Paul Minus

1935 - 2021

Minus, Paul
Paul Minus, born on July 26, 1935 in Columbia, South Carolina, died on February 12, in Claremont, California. He suffered a heart attack. Paul grew up in Charleston, leaving a few weeks after his 16th birthday to attend Yale University. In 1962 he received a doctorate from its Divinity School. For a year he served as chaplain at Florida State University, and then in 1964 moved with wife Nancy and two young sons to Ohio. For the next 24 years Paul taught church history at the Methodist Theological School, in Delaware. He never stopped working to realize God's Kingdom on Earth. He was arrested for trying to enter a white church with students of color in Mississippi, led an unsuccessful campaign to reject the formation of Ohio's statewide lottery, and worked with local and international business leaders to establish responsible marketing of infant formula in developing countries. He founded the Council for Ethics in Economics, in Columbus, to help business leaders address the ethical ramifications of their work. He wrote books on reconciling Catholics and Protestants; on Christian responsibility in the face of a hungry world; on the life of Social Gospel pioneer Walter Rauschenbusch. At the age of 60, Paul retired from the presidency of the Council and began working with it and Trinity Episcopal Church to help Christian laity bring to their workplaces the values of their faith. Later, in Cape Cod, he founded the Faith Communities Environmental Network, which now includes more than 30 Cape Cod faith communities who have joined their forces to battle the climate crisis together. At the end of his life Paul lived at Pilgrim Place, a senior community in California. Here he oversaw the energy retrofit of 80 of the community's individual homes and established the Napier Initiative, a program by which students of the city's five colleges are matched with mentors at Pilgrim Place and awarded cash prizes to further environmental and social justice programs of their own devising. Paul is pre-deceased by his first wife Nancy, daughter Susan, son David, and second wife Carolyn. He is survived by his older sister, Betty; son, Stephen; stepchildren, Andrew, Kathryn, and Tim; grandchildren, Justin, Erin, Emily, Eliot, Elinor, Madelyn, Cordelia, Charlotte, and Aimee; and his beloved wife, Jean. A zoomed memorial service in celebration of Paul's full life will be held Saturday, April 10, at 12:30 EDT. To receive a link to this service, please contact stephenkminus@gmail.com. Paul used his gifts to create institutions that would survive him, and continue his work. A memorial fund has been established to honor his life and legacy: to contribute to this, and learn more about his environmental leadership on Cape Cod, please visit https://capecodclimate.org/paul-minus-memorial/.