Douglas John Hall CM (born 1928) is an emeritus professor[1] of theology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and a minister of the United Church of Canada.
The author of 24 published works, including a three-volume systematic theology, and numerous articles, Hall lectured widely in the United States and Canada during the period 1974–2010.
Influenced by his teachers Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, John Coleman Bennett, and others, as well as fellow-Canadians including George Grant and Emil Fackenheim, Hall desired to understand and further the biblical and mainstream Reformation Protestant traditions of critical and constructive theology.
Accordingly, he believes, the church must abandon the theological triumphalism that has typified its long fraternization with empire, and search its biblical and doctrinal traditions for ways of engaging, rather than seeking to monopolize the spiritual and intellectual life of humankind.
That tradition, which Luther distinguished from the dominant religious and ecclesiastical conventions of Christendom (all variations of the theologia gloriae ,‘theology of glory’), accentuates God's compassionate solidarity with the world; thus it opens the Christian movement to both secular and other faith-communities that seek planetary "peace, justice and the integrity of creation" [the theme of the World Council of Churches, Vancouver 1983-1990]., Hall affirms that theology, in contrast to both "doctrine" and piety ("spirituality"), involves both historical knowledge and conscious, informed immersion in one's cultural context [contextuality].