Samuel Stumpf and the Intellectual Foundations of Liberal Democracy in the 1950s

Philosopher Samuel Stumpf (1918-1998) is known primarily for his late career work, especially the bestselling philosophy textbook Socrates to Sartre. Yet his early career provides new insight into the waning years of the Protestant cultural establishment in the post-World War II United States, particularly how its thinkers sought religious renewal in public life and the university as a way to fortify liberal democracy in an era of fears about totalitarianism.

            Stumpf, an ethicist, spent the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s writing on the relationship of law, morality, and religion in a democratic society. This work ranged from descriptive studies of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Soviet legal system, and historical jurisprudential figures to constructive arguments about the inseparability of law and morality.   

            Stumpf’s work stood at the intersection of two intellectual movements among mainline Protestants. The first, centered at the University of Chicago Divinity School, argued for the essential role of left-wing Calvinism in creating modern liberal democracy. This tradition had patterned civil society after a non-hierarchical church conceived as a voluntary society of equals under law.

            The second movement centered on the relationship between Christianity and law. In this work, Stumpf argued that a theological approach to law could provide a corrective to legal positivism, especially through an “ethics of creative love.” He even invoked Augustine, natural law, and love against segregation six years before King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

            While participating in these movements, Stumpf chaired Vanderbilt University’s Department of Philosophy, work that included creating a Ph.D. program. Chancellor Harvie Branscomb promoted the department as integral to one of his three major goals for Vanderbilt—transmitting cultural heritage and spiritual values. The paper probes this project and its awkward relation to Branscomb’s other goals, promoting economic development and internationalizing the university, which were more typical in postwar higher education.