1950's Religion | Watts, Alan 1915-1973

WRITER AND THINKER

Lucidity.

During his career Alan Watts became known as the most lucid Western interpreter of Zen Buddhism. His blend of Eastern religion and drug exploration had great influence in the Beat movement and nascent counterculture movement which flowered in the 1960s.

Leaving the Episcopals.

Watts was born in Great Britain and came to the United States in 1939. He was ordained in the Episcopal priesthood in 1944 and served as chaplain at Northwestern University in Chicago until 1947. Watts left the church in 1950 and married Dorothy De Witt shortly afterward. He was quoted as saying that he left the Episcopal church "not because it doesn't practice what it preaches but because it preaches."

Success.

He taught at the American Academy of Asia Studies, a graduate school of the College of the Pacific, in San Francisco from 1951 to 1957, serving as dean of the school from 1953 to...