Divinity School to Give New Course Next Year

The Faculty of the Divinity School has announced plans for a new course, the History of Religious Education, to begin next year. Robert Ulich, James Bryant Conant Professor of Education, will teach the course in accordance with the Divinity School's extensive program of expansion.

The new course will be part of a policy of close cooperation between the Divinity School and other departments of the University, especially the School of Education.

Ulich will begin the course with the study of early synagogues and monasteries, advance to developments in religious education in the Reformations, and later consider American developments in detail.

To Study Sunday Schools

In American religious education, the course will deal with problems from the early grades of Sunday Schools to problems on a college and graduate level. Ulich will also devote time to a discussion of American parochial schools.

Most of the material for the course will come from translations of texts which were used during the periods to be studied.

Among other plans for future expansion, the Divinity Schools plans to create a new field, International Churchmanship, which would represent the growing importance of the movement toward unity among Protestant and Orthodox sects symbolized by the World Council of Churches. In addition, the school also contemplates a Chair of Byzantine Theology.

American Church Professorship

Further plans provide for a Professorship of American Church History which would free one scholar to concentrate on the theological traditions of the New World. The purpose of this study will be to help future ministers understand American history in terms of its many religious currents. "This aspect is one of the last to be fully developed in the study of church history," explained George H. Williams, associate professor of Church History and Acting Dean of the Divinity School.