Huston Smith

Huston Smith (1919–2016) was a scholar and teacher of comparative religion. Born in Suzhou, China, to American Methodist missionaries, he earned a doctorate from the University of Chicago and taught at Washington University in St. Louis, MIT, Syracuse University and the University of California, Berkeley. Bill Moyers later made Smith the subject of the five-part PBS series The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith.

Smith wrote about religion from both scholarly study and sustained engagement with religious practice. His work favors the ideas and experiences that make a tradition meaningful to its adherents, rather than treating faith chiefly as an institution. This sympathetic, inward-looking approach made his prose unusually welcoming, though scholars have also debated his tendency to emphasize common ground among religions.

His best-known book began as The Religions of Man in 1958 and was substantially revised as The World’s Religions in 1991. It introduces Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity and Indigenous traditions. His other books include Why Religion Matters, The Soul of Christianity and the memoir Tales of Wonder.

New readers should begin with The World’s Religions. It offers the broadest view of Smith’s project: to explain what each tradition asks of its followers and why its teachings have endured. The chapters can be read separately, making the book useful both as a continuous introduction and as a reference when curiosity turns toward a particular faith.