Douglas Possible Committee Choice For Divinty Dean

Truman Douglas, head of the Board of Home Missions of the Congregational Church, appeared last night to be high on a list of three men submitted to President Pusey for consideration as new Dean of the Divinity School.

A source close to the selection committee indicated that Douglas was definitely the first choice. A member of the committee itself stated that Douglas "had been under strong consideration," and refused to deny that he was one of the three, although denying that several other names given to him were under consideration.

Douglas, a former minister of the Pilgrim Congregational Church in St. Louis, has been for several years the head of the Congregational Church's Home Missions Board and active in student work.

Originally considered for Preacher

Reportedly, Douglas had originally been one of the top contenders for the position of University Preacher, but was switched to the Divinity School list because the committee "thought so much of him."

President Pusey has already announced that the new dean will be chosen before the end of this term. Many expect him to be named within the next few weeks.

Members of the committee emphasized that Pusey could over-ride their suggestions and pick a man of his own choosing.

Other persons on the committee's original list of "twenty-five or thirty," and still believed in the running, are said to be the Rev. Theodore P. Ferris '29, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston, the Rev. H. Richard Niebuhr, professor at Yale; the Rev. Douglas Horton, minister of the General Council of the Congregational Churches and husband of the former president of Wellesley; the Rev. John C. Bennett, professor of Christian Theology and Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and colleague of Reinhold Niobuhr; and John a. Hutchinson, professor of Religion at Williams College.