“The worst thing we could do would be to become a Kennedy School of Religion, studying everything without a single focus,” he said last year. “If we cease to be a school whose primary professional constituency is Western Christian religion, then our heart will be eviscerated.”

One of the goals of this curricular review is to strengthen the school’s diverse offerings while not losing sight of its core strength—the study of Christianity.

“I’m not at all convinced that you can’t find a way to accommodate both of those school of thought, and I think that’s exactly what’s being considered right now,” Little says.

But Lamberth says there is general agreement that Christianity will remain central, in large part due to the HDS ministry program, because it’s simply not feasible to train religious leaders in many different denominations. Nonetheless, he says he hopes to find a way to give more weight to other religions.

“There are resources limitations there,” Lamberth says. “But in principle, it’s not an either-or, but a both-and.”

The school must find a way to balance its vocational training with the more academic study of religion, a problem that has historically been difficult.

“There’s a kind of traditional divide between theology and religious studies,” Constas says.

In just recently appointing a new dean of ministry, faculty say Graham has reaffirmed his commitment to the program.

“There’s no question [of us] getting rid of the Christian studies or the ministerial program—that’s really central to our mission,” Constas says. “There’s also no question that we’re going to go back on or renege on our commitment to the study of religion more generally.”

He says finding the school’s mission is necessarily an intractable problem.

“That we struggle with this problem shouldn’t be anything we feel embarrassed by,” Constas says. “It’s just an enormous problem, and a terribly complicated one.”

And striking an effective balance could help define Harvard’s niche as one of the few non-denominational divinity schools, he says.

Ivory Tower of Babel?

But with a separate FAS Committee on the Study of Religion that awards undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees, some wonder whether Harvard needs a divinity school.

It comes as no surprise that HDS professors—many of whom also serve on the FAS committee—say that the Divinity School is essential.