Stephen Charles Mott

Stephen Charles Mott (born April 9, 1940) is a teacher among Evangelical Christians in the U.S. in the teaching and academic study of social ethics since the early 1970s.[1]

He has a BD degree from Wheaton College, Illinois, and a Ph.D. degree 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 Cochesett United Methodist Church in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, from which he retired in summer 2005. Since his retirement, he is serving part-time as a volunteer with the Essex County Community Organization and is on the Leadership Team of Christians Supporting Community Organizing, president of the James Luther Adams Foundation, and on the Board of Directors of North Shore Community Action Programs.

His most important books are Biblical Ethics and Social Change (Oxford University Press, rev. ed. 2011 [1982]) and A Christian Perspective on Political Thought (Oxford University Press, 1993).[2] Both are widely read among scholars and students who are concerned with Christian engagement with the society, especially from a Biblical perspective.