John Harwood Hick (20 January 1922 – 9 February 2012) was a philosopher of religion and theologian born in England who taught in the United States for the larger part of his career. In philosophical theology, he made contributions in the areas of theodicy, eschatology, and Christology, and in the philosophy of religion he contributed to the areas of epistemology of religion and religious pluralism. Life John Hick was born on 20 January 1922 to a middle-class family in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England. In his teens, he developed an interest in philosophy and religion, being encouraged by his uncle, who was an author and teacher at the University of Manchester. Hick initially went to Bootham School in York which is Quaker, and then pursued a law degree at the University of Hull, but, having converted to Evangelical Christianity, he decided to change his career and he enrolled at the University of Edinburgh in 1941. During his studies, he became liable for military service in World War II, but, as a conscientious objector on moral grounds, he enrolled in the Friends' Ambulance Unit. After the war, he returned to Edinburgh and became attracted to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and began to question his fundamentalism. In 1948 he completed his MA thesis, which formed the basis of his book Faith and Knowledge. He went on to complete a D. Phil at Oriel College, Oxford University in 1950 and a DLitt from Edinburgh in 1975. In 1977 he received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Theology at Uppsala University, Sweden. In 1953 he married Joan Hazel Bowers, and the couple had four children. After many years as a member of the United Reformed Church, in October 2009 he was accepted into membership of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain. He died in 2012. Career Hick's academic positions included Danforth Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at the Claremont Graduate University, California (where he taught from 1979 to 1992); H.G. Wood Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham; and Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham. While at the University of Birmingham Hick played important roles in a number of organisations centred on community relations. Non-Christian communities, mostly Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh, had begun to form in this central England community as immigration from the Caribbean Islands and Indian subcontinent