Walter H. Capps

Born 1934-05-05 Omaha, NE (USA)

Died 1997-10-28
Reston, VA (USA)

Buried
Santa Barbara, CA (USA)
Santa Barbara Cemetery

Capps was a Democratic Party member of the United States House of Representatives who died of a heart attack only nine months into his term. Before entering politics, Capps taught for more than thirty years at the University of California, Santa Barbara. As a Professor in the Religious Studies department he helped define the field, and cataloged the growth and changes in his 1995 book Religious Studies: The Making of a Discipline. An anti-war activist during the 1960s, he later initiated a nationally renowned course titled "Religion and the Impact of Vietnam" in 1979. His name lives on in the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion and Public Life at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Places Lived

Omaha, NE

Author Of

Nonfiction

Keywords

History; Religion; Theology

Occupation

Professor
Politician

Places Worked

Director of Robert Hutchins Institute for the Study of Democratic Institutions
Professor of Religious Studies at U.C. Santa Barbara

Bibliography

Religious Personality.
Silent Fire: An Invitation to Western Mysticism.
The Unfinished War: Vietnam and the American Conscience. 1982.
The Monastic Impulse. 1983.
Religious Studies: The Making of a Discipline. 1995.

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