Faculty point to the ministry program as a central justification for having an independent divinity school.

“If you’re reaffirming the ministry program [by appointing a respected new associate dean], you’ve got to have a divinity school,” says Hall, who also chairs the committee. “The Faculty of Arts and Sciences is not set up to have a ministry program.”

But the HDS faculty have not yet begun to discuss the ultimate relationship between the Divinity School and the Committee on the Study of Religion.

“It’s an old question,” Hall says. “It will never go away.”

Most HDS faculty say there is a good relationship between the committee and the Divinity School, claiming that any overlap is productive.

“There’s nothing major broken at the moment,” Hall says.

But Eck says despite the success of the partnership, it’s “high time” that the FAS religion committee became a department.

“Every other major university in the U.S. has a religion department,” Eck says.

Lecturer on the Study of Religion Brian C.W. Palmer says students and faculty at FAS would benefit if the committee became a department. But he also expresses concern that a full FAS religion department might jeopardize the Divinity School’s drawing power.

“One worry about making FAS Religion a department has been that it would become more prestigious to be tenured there than to be tenured at HDS, creating an unpleasant inter-faculty rivalry,” he writes in an e-mail.

Many say Summers chose Graham because of his joint appointment and strong relationship with FAS. Graham—a past chair of both the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and the College’s Council of Masters—will step down as Currier House master this month.

Graham has committed to ensuring a successful relationship with FAS.

“Dean [of the Faculty William C.] Kirby and I have been discussing the future relations of the two faculties since before I agreed to serve as the regular dean, and we shall continue to work together to improve the study of religion as a whole, across the boundary between our two faculties,” he says.

And professors say that in picking Graham, Summers hoped the new dean’s experience working with other schools would lead him to forge strong relationships for HDS across Harvard.

“I know that that’s one reason why he appointed Bill Graham,” Little says. “He brings to the Divinity School a history of integration with the broader University program.”