Brief biographical notes

Thomas Kelly was born on a farm in southern Ohio on June 4, 1893. That makes him a contemporary of Howard Thurman who was born in Florida in 1899. Kelly’s parents were Quakers as was he for all of his life. He had a passion for science and philosophy that ran within a stream of deep religious hunger. He poured himself into school and became an adept student and scholar. He studied at Wilmington College in Ohio and Haverford College in Pennsylvania. He taught philosophy at several colleges and universities. He was trained as a missionary at Hartford College where he also earned a doctorate in philosophy. He desired to work as a missionary in Asia when WWI broke out and he ended up working with German prisoners in England. He was fired from this work eventually because he was a passionate pacifist. 

He worked on a Ph.D at Harvard and published his dissertation, but failed his oral defense due to a mysterious memory lapse. This failure (1937) drove him into a period of deep grief during which he wrote much of the content of A Testament of Devotion. Something happened to him during this time which caused a spiritual awakening and seems to have led to the sharp mystical focus we find in A Testament of Devotion. A few short years later he died suddenly at the age of 47 of a heart attack.  A Testament of Devotion was published after his death.

Kelly was married to Lael and they had two children, Lois and Richard.