Spring Preachers Asked To Cancel Engagements

President Pusey has asked clergymen previously scheduled to preach at Memorial Church during the spring term to cancel their engagements.

Newly elected Chairman of the Board of Preachers George A. Buttrick will preach almost all of the sermons during the term. The only visitors scheduled at present are Paul J. Tillich, University Professor of Christianity; Reinhold Niebuhy, dean of the Faculty of Union Theological Seminary; and Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, of the Washington, D.C., area of the Methodist Church.

Niebuhr's engagement here is the first outside speech he has scheduled since his illness three years ago.

This plan is a radical departure both from the ordinary schedule at Memorial Church and from customary campus procedure throughout the nation. In the past, prominent clergymen have spoken weekly, with the Chairman filling in only occasionally.

Among those asked to cancel spring engagements are Sidney Lovett, chaplain of Yale University, and the Rt. Rev. Angus Dun, Episcopal Bishop of Washington, D.C. Dun had been invited often in past years to appear at the Church, but had never until this year been able to accept a date.

Lovett explained that he and the other scheduled speakers were happy to cancel their engagements in favor of the Buttrick series. Lovett, as a member of the Board of Preachers, has previously appeared at Memorial Church twice a year. He will still preach this fall. According to Pusey, Dun agreed that the proposed pre-Lenten series by Buttrack was well worth the change in plan.

Program Continuity

Buttrick will preach the series in order to give the program a continuity it has lacked in past years. Life magazine featured Buttrick, now pastor of the Madison Ave. Presbyterian Church in New York and professor of Homiletics at Union Seminary, as one of the ten greatest preachers in the country.

"In separating the position of Dean of the Divinity School from Chairman of the Board of Preachers," Pusey explained, "we wanted a first-class man for the second post too. It was assumed that when we got such a man he would take on a large share of the speaking schedule. In Mr. Buttrick we have that first class preacher."