Stephen Charles Mott

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Stephen Charles Mott (born April 9, 1940) is one of the few pioneers among Evangelical Christians in the U.S. in the teaching and academic study of social ethics since the early 1970s.

He has a Bachelor of Divinity (BD) degree from Wheaton College, Illinois, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he studied under New Testament scholar Krister Stendahl and social ethicist James Luther Adams.

He is an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church and had been Professor of Christian Social Ethics at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts for almost a quarter century. When he started teaching in the early 1970s, the courses he offered at Gordon-Conwell were unique across all evangelical theological schools in any English-speaking countries at the time. These courses included, most notably, The Social Stance of Jesus and Biblical Social Ethics, which involved discussions on issues that were virtually untouched in the western Evangelical world in those days.

On the one hand they exemplified Mott's scholarly orientation in the interdisciplinary integration of Biblical study and social ethics, while at the same time sharpened Gordon-Conwell's image of being a socially concerned institution in that period. Concomitantly, he also pioneered in offering a joint course between Gordon-Conwell and Harvard Divinity School, which he team-taught with Prof. Harvey Cox from the latter school.

In 1995 he left his teaching position and became pastor of Cochosett United Methodist Church in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, from which he retired in summer 2005. Since his retirement, he is serving part-time as the non-stipendiary assistant to the lead organizer of the Essex County Community Organization.

He continues to be involved on the Leadership Team of Christians Supporting Community Organizing, president of the James Luther Adams Foundation, and co-chair of the Probationary Care Committee of the New England Conference Board of Ordained Ministry (UMC).

His most important books are Biblical Ethics and Social Change (Oxford University Press, 1982) and A Christian Perspective on Political Thought (Oxford University Press, 1993). Both are widely read among scholars and students who are concerned with Christian engagement with the society, especially from a Biblical perspective.