James Winston Clayton died at St. Thomas Rutherford Hospital, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on November 20, 2016, at age 89. Jim, as he was known to family and friends, was born in Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, on August 17, 1927. His parents were Cranston and Cecyle Clayton.

As the child of a United Methodist minister, Jim moved several times during his early years, spending much of his childhood in White River Junction, Vermont. After completing high school, he moved with his family to Hicksville, New York.  Beginning in 1944, he  attended New York University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in English, and then Union Theological Seminary, where he earned his Bachelor of Divinity. Jim served as a Methodist minister at several churches on Long Island until 1955, at which time he returned to Union Theological Seminary and earned his Master of Sacred Theology. While at Union, Jim studied with two of the greatest theologians of the 20th Century – Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr.  These two men would continue to influence Jim's scholarship and thought for the rest of his life.  From 1966 to 1970, Jim attended Harvard University, where he immersed himself in theological thought, especially of the 19th century, and earned a Ph.D. in 1971. Jim went on to have a rewarding career as a professor of religion: for two years at McKendree College in Lebanon, Illinois, and for 23 years at Sewanee: University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee.

As Jim's Sewanee colleague and good friend Herbert Wentz wrote at the time of his retirement, "Jim's devotion to his subject has been relentless, with a persistent striving better and better to understand 19th century intellectual movements, especially in Germany.  His study…has always been grounded…in original sources, whether by studying in England the unpublished writings of Coleridge or by reading in Sewanee the German texts of the great philosophers and theologians of his period.…Jim believed that the depth of knowledge which he sought to acquire was directly related to – and essential for – good teaching."

In addition to teaching, Jim contributed in many ways to community and college life at Sewanee. In the early 1980s, a minority student affairs committee was created; Jim served on that committee as a member and also as its chair.  The committee led to the appointment of a director of minority student affairs and later to the establishment of the Ayres Multi-Cultural Student Center and the Summer Scholars program. For Jim, this work grew out of a deep commitment to equal rights and tolerance, which had been sparked decades earlier when, with a small group of people with whom he worked as a Methodist minister, he participated in the March on Washington and heard Martin Luther King, Jr., deliver his "I Have A Dream" speech.

Jim was devoted to and is survived by his beloved wife of 62 years, Doris R. Clayton.  Jim and Doris shared interests in history, literature, music, and art, making their life together rich in experiences and happiness.  After many years of retirement in Sewanee, Jim and Doris moved in 2011 to Murfreesboro, Tennessee.  Jim is also survived by his three sisters, Mary Kohn of Fairfield, Pennsylvania, Patricia Milnes of Walnut Creek, California, and Irma Kaslow of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania; his three children, Douglas Clayton of Acton, Massachusetts, Susan Lewis  of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and Deborah Lister of Malvern, United Kingdom; his eight grandchildren, Amanda Day, Charles Lister, Anna Lister, Collin Lewis, Emily Lister, and Benjamin, Noah, and Henry Clayton; and his two great-grandchildren, Oscar Robin James Lister and Marshall James Day.

Burial will take place in Sewanee on December 2, 2016, following a family service at St. Augustine's Chapel at Sewanee, University of the South.