Competent Men Chosen
In the remaining appointments, the Corporation was careful to pick men of varied experience and interests. They were Seelye Bixler, president of Colby College and last occupant of one of the two now-vacant Divinity School chairs; Ernest C. Colwell, president of the University of Chicago: Harry Cotten, president of the McCormick Theological School at Chicago; Remhold Niebuhr, professor at the Union Theological Seminary; and Reverend Palfrey Perkins '05, minister at King's Chapel.
Dean Sperry, this year celebrating his twenty-fifth anniversary as head of the School, has recommended to the commission a concern with the general subject of religion in the University and how the Divinity School may find closer ties with the College.
Making serious instruction in the field available to all students through the Divinity faculty is one of the Dean's pet projects. He feels that the undergraduate, while perhaps not being "hungry for religion," wants to know more about it.
In order to get this serious instruction, the student must shop around in sundry departments. Dean Sperry asserted in a Memorial Church sermon last March. "He must put together such pieces of the puzzle as he picks up on this expedition," he said, "through such departments as history, literature, philosophy, and Semitic languages." Comparison shows that an undergraduate can get a better education in religion at Yale, Princeton, Columbia, or Chicago. There are certain elementary Divinity School courses offered by the School faculty, which also belongs to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences; but undergraduates usually find them too advanced or specialized.
A deterring factor is the bias frequently encountered in teaching religion. But the College, Dean Sperry said, tends toward neglect.
What Dean Sperry suggests is a group of elementary survey courses to be offered in most-closely related Arts and Sciences departments and to be taught as dispassionately as possible by the Divinity faculty. In that way, two dreams are realized: filling a void in College course-offerings and furthering integration of the Divinity School within the University.
Humanism Recommended
A vociferous alumni element has recently been proposing, in the pages of the Alumni Bulletin, that the School be converted to Humanism--faith in man substituted for faith in God. Aside from theoretical merit or demerit of such a proposal, it is legally blocked by the School's constitution, which definitely specifies that the School be undenominational.
Meeting every six to eight weeks for the past two years, evaluating the material it has drawn from the School, the commission has made its decision and, reportedly, will have its findings in the Corporation's hands in time for a pre-June 5 publication. Once the commission's work is made known only Corporation action will stand between epithets such as "cheapest place to get a Ph D." and a happy solution of the paradoxical dilemma of religion at Harvard.