Jacks, Lawrence Pearsall

Person

Jacks, Lawrence Pearsall

9 October 1860 - 17 February 1955

editor of "Hibbert Journal". Lawrence Pearsall Jacks (9 October 1860 - 17 February 1955), abbreviated L. P. Jacks was an English educator, philosopher, and Unitarian minister who rose to prominence in the period from World War I to World War II.Jacks was born on 9 October 1860 in Nottingham,
to Anne Steere and Jabez Jacks. When his father died in 1874, George
Herbert, at the University School in Nottingham, allowed the 14 year old
Jacks to continue his education without fee. At about the same time,
his family took in a Unitarian lodger, Sam Collinson, who discussed
religion with Jacks and lent him books such as Matthew Arnold's Literature and Dogma.
Jacks left school at the age of 17 and spent the next five years
teaching at private schools, while earning a degree as an External
Student at the University of London.
In 1882, Jacks enrolled in Manchester New College, London, to train for the clergy, and became a Unitarian while at the College, under the influence of James Estlin Carpenter and James Martineau. After graduating, he spent a year on scholarship at Harvard University, where he studied with the philosopher Josiah Royce and the literary scholar Charles Eliot Norton. In 1887, after returning from the United States of America,
he received an unexpected invitation (due to Carpenter's
recommendation) to take the prestigious position of assistant minister
to Stopford Brooke
in his chapel in London; he later wrote that "Had I received an
invitation to become demigod to Apollo my surprise would hardly have
been greater." He served as assistant minister for a year, and then
accepted a position as Unitarian minister for Renshaw Street Chapel in Liverpool in 1888.
In 1889, Jacks married Olive Brooke (the fourth daughter of Stopford
Brooke), whom he had fallen in love with on the ship returning from
America. They had six children together.
In 1894, Jacks was appointed minister for the Church of the Messiah, Birmingham, England, where he developed his democratic
political and religious views, holding that "the Common Man is the
appointed saviour of the world," and developed his idea of a natural
religion accessible to everyone, regardless of denomination or creed. 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

http://viaf.org

Final

Partial

Created 2015-10-29 by Anna St.Onge.

http://viaf.org/viaf/61922274 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._P._Jacks