While the Div School is a center for many diverse activist groups, the most vocal and visible is the movement against nuclear arms.

The recently published statement calls for an immediate halt to the manufacture of nuclear weapons and the eventual abolition of all nuclear arms. Similar to statements circulated by local secular groups such as the Coalition for a Nuclear Arms Freeze, it reads in part, "In the name of God, let us speak out now, let our silences once again make us accomplices to holocaust, this one threatening the very existence of mankind."

Signed by 27 of the Divinity School's 36 faculty members, 36 staff members, and over 100 of about 350 students, the advertisement will appear in two additional religious magazines and in the March 3 issue of the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, the Divinity School publication. Frank Dormar the United Church of Christ minister and Div School receptionist who started the ad, says 30 additional student signatures have arrived at his office since the advertisement appeared.

Although Dorman believes every profession should "come out with its own kind of expertise on nuclear disarmament," he says religious scholars are particularly qualified to speak out on the "ethical implications" of war and nuclear weapons.

By addressing the statement to other members of the religions community, Dorman hopes to induce or persuade other religious leaders to speak out on nuclear disarmament. He was inspired to write and circulate the current statement when the read an advertisement in the Boston Globe drafted by a group of theological experts in Berlin, which "appealed to Americans to do something about" the nuclear weapons race.

In fact, one other seminary has already taken action, 95 percent of the faculty members of the Andover-Newton Theological School have already signed a statement identical to Dorman's. "The response here was almost instantaneous," says George W. Peck, dean of Andover-Newton. Dorman sees a widespread religious movement just starting for nuclear disarmament, and the Divinity School will be part of it, however unofficially. This seminary is no bastion of bible-belt conservatism.