James W. McClendon Jr.; Educator, Author of Religious History

James W. McClendon Jr., 76, theologian, educator and author of volumes on Baptist religious history and thought. A native of Shreveport, La., McClendon served in the Navy during World War II and earned degrees from the University of Texas, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Princeton Theological Seminary. He taught at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, Stanford, Notre Dame, Temple and Baylor universities, Goucher College, the University of Pennsylvania and for many years at Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union and the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. For the past decade, McClendon was scholar-in-residence at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. Among his published works are “Biography as Theology,” “Protestant Theology,” the three-volume “Systematic Theology” and, as co-author, “Convictions: Defusing Religious Relativism” and “Baptist Roots: A Reader in the Historic Theology of a Christian People.” As a panelist in 1995 at Baylor University on the future of religious universities, McClendon assured listeners that even if schools abandoned their original religious sponsorship, they fulfilled religious leaders’ original intent. Colleges often came about in history, he said, because “Christians concerned with the telling of a true story created institutions dedicated to high literacy and exacting truthfulness.” On Oct. 30 in Altadena.