George Huntston Williams

George Huntston Williams (April 7, 1914, in Huntsburg – October 6, 2000) was an American academic, historian of Christianity, and professor of Nontrinitarian Christian theology.

His works focused on the historical research of Nontrinitarian Christian movements that emerged during the Protestant Reformation, primarily Socinianism and Unitarianism.

George Pease Williams was born in 1914.

His father David Rhys Williams was a Unitarian minister who signed the Humanist Manifesto, while his grandparents were Congregationalists.

Williams changed his middle name as a young man and chose the name of his village, Huntsburg, Ohio.

He went to study at St. Lawrence University (graduated 1936) and Meadville Theological School (graduated 1939).

After his academic studies in history of Christianity at the European universities of Paris and Strasbourg, he returned to the United States and became assistant minister of a Unitarian church in Rockford, Illinois, where he married his wife Marjorie Derr in 1941.

From 1941 onwards, he taught Church history at the Unitarian-affiliated Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, California, and at the nearby Pacific School of Religion, while studying for his Th.D. completed at Union Theological Seminary, New York (1946).

From 1947 he taught at Harvard Divinity School, being appointed Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History from 1956 to 1963.

He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1953.

In 1962 he was one of several official Protestant observers who attended the sessions of the Second Vatican Council, where he met the future Pope John Paul II.

In 1981 he was appointed to the Hollis Chair of Divinity.

He was among the original Editorial Advisors of the scholarly journal Dionysius.

As an anti-abortion activist, he became the first chairman of the board of Americans United for Life.

Williams was married to Marjorie Derr for 59 years and they had four children.