Pusey Calls For Religion Integrated Into Daily Life

We can meet the problems of this "troubled age" only by "ceasing to think of religion as something unrelated to contemporary life, as something 'outgrown' since the time of those who founded Harvard College," President Pusey asserted yesterday.

The President delivered the traditional sermon at the Baccalaureate Service for the Class of 1961 in Memorial Church. He told the gathering of 604 that religion cannot be viewed "as an enterprise which in any way counsels withdrawal from life. Rather we should regard it as both an aid and a present necessity."

"Over and above knowledge, is it not true that what we want finally from Harvard--or perhaps I should say, what we should like to have grow in us while we are here--is an underlying, life-giving faith of (this) kind?" Pusey asked the seniors.

Pusey began his remarks by commenting on the "difficulties" of Harvard's Baccalaureate Service, established when a homogeneous group from the same ethnic background quite naturally met for common prayer. The tradition is maintained now, though services of prayer "do not come so easily to us" and the participants are from widely differing religious and cultural backgrounds.

Because of this diversity in contemporary religion, Pusey stated, we have learned only that religion cannot be "improvised or lived abstractly, but only concretely--in full involvement in the particularity of specific cultural and historical circumstances."

President Pusey added that this great ethnic diversity comes in an age of "widespread spiritual rootlessness" and at a time when "all leaders are crying out for unifying purposes."

Noting that the Class of 1961 entered the College during the Little Rock incident and the Sputnik anxiety, Pusey reviewed happenings in the Class's four years. He said that we now find ourselves in "a frighteningly disturbing world situation" when we must ask ourselves how to behave in such a world.

Now, as in all ages, men ask whether a "reasonably idealistic" individual can make his way in the world without being overwhelmed, defeated, or corrupted by it, Pusey said. And the answer to the question, the President declared, must be "in each individual case that we simply do not know."

The Senior Class was led in the procession through the Yard by the four Class Marshals.