Ninian Smart

Ninian Smart was born in Cambridge, England, where his father, William Marshall Smart (1889–1975) was the John Couch Adams Astronomer in the University of Cambridge.

His mother was Isabel (née Carswell).

Smart was one of three brothers, all of whom became professors: Jack (1920–2012) became a professor of philosophy; Alastair (1922–1992) was Professor of Art History at the University of Nottingham.

Roderick Ninian Smart (6 May 1927 – 29 January 2001) was a Scottish writer and university educator.

He was a pioneer in the field of secular religious studies.

He is best known for his seven-dimensional definition of religion.

They moved to Glasgow in 1937, when W. M. Smart became Regius Professor of Astronomy (retiring in 1959).

Smart attended The Glasgow Academy before joining the military in 1945, serving until 1948, in the British Army Intelligence Corps where he learned Chinese (via Confucian texts) mainly at the London School of Oriental and African Studies and had his first extended contact with Sri Lankan Buddhism.

It was this experience that roused him from what he called his "Western slumber with the call of diverse and noble cultures."

Leaving the army – as a captain – with a scholarship to Queen's College, University of Oxford, he reverted to his Glasgow major, classics and philosophy, mainly because Chinese and Oriental studies in those days had "pathetic curricula".

However, for his B.Phil.

work he returned to world religions, writing what he later described as "the first dissertation in Oxford on philosophy of religion after World War II".

After teaching in the University of Wales from 1952 until 1955, Smart spent a year as a visiting lecturer at Yale University, where he also studied Sanskrit and Pāli, the language of the Buddhist scriptures.

In 1956, he was appointed Lecturer in the University of London, then in 1961 at the very young age of 34 – extraordinarily young for a full chair in the British system – he became the first H. G. Wood Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham – one of the largest departments of theology, where he also served as head of department.

By now author of several publications, including Reasons and Faiths (1958), based on his B.Phil.

work and World Religions: A Dialogue (1960), Smart was a rising star in the newly developing field of Religious Studies, rather than in Theology, despite the name of the chair he occupied.

Already known internationally, he received several offers to take up positions in North America, including as chair of the Columbia and Pennsylvania Departments, and an invitation to apply for a chair at Oxford.

However, he was already involved in a consultative capacity in forming the first major department of Religious Studies at the new Lancaster, and found himself "cajoled from being adviser to being candidate" for the chair.

Despite the attraction of prestigious posts elsewhere, he chose Lancaster because it represented a "tabula rasa, a new field" where he could practice his ideas.

In 1967 he established the first department of religious studies in the United Kingdom at the new University of Lancaster where he was also Pro-Vice-Chancellor, having already chaired one of the largest and most prestigious departments of theology in Britain at the University of Birmingham.

He took up appointment in 1967, as Foundation Professor of Religious Studies.

His tenure at Birmingham University had also done much to shift the department from an exclusive focus on Christianity to encompass world religions.

His successor at Birmingham, John Hick, would emerge as the most well-known exponent of a pluralist theology of religions.

Between 1969 and 1972, he was also Pro-Vice-Chancellor at Lancaster.

W. M Smart, who died in 1975, also served as president of the Royal Astronomical Society (1950).

Both parents were Scottish.

In 1976, he became the first J.F. Rowny Professor in the Comparative Study of Religions at University of California, Santa Barbara.

Smart became widely known outside the academy, at least in Britain, when he was editorial consultant for the major BBC television series, The Long Search (1977).

In 1977, Smart started to divide his time between Lancaster and another new venture, the Religious studies department at the University of California, Santa Barbara (1976–98) where he became the first J. F. Rowny Professor in the Comparative Study of Religions at Santa Barbara, from 1988 (he was a professor from 1976).

As at Birmingham and Lancaster, he was again also department chair.

He spent six months of each year at each campus.

Smart presented the Gifford Lectures in 1979–80.

His book The World's Religions (1989) also reached a considerable popular readership.

His defence of religious studies as a secular discipline helped the formation of departments in many public universities, especially in the United States.

He distanced religious studies from traditional theology in that evaluating truth claims and apology have no role but regarded investigation into the "truth and worth" of religion per se as a valid academic enterprise in the public arena of state-funded education.

In 1996, he was named the Academic Senate's research professor, the highest professorial rank at UC Santa Barbara.

In 1996, he was named research professor at Santa Barbara, the highest academic honour.

Toward the end of his career, he was elected president of the American Academy of Religion.

In 2000, he was elected president of the American Academy of Religion, while simultaneously retaining his status as president of the Inter Religious Federation for World Peace.

Smart held both titles at the time of his death.