He was a friend of the Dalai Lama. He talked spirituality with Aldous Huxley. He transcended through peyote with Native Americans. He moved in academic circles, defending and defining the value of religions in an era marked by a distinct distaste for faith.

His name was Huston Smith, and he passed away on December 30^th, at the age of 97.

Smith was a man who gained national attention by, quite literally, writing the book on world religions—his 1958 text, “The World’s Religions,” went on to sell nearly 4 million copies, and remains one of the most oft-used academic textbooks on the subject.

Before Smith’s debut, the modernist take on religion was that it was, at best, a waste of time, and at worst, a tool used to control humanity.

Sigmund Freud, whose psychological theories were prominent in Smith’s heyday, called religion a delusion, a sort of willful ignorance created by mankind to comfort itself in a world it couldn’t explain. Carl Marx made the now-cliché argument that religion was the “opiate of the masses”. In the 1950s, most religious scholars explained religion as an antiquated way of thought—something mankind had outgrown.

But Smith’s work did something new, something wonderful. His scholarship depicted religions not only with accuracy, but with reverence, a lack of judgment, and the mindset that these belief systems held potential truth—something no one else was doing, at the time.

Where other scholars mocked religion, he took it seriously, describing world religions as their adherents understood them rather than filtering everything through a modernist, postmodernist, or Western lens. Although Smith was quick to note the imperfection of religion throughout human history, he also noted the art, morality, meaning, and even joy that it has brought, and continues to bring to the faithful.

Also unique was Smith’s method of research. Describing his methodology, Smith said, “First I read their sacred scriptures – including the profound and trusted commentaries on those scriptures. Second, I sought out the most authentic and profound living representatives of those views and asked them questions. And third, I would jump into the religions myself—as a participant observer, doing the rituals and practices they prescribed to get an insider’s view.” This was in stark opposition to most religious studies professors, who largely kept to their offices.

This is the key to the timeless quality of Smith’s work—it describes each religious tradition from the inside, intimately and truthfully, almost as if he had sincerely converted to each and every faith he studied.

Today, contemporary religious scholarship largely follows Smith’s example, and his work ensured the preservation of our religious human heritage in academia, rather than its relegation to the dustbin of history. In the past century, there have been few supporters of world religious traditions that have worked so hard and so well to show their value to humankind.

We would do well to follow his example, and learn to recognize and respect one another’s traditions as both valid and beneficial. Huston’s example as a cultural bridge-builder, a teacher, and a non-judgmental scholar leave a legacy that will continue to inspire future generations to be open to the idea that there very well may be more things in heaven and earth than we know, that there may be some mysteries that can only be explored through faith.