Lawrence Schmidt received his Ph.D in Theology from the Institute of Christian Thought at St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto in 1975. As a member of the University of Toronto’s full-time faculty from 1975 to 2011, he taught undergraduate courses at the Mississauga Campus and graduate courses on the St. George Campus. His undergraduate teaching included introductory courses in Religious Ethics and advanced courses in Religion, Politics and Bioethics.
Administrative service at the University of Toronto included some twenty years as Discipline Representative of the Department for the Study of Religion at Erindale College (UTM) and five years as Associate Chair of the Combined Departments for the Study of Religion on the St. George Campus. He served for five years on the executive of the American Weil Society. He continues giving papers at the annual meeting of that Society.
Books
Historical Process and Hermeneutical Method in the Theologies of John Macquarrie, Schubert Ogden and Wolfhart Pannenberg. (Toronto: ICT Press, 1976), 303 pages.
The End of Ethics in A Technological Society with Scott Marratto (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2008), 246 pages.
Books Edited
George Grant in Process: Essays and Conversations, edited with an introduction by L. Schmidt (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1978), 223 pages.
Articles and Book Chapters
"George Grant and the Problem of History," in George Grant in Process: Essays and Conversations (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1978), 130-138.
"The New Religion in the Public School," The School Guidance Worker, 34 (1979), 36-38.
"Ethics and Equity Issues Connected with the Mississauga Train Derailment" incorporated into Ian Burton and Larry Schmidt, "Coping with Risks," Chapter 8, Volume 2, Ian Burton, Peter Victor, Anne Whyte (eds.) The Mississauga Evacuation: Final Report to the Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General (Toronto: Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Toronto, 1981), 1-20.
"The Rise of the Bourgeois Householder and His Decline in the Technological Society," The Ecumenist, 19, (1981), 29-32.
"Eric Voegelin's Contribution to A Theology of History," John Kirby and William Thompson (eds.) Voegelin and the Theologian (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1983), 290-313.
"An Interview with George Grant," in Grail: An Ecumenical Journal, 1, (1985), 34-47.
"The Good Life vs. The Good: George Grant Calls Liberalism to Account," The World and I, a Washington Times publication, (January 1986), 639-651.
"In Defence of George Grant," Grail: An Ecumenical Journal, 7, (1991), 10-17.
"Simone Weil on Religion: A Voegelinian Critique," Cahiers Simone Weil, Tome XV, (1992), 263-273.
"Towards a Canadian Theology," Grail, an Ecumenical Journal, 9 (1993), 91-112.
"George Grant on Simone Weil, The Saint and the Thinker," Arthur Davis (ed.) George Grant and the Subversion of Modernity: Art, Philosophy, Politics, Religion and Education (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 263-281.
"The Measure of Justice: The Language of Limit in the Writings of Simone Weil," (co-authored with Scott Marratto), ARC, The Journal of the Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University, 28, (2000), 53-66.
“Voegelin Not Mysterious: A Response to Zdravko Planinc’s ‘Plato’s Timaeus in Stephen A. McKnight and Geoffrey L. Price (eds.) Politics, Order and History: Essays on the Work of Eric Voegelin, (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 376-409.
"The Christian Materialism of Simone Weil" (with Pat Patterson) in E. Jane Doering and Eric O. Springsted (eds.) The Christian Platonism of Simone Weil, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), 77-93.
"Weil, Simone" in Encyclopedia of Science, Technology and Ethics, Carl Mitcham, Chief Editor, Macmillan Library Reference, 2005.
Editorial Introduction to “George Grant on Simone Weil” in The Collected Works of George Grant, Volume 4, edited by Art Davis and Henry Roper, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009, 771-780.
“Simone Weil’s Analysis of Modern Science as the Basis of Her Critique of the Technological Society” in Lucian Stone and Rebecca Rozelle-Stone (eds.), The Relevance of the Radical: Simone Weil 100 Years Later, New York: Continuum Press, 2010
“André Naud: From Vatican II to Simone Weil” in Philosophical Investigations Vol.43 No. 1-2 January-April 2020, 115-121.