Is Huston Smith a Christian?

To ask the question, “Is Huston Smith a Christian?’ strikes me as terribly impudent. He and I, after all, share a significant year together. This year, he turns 90 and I turn 50. Yet I think the question is important as I think about the meaning of Christian faith for the twenty-first century.
I have recently finished reading Huston Smith’s newly published autobiography, Tales of Wonder. Whatever one thinks about Huston Smith’s religious faith, this is a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable read. If there is such a thing as a beach read for the intellectually and spiritually inclined, this book may be one. It is a page-turner with sex (or at least love and marriage and children), drugs (psychedelics with Timothy Leary), murder (one of Huston Smith’s granddaughters) and “adventures chasing the Divine” (the book’s subtitle). In its pages you meet (or hear about Huston Smith meeting), besides Timothy Leary, Henry Nelson Wieman (who is Smith’s father-in-law), Martin Luther King, Jr., Aldous Huxley, D. T. Suzuki, Eleanor Roosevelt, David Bohm, Thomas Merton, the Dalai Lama, Bill Moyers.
Huston Smith is the child of Methodist missionaries to China. He has practiced Christian faith for ninety years. He writes of himself: Of most of the things that happened to me, had they not happened, I would still be the same person. Erase Christianity from my life, though, and you will have erased Huston Smith. (97) Huston Smith clearly sees himself as a Christian. He can articulate succinctly what he thinks is required for person to be Christian. What is the minimum requirement to be a Christian? If you think Jesus Christ is special, in his own category of specialness, and you feel an affinity to him, and you do not harm others consciously, you can consider yourself a Christian. (109)
That definition would not be sufficient for a number of my fellow Christians, making Huston Smith suspect. His daily practices would make him more so. He begins each day with exercises for body, mind and spirit. For his body he practices hatha yoga. For his mind he reads “a few pages from the Bible or a bible (the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, the Quaran, the Sufi poems of Rumi, and so on” (xxi). Then he prays. In his memoir, Smith writes of his Christian faith, and then of his “three other religions” – Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. I never met a religion I did not like…. I practiced Hinduism unconditionally for ten years, then Buddhism for ten years, and then Islam for another ten years – all the while remaining a Christian and regularly attending a Methodist church. (113) Such religious practice would take him out of the family of Christian faith, at least as some would define it.
I have never met Huston Smith, but reading his autobiography I could almost feel his spirit – kind, generous, curious, deeply in love with life and with the Divine. I see in his Christian faith such depth that he can incorporate other religious practices into it with integrity without losing that faith. His openness to and wonder about other religious traditions seem genuine virtues in a world where Hindus and Buddhists and Muslims are not half a world away, and may not even be half a block away. Can Christians share the good news of Christian faith while acknowledging that other religious traditions might also lead to genuine encounters with God, with the Divine? I believe so, and I think Huston Smith serves as a wonderful example of a Christian who lives, thinks and shares his faith while learning from other faiths. Somehow the Christian community would be a much poorer place if our definition of Christian faith excluded this kind, thoughtful, deep soul.


With Faith and With Feathers,

David