Professor Ninian Smart

Roderick Ninian Smart, religious scholar: born Cambridge 6 May 1927; Assistant Lecturer in Philosophy, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth 1952-55, Lecturer 1955; Visiting Lecturer in Philosophy, Yale University 1955-56; Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Religion, London University 1956-61; H.G. Wood Professor of Theology, Birmingham University 1961-66; Professor of Religious Studies, Lancaster University 1967-82, Pro-Vice-Chancellor 1969-72, Honorary Professor 1982-89; Gifford Lecturer, Edinburgh University 1979-80; Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara 1976-88, J.F. Rowny Professor of Religious Studies 1988-98 (Emeritus); married 1954 Libushka Baruffaldi (one son, two daughters, and one son deceased); died Lancaster 29 January 2001.

Roderick Ninian Smart, religious scholar: born Cambridge 6 May 1927; Assistant Lecturer in Philosophy, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth 1952-55, Lecturer 1955; Visiting Lecturer in Philosophy, Yale University 1955-56; Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Religion, London University 1956-61; H.G. Wood Professor of Theology, Birmingham University 1961-66; Professor of Religious Studies, Lancaster University 1967-82, Pro-Vice-Chancellor 1969-72, Honorary Professor 1982-89; Gifford Lecturer, Edinburgh University 1979-80; Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara 1976-88, J.F. Rowny Professor of Religious Studies 1988-98 (Emeritus); married 1954 Libushka Baruffaldi (one son, two daughters, and one son deceased); died Lancaster 29 January 2001.

In 33 years as a professor of religious studies, Ninian Smart was the single most important figure in the development of the subject in British education, and a strong influence more widely in Australia, North America and New Zealand.

In 1967 Smart became founding Professor of Religious Studies at Lancaster University. He estimated that in the mid-1950s there were only 16 people in British universities and colleges teaching religions other than Christianity. Now all relevant departments include at least an option in another tradition and most of them have "religious studies" as part of their title. It is difficult now to recall that the emergence of Religious Studies as a higher-education subject was then controversial.

It was not untypical for theology or divinity students to spend 90 per cent of their time on events, texts, persons and language solely up to the fifth century CE. In Smart's view, this restriction to ancient credentials was a defensive response to the problems of an almost exclusively Christian theology in a secular setting. He believed passionately that a more open, plural and contemporary approach was needed to widen this constricting focus and the best way forward for the study of religion and for theology itself.

There were many voices for change, but the creation of the departments at Lancaster and then at Newcastle marked a decisive point. Smart was proud that, currently, more than 100 Lancaster graduates have posts in higher education worldwide. He had created a new space for thinking about religion.

At Lancaster in the early 1970s he was director of major projects for the Schools Council on the teaching of world religions in schools. This was the first systematic attempt at clarifying the confusions of the 1944 Education Act on the teaching of religion in schools. The proposals have, of course, been greatly revised in practice over the past 25 years but that impetus to rethink has been of lasting effect.

Smart's abiding emphasis was upon religion as an aspect of human experience and he held it to be vital that students had acquaintance with more than one tradition so as to generate reflection upon the extreme differences, and occasional similarities, of religious systems. He saw this awareness as an urgent issue, clearer now when such systems are perhaps in even more visibly extensive contact and collision than at any time in the past. In his view the study of religion is necessarily "polymethodic". Existing linguistic, historical and philosophical skills needed to be supplemented by methods drawn from the social sciences and psychology.

That this now seems so obvious is part of a wider cultural change, but it was most forcefully and effectively articulated by Ninian Smart. It was not always understood that he saw these factors as requirements for the field as a whole, not something that any one department or institution could encompass single-handedly.

From 1976 Smart divided his time between Lancaster and the University of California, Santa Barbara - the summers spent, as always, and most preciously to him, at his wife Libushka's family home at Lake Como. He formally retired from Lancaster in 1989 and from Santa Barbara in 1998. He received honorary degrees from six universities.

Roderick Ninian Smart was born in Cambridge in 1927, son of Scottish parents, the astronomer and mathematician William Smart and his wife Isabel (née Carswell). Moving to Glasgow where his father became Regius Professor of Astronomy, in 1937 Smart attended the Glasgow Academy. In 1945 he entered the British army, where he served in the Intelligence Corps, learned Chinese and was a year in the East, mainly in Sri Lanka, attaining the rank of Captain.

He was demobilised in 1948 and studied Classics and Philosophy at Queen's College, Oxford. He taught philosophy at the University College of Wales (1952-55), and at Yale (1955-56), where he also did graduate work in Pali and Sanskrit. He was Lecturer in the history and philosophy of religion at London University (1955-61), and was then appointed as the first H.G. Wood Professor of Theology in Birmingham until 1966.

Sociable and instinctively democratic, Smart was reserved about his personal beliefs. "Scottish Episcopalian by birth and adherence, Taoist by temperament" was about as far as he would go in overt self-definition. His personal convictions led him to resign as a Lancaster Pro-Vice-Chancellor in 1972 over an issue of principle. For someone who liked to be liked and at the centre of things this was a brave and costly decision.

He took a keen interest in politics. Becoming disenchanted with the Labour Party he mused about standing for the Scottish Nationalists in Lancaster as a protest, and he was an early member of the Social Democratic Party.

He was immensely good company; humour was an essential and compelling part of his character and anecdote, joke and repartee key to his teaching style - inspiring most, baffling some. A master of the limerick, when challenged to write on the theologian Ernst Troeltsch, he finally rhymed "extensive resoeltsch" with "defining a sect and a choeltsch". He was a keen cricketer and tennis-player, and greatly enjoyed painting water-colours. Naturally, he had some quirks, like insisting upon the term "phenomenological" as key to religious studies, when many people have difficulty even pronouncing it. A constant traveller, he never learned how to drive, and was always accompanied by Libushka.

Of the 30 books he wrote, the most technically accomplished is probably the pioneering - especially in the British context - Doctrine and Argument in Indian Philosophy (1969). In The Religious Experience (1969), which ran to five editions, he outlined for a wide readership his view of six dimensions of religion. These were, in no particular order, ritual or practical; doctrinal or philosophical; mythic or narrative; experiential or emotional; ethical or legal; organisational or social. He later added the artistic or material to the core set, and political and economic as supplementary dimensions. In some hands this approach became prescriptive and formulaic, the reverse of what he intended as a tool to provoke inquiry.

He was essentially an optimist about the future of religion as "the jewelled net of Indra". He wrote, "The study of religions is a science that requires a sensitive and artistic heart." In Ninian Smart it found just that.

Smart died suddenly, days after his permanent return to Lancaster, full of plans for the next phase.