| James Thompson Bixby | |
| Birth Date: | 30 July 1843 |
| Birth Place: | Barre, Massachusetts |
James Thompson Bixby (July 30, 1843 – December 26, 1921[1]) was a United States Unitarian minister and writer.
He was born at Barre, Massachusetts, and graduated from Harvard College (1864) and Harvard Divinity School (B.D., 1870).[1] He entered the ministry, and served as a minister for Unitarian churches in Watertown, Massachusetts (1870–74), Belfast, Maine (1875-79), and Meadville, Pennsylvania (1879–83).[2] In Meadville, he was also professor of the philosophy of religion in the Meadville Theological School from 1879 to 1883.
In 1883, he went abroad for study and travel, receiving the degree of Ph.D. at the University of Leipzig in 1885, having also attended the universities at Jena and Heidelberg. He served as a minister in Yonkers, New York (1887-1903).[2] He retired in 1903, and spent his last years in Yonkers.[1]
He lectured on the philosophy of religious at the Lowell Institute, Boston, in 1876 and 1883. He was a member of the Authors' Club and Authors' League of America.[2] He was interested in founding theology on a scientific basis, and his studies of comparative religion also found expression in his writings. In his later life, he wrote on immortality for Bibliotheca Sacra and Biblical World.[1]
Bixby criticized the arguments of Felix Leopold Oswald, that Christianity was of Buddhist origin.[3]