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Exploring the Worlds of the Religions

By William Schweiker Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Theological Ethics | April 22, 2026

Black and white photo of william schweiker in regalia

"The creation of the universe operates on the principle

that Intellect (Reason) prevails over Necessity

not by force, but by persuasion."

—Plato, Timaeus

My first encounter with Chicago as an adult came late at night, driving over the Skyway, up from Indiana and further still from Durham, NC, and Duke University, where I began the journey north. At the summit of the Skyway Bridge, the skyline, blazing with light, spread out along the horizon, meeting the coal-black waters of Lake Michigan, which mirrored the star-studded sky. Two or three steel mills, still active then, belched fire and smoke, seeming to signal an apocalypse worthy of any myth of endings.

I drove on, down the Skyway and into the South Side streets of the city, awash in streetlights, cars, sirens, and buildings darkened or alit. At last, I turned the U-Haul truck onto the Midway Plaisance, and there opened a dark space, the medieval world of the University of Chicago. The lake to the east, the starry sky barely visible within the glare of campus lights, and a campus snuggled in a diverse and many-peopled world. A wonder to witness for a young man originally from Iowa. I had arrived to begin my PhD studies.

And begin they did. A few days after moving into my apartment, I found my way to the Hyde Park campus’s main quad and Swift Hall to take five certifying exams over 10 days. The tests covered history, anthropology of religion (e.g., cargo cults and the ritual movement of material objects), methods and theories in religion (Freud and Nietzsche, of course), and so on. Again, I found myself between sky and water in creation myths, and the many social worlds that collide in theories of religion.

And an apocalyptic ending? As I wandered onto the campus through the Hull Court Gate, some inspired soul had strung a banner reading "Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here."

Thus, my PhD studies were well under way, though they had yet to begin.

Forming a Life of Thought

Thankfully, in that first term, I passed “the certs” in one sitting, along with my French language exam. Courses were in full swing, and so too were my studies with Langdon Gilkey, David Tracy, James Gustafson, and Bernard McGinn. Seminar rooms full of students buzzed with discussion, and the scent of cigarettes and pipe smoke lingered outside faculty offices and classrooms. The lecture hall rang with the elegant and nuanced work of B. A. Gerrish, McGinn, and Paul Ricoeur.

Amid these new-to-me courses and professors, I was happily invited to join a rough-and-ready group of students, called "the Brain Trust" by our peers. During that time, my now lifelong friends and I met every Friday throughout the calendar year at Jimmy's Pub to read and debate a scholarly article chosen by one of us, and then to lift a glass or two. In truth, professors and fellow students were my faculty—each as demanding as the other—and each sharpening my thought, deepening my knowledge, and refining the methods I was learning from and alongside them.

Worlds of thought were created through texts and conversations—the persuasion Plato knew so well—and a personal library was being built by roaming through the bookstores and the Regenstein to forge a life of research and discovery.

For many reasons, I have always been taken with ways of worldmaking (to borrow a term, but not a philosophy, from Nelson Goodman). My interests lay in the theological, ethical, and political import of the undertaking. Happily, so too were my teachers, colleagues, and students. How and to what end do people create a way of life and a system of value (a meaningful cultural world) against the background of forces that enable and constrain them? Those possibilities and constraints are often enough gods, the Divine, God, the "transcendent," or is it sheer luck and the power of nature? How is one to live, if the "total system of value" (Nietzsche) devalues finite human life and conduct, or places it contrapuntal to earthly life, or sees it as an apocalyptic end of everything that is? And can we understand someone whose world—cultural, religious, political, gendered, and on and on—is radically different than our own? Can persuasion work, or are we reduced to force? And, besides, do we know our own worlds?

The Divinity School has always studied the ways "religion" (so variously defined) permeates every facet of human reality and is inscribed in sacred texts and rites, communities and social realities, as well as the works of genius and imagination. It has also focused on the tenacious and exhausting work of understanding others and ourselves, as well as the hope of persuasion.

Dangers abound, too. If a specific cultural form is taken to exhaust the proper relation to the sacred, it too easily leads to idolatry, tyrannous ventures, deadly xenophobia, and force; persuasion does not win. And yet, to deny how religion seeps into the crevices of a world emboldens an otherworldly revelationism, enchantment with inexplicable mystery, or a dull materialism. In this sense, my journey to Chicago, the Skyway Bridge, the Midway, and the declarations about the end of hope, my faculty, and student colleagues, each bespoke various ways of life before God (to use a Christian idiom).

Yet it also revealed my own mindset, marked more by how one can and ought to live together by argument rather than force, not riveted on the fine points of dogma, the conceptual flights of trinitarian thought, or—what I had supposedly come to study—Christology. How we ought to live is, after all, the founding question of theological and philosophical ethics. The theologian or scholar of religion complicates matters by setting life within religious worlds.

How was I to balance in thought and studies theology, hermeneutics (as I learned it), and ethics? I needed to figure out some way to coordinate, or, better yet, to integrate, these foci into an approach to theological ethics. So, my teaching and research over the years have forged ahead on a journey that had few maps. Much of the theological ethics during my career has been church-centered (ecclesiocentric in so-called narrative theology) or has drawn heavily on church doctrine (especially among Catholics with their social teachings), the new interest in Augustine and Aquinas, and liberation theology. There were various iterations of liberation theology, one learns, each interested in the embeddedness of thought and life in history and society (Black theology, feminist and womanist thought, subaltern voices). And, of course, in the wider culture, forms of conservative and nationalistic Protestantism filled pews and airwaves. This, I have found in my global travels, seems to be the case in many places on earth, even if each place has its own distinctive flavors of these religious forms.

As a student at the University of Chicago and later on its faculty, finding myself a colleague of former professors who became dear friends, I developed a constant preoccupation with key themes of the Divinity School. How best to interpret and understand a religion (however defined)? It's all a matter of method and theory. In our multipolar world and systematically differentiated societies, I knew that some older theories and methods in theological ethics, ones that sought “THE Center of Value,” or “THE Word of God,” or “THE Ground of Being,” simply would not work.

I started to develop a multidimensional approach to the field—five dimensions, in fact—that I have developed in my books from Mimetic Reflections to Responsibility and Christian Ethics, and later Theological Ethics and Global Dynamics. Meanwhile, one could hardly ignore the threats posed by human power to the natural world and to human existence itself, especially in religions. I sought to humanize my own tradition in Religion and the Human Future (with David E. Klemm) and Dust That Breathes: Christian Faith and the New Humanisms. With the help of the Templeton Foundation and the Divinity School, I also ran a multiyear, interdisciplinary project involving 35 scholars from around the world on the topic of "Enhancing Life."

Each of these scholarly ventures unfolded under the banner of the university: Crescat scientia vita excolatur. And, finally, I directed the Martin Marty Center and also took on the editing demands of the Companion to Religious Ethics, with assistance from my student David C. Clairmont. Later, I shouldered the task of Senior Editor for the Encyclopedia of Religious Ethics, whose volume editors had studied with me (Maria Antonaccio, David C. Clairmont, and Elizabeth Bucar). So, I had ventured into the difficult and, for me, uncharted terrain of comparative religious ethics. After all, our world is not only our world; it is the confluence of religions in motion everywhere on earth, each resonating with real and imagined worlds. Is reasoned persuasion possible, or is there only a horrific reduction to force when traditions meet?

Truth be told, none of this work would have been possible without the company of colleagues and close friends with whom I shared work and who suffered my prose even as I drew inspiration and insight from them. The subtle and wondrous thought of Kristine Culp, the amazing historical and cultural erudition of Willemien Otten, Richard Miller’s subtle analytic mind and knowledge of political theory, and the global reach of Dwight Hopkins' theology. Others, as well, from around the world helped to shape thought and life (Michael Welker, Günter Thomas, Douglas Ottati, Terrence Martin, Charles Wilson, and Robin Lovin—to name a few). So too my work with students who have honored me through their scholarship, friendship, and collaboration. Graciously, at my retirement (apocalypse?), they will honor me yet again with a conference. So many fabulous minds and souls that have enlivened my life in the world(s) of the Divinity School. But that is what UChicago is about: connecting people to build new worlds and lives.

I had no idea, on the Skyway trembling with traffic so many years ago, of the adventure I was joining or the people and worlds that I would encounter. The Divinity School, with its many programs, conferences, ventures, and brilliant faculty and students, has allowed me to explore life in ways I had only dreamed about doing. A university surrounded by steel mills, streets half bathed in light, endless forms of music, art, food, and people, situated in a city at once deeply midwestern and profoundly cosmopolitan, forges the future with its inevitable vulnerability and excitement. In this university, school, and city, a company of people is found dedicated to advancing the understanding of the oddest, most complex, dangerous, and yet life-giving human enterprise of living within the linkage of many worlds, to wit, exploring the worlds of the religions.

Read additional faculty reflections upon Swift Hall's centennial: