Resplendent in clerical robes and red cap, Augustin Cardinal Bea, President of the Vatican Secretariat for Christian Unity, took the pulpit in Sanders Theatre March 27 to address the Divinity School's Catholic-Protestant Colloquium. In a dramatic way Bea's visit to Harvard marked the re-emergence of the Divinity School as a significant force in the intellectual life of the University. Sure of its present and hopeful for its future after ten years of growth, the School is making an effort to expand the influence of religion in contemporary society.

President Pusey's appointment of Samuel H. Miller, professor of Pastoral Theology and a Baptist minister of national reputation, as dean in 1959 recognized the desirability of this effort. The seven years which preceded Dean Miller's appointment had witnessed the effective rebirth of the Divinity School.

In that time enrollment in the School had more than doubled, from 103 to 256. With the active support of President Pusey and Dean Douglas Horton, a capital funds drive to raise $5 million in new endowment had reached its goal. An increase in the number of professors from a mere handful in 1952 to over 20 had given it a distinguished faculty--including such luminaries as University Professor Paul Tillich, Krister Stendahl, and Old Testament scholar George E. Wright--and made it a leader in scholarship.

Train Ministers

Under Dean Miller the Divinity School has returned to its basic aim: training men for the ministry. In the last four years Dean Miller has overseen a reworking of the program for the Bachelor of Divinity degree, the establishment of a Department of the Church to promote closer relations with parishes, and the inauguration of a series of "Reports from the Ministry" to bring students into closer contact with the problems of working clergymen.

The most striking evidence of the School's renewed concern for the role of the church in the modern world was this year's Colloquium, which brought together more than 150 Catholic and Protestant churchmen. Dean Miller called the Colloquium a "superb success," and saw in its format of public lectures and panel discussions "a method of introducing into our School a dialogue with many different fields." Among the colloquia which he suggested the Divinity School might sponsor were a symposium on contemporary business ethics, a discussion of the relationship between ministers and psychiatrists, and an examination of the theological significance of modern novels.

Religion or the University

This desire on the part of the Divinity School to confront the sciences and humanities on their own terms has replaced what was, in the middle fifties, almost a preoccupation with the role of religion in the university community.

President Pusey himself started the preoccupation by delivering a major address at the Divinity School in the fall of 1953. He criticized the idea that society is a substitute for God or that knowledge without faith can serve as a guide for human conduct, and called for leadership "in religious knowledge and even more, in religious experience."

Though the President's active concern for the quality and influence of religious thought has been a major impetus behind the rebuilding of the Divinity School, it has at times caused friction in a Harvard steeped in religious indifference. The most notable example of this friction was the Memorial Church controversy of 1958, in which, after intense pressure from the Faculty, the Corporation recognized the right of non-Christians to be married in the chapel.

More Secure

But the need to reassert Harvard's religious traditions which marked Pusey's original, unbending stand in 1958 has become less urgent as the place of the Divinity School has become more secure, and there are few who would challenge the integrity of religious thinkers willing to meet their critics halfway.

"The place of religion in the University is to some degree determined by the openness and moderateness of the claims which religion makes," Dean Miller said. "If we're not trying to re-establish theology as the queen of the sciences we may get a lot further in trying to confront all the realms of human knowledge and in manifesting a real integrity in the search for truth."

The rejuvenation of the Divinity School over the last ten years is the most dramatic, if most obvious, example of the power of Presidential patronage at Harvard. Even in Cambridge, money talks, and the keeper of the purse is in Massachusetts Hall.

The annual reports of the deans of the graduate schools present a tiresome chronicle of precariously-balanced budgets and impending financial disaster. If the President lends a sympathetic car it may mean a fund drive, or a larger share of the jealously-guarded unrestricted monies of the Corporation. If he does not, the pleas for a new building, new programs, or new faculty members will go unheeded, to be repeated in next year's report.