where he received the Ph.D. degree in economics (thus in the philosophical rather than theological faculty) in 1901. The dissertation was basically a historical survey: classical economics with its "dogmas" of free market, contract, and Malthusian population pressures; criticism of "Manchesterism"; Saint-Simon as the key founder of the socialist movement; and the rise of the Christian socialists in England and similar movements in America. The last section offers a contemporary perspective on the Progressive Era and the Social Gospel during the years when they were still taking shape.

Thomas's chief concern was the relation between religion and society, the spiritual and the temporal. He had hoped to address the question how the economic and social order is to be reformed according to the Christian principle of service. He was disappointed by a shift in the thinking of some leading German Protestant intellectuals, specifically Friedrich Naumann, who adopted the position that political decisions lie beyond or outside Christian norms. In the dissertation Thomas tried to restore balance between ethics and politics, the preacher and the politician, this world and what is beyond it.

Rochester
When Thomas returned from Germany he held several positions in New York and New Haven, then was appointed rector of St. Andrew's in Rochester (1907-14) as successor to the controversial Algernon Sidney Crapsey. He became acquainted with Walter Rauschenbusch, the leading spokesman for the Social Gospel, and with Paul Moore Strayer, minister of the Third Presbyterian Church. To broaden contact with working people Strayer started the People's Sunday Evening, held in a theater during the five winter months between 1908 and 1916. Rauschenbusch, Strayer, and Thomas, all belonging to different denominations, were the three "ministers," and they were backed by a Committee of Fifteen, composed of business and professional men and labor leaders, two of them Roman Catholics.

During his last five years in Rochester, Thomas also engaged in spiritual care and group therapy as promoted by the Emmanuel Movement, founded by Elwood Worcester, an Episcopal priest. He visited three Rochester hospitals with regularity, and he later noted that thirty-seven nurses became members of the parish.

Sewanee
In 1914 Thomas was appointed Professor of Systematic Theology, Church Polity, and Liturgics in St. Luke's School of Theology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. He preached in major churches in the area, but twice a month he served small missions in the mountains, often walking part of the way.

While at Sewanee Thomas published his book entitled italicReligion - Its Prophets and Its False Prophets. He acknowledged that Rauschenbusch had offered extensive comments ; Rauschenbusch in turn mentioned Thomas's book in his own last book, published in 1917, noting that Thomas had made many suggestions.

Thomas's book was often characterized as "radical." .   He saw throughout the history of Israel and Christianity an opposition between priestly and prophetic religion. The former was "exploiting" in character, seeking exclusive control, usually with the aid of rituals claimed to be essential for salvation. The latter was "insurgent," protesting against exploitation and seeking a basic transformation of society. Thomas asserted that under the influence of Paul Christianity became a mystery cult, looking to a different world beyond the grave. By the time of Constantine the Christian church had become an effective instrument of exploitation. But Thomas saw hope in the prophetic protests that had arisen from time to time in Christian history and were now emphasized by the Social Gospel.

New York
During World War I the enrollment of the school in Sewanee was reduced by the draft. Thomas joined the staff of the Church of the Ascension in New York, located in Greenwich Village; the rector was Percy Stickney Grant (1860-1927), an author and active socialist. During these years Thomas was also associated with J. Howard Melish, rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Brooklyn, who would become a focus of controversy during the Cold War period, along with his son, William Howard Melish.

Winter Park and Rollins College
After three years in New York, Thomas moved to Plymouth, Msssachusetts, writng occasional articles for magazines as well as two propular volumes on Kant and Bergson in the Little Blue Books series. Then he became the first rector of All Saints' Church in Winter Park, Florida (1923-35).

Thomas shifted his focus from Social Issues to ornithology and poetry. In 1926 he became part-time Professor of Biblical Literature at Rollins College, located near All Saints'. Hamilton Holt, an innovative educator, advocate of reform, and internationalist, hade become president in 1925. Thomas resigned from his position at Rollins in 1933, and from All Saints' in 1935. The college conferred on him the honorary D.D. degree in 1934. He died in 1946 after years of coronary problems.

Assessment
James Bishop Thomas was not a major player in the events of his time. But he had a close relationship with several persons who were influential during those years. And he was distinctive in raising the alarm at the turn of the century about the nationalistic trend in German theology and culture, leading him to crit8icize most strands of the Christian tradition as "exploiting" and to call for an "insurgent" response.

Works

italic Die Entwickelung der messianischen Idee in ihrer Bedeutung fur die soziale Frage. Letzter Teil: Der christliche Socialismus.'    Halle: C.A. Kaemmerer & Co., 1901.

italic Religion - Its Prophets and False Prophets. New York: Macmillan, 1918.

Biographical Notes, 1934, Thomas file in the Rollins College Archives.