L. P. Jacks - Oxford

Oxford

In 1903 he accepted a Professorship at Manchester College, Oxford, where he taught philosophy and theology. He taught the work of Henri Bergson and Baruch Spinoza, and published The Alchemy of Thought in 1910. He served as Principal of the College from 1915 until his retirement in 1931, where he opened the theology program to lay students and tried to introduce the study of Asian religious thought, in an effort to relieve what he saw as the "insufficient ventilation" in the theology program.

Jacks served as the editor of the Hibbert Journal from its founding in 1902 until 1948. Under his editorship the Journal became one of the leading forums in England for work in philosophy and religion. He gained international notoriety as a public intellectual with the outbreak of World War I, when he wrote in support of the war effort, citing the need to defeat German militarism and defend "the liberties of our race." In September 1915, he published "The Peacefulness of Being at War" in The New Republic, arguing that the war had "brought to England a peace of mind such as she had not possessed for decades," claiming that the sense of common purpose brought on by the war had overcome social fragmentation and improved English life.

After the war, Jacks wrote prolifically and gained popularity as a lecturer in Britain and America. He frequently returned to the theme of militarism and the "mechanical" mindset, which he regarded as one of the greatest threats in modern life. In his Revolt Against Mechanism (1933), he wrote that "The mechanical mind has a passion for control—of everything except itself. Beyond the control it has won over the forces of nature it would now win control over the forces of society of stating the problem and producing the solution, with social machinery to correspond." He proposed liberal education and world vision as a hope for salvation from the mechanistic world, in books such as his Education for the Whole Man (1931) and his 1938 BBC Radio Lectures.

Although he continued to preach Unitarianism, he became increasingly critical of all forms of institutional religion and denominationalism, and refused to let his name be added to a list of Unitarian ministers published by the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches in 1928. He accepted an invitation to preach in Liverpool Cathedral in 1933; a Convocation of the Church of England rebuked the cathedral for allowing a Unitarian to preach, igniting a controversy in the press.

Jacks published prolifically over a period of fifty years, including philosophical and visionary treatises, biographies, articles, and moral parables. He died in Oxford on February 17, 1955, at the age of 94.