Divinity School: No 'Spectator Religion'

Talking to people at the Divinity School is like watching Sir Lancelot zoom by on a motorcycle: you get the feeling that time-honored traditions have been catapulted into the twentieth century.

Father Joseph H. Fichter is an example of this sometimes disconcerting blend of past and present. Fichter was appointed to the Divinity School faculty this fall as Chauncy Stillman Professor of Catholic Studies. But unlike his predecessors, who lectured in medieval history, Fichter holds a Harvard Ph.D. in sociology. Although he is a Jesuit, he admits he "can't remember the last time I read Thomas Aquinas."

Fichter is typical of the Divinity School's activist-theologians who are leading a religious revolution aimed at what another professor called "getting the church back into the pain and hope and excitement of the real world."

According to Harvey G. Cox, who joined the School's faculty this fall as associate professor of church and society, it is a revolt against "spectator religion, against the idea that the religious community is a ghetto somehow separated from the rest of society."

Cox says Divinity School unrest about "sterile, Sunday-morning Christianity" simmered until the civil rights issue exploded in the mid-1930's. "That gave us a chance to speak out, a chance to show people we were interested." Pope John's support of ecumenism also helped shape a brand of world-conscious religion that has not been seen in America since the abolitionist movement of the 1850's, Cox explains.

Not Just Good Ministers

The world-conscious religion, as practiced by the Divinity School, has prompted major revisions in the school's Field Work Program, part of the core curriculum. The program originally was an attempt to teach the practical side of the parochial ministry by giving students apprenticeships in local churches. "But we decided in 1961 that it is just as important to train good theologians as it is to train good ministers," Tjord G. Hommes, the program's director, says.

Under the revised program, only about one-third of the student teams--each with a faculty advisor--are placed in churches. This year, the rest will work in the Negro ghettos of the South End and Roxbury and in the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. Teams have been assigned to the state attorney general's office to study birth control legislation, juvenile delinquency, censorship, and property rights.

New Projects for the Surplus

The School was so hard put to find new projects that last summer it hired a student, Robert M. Veatch, to map out an effective program of participation in race relations. Veatch consulted community action groups like the Congress of Racial Equality and the American Friends Service Committee to determine specific jobs which would be suitable for students. He expects that the School will institute a complete program based on some of his proposals.

Veatch recommends, in his still unfinished report, that the School's civil rights activity be centered in one geographical area, probably the South End. He particularly emphasizes that participating students should move into neighborhoods, so they can be more than academic spectators.

Many of the men responsible for the School's new attitude joined the faculty this fall. One of the newcomers is Max L. Stackhouse, who lectures on ethics but is also an associate of the Harvard-M.I.T. Joint Center for Urban Studies. Stackhouse sees the union of sociology and theology as the birth of a new academic discipline, Christian Social Ethics, which focuses on "the relation between the church and all the problems of American culture."

New, But Not All That New

Stackhouse stresses that the new discipline is a modification, not a rejection, of traditional religious values. "You can't take medieval thinkers and transport them to the twentieth century," he says. He and his colleagues, in undertaking sociological studies for the Divinity School, have sought the advice of specialists in other fields. They have met with representatives of the Business School to consider questions of business ethics and will hold forums with the Education School on religion in public schools.

Two other men who came to the Divinity School this fall are Arthur J. Dyck and Ralph B. Potter J.r, assistant professors of social ethics, who split their time between teaching at the Divinity School! and research at the Harvard Center for Population Studies. The year-old Center coordinates work on world health problems, medical care, and the development and circulation of new birth control devices.

Potter and Dyck trade slashing repartee in their office and seem as far removed from the medieval scholastics as the atomic bomb is from the cross bow, but they are faced with a special problem. "Theologians working in urban affairs and civil rights can justify their work on the grounds that the Bible says 'God so loved the world'--which means the whole world, everyone, not just good little Christians,'" Potter says. "But we have to work against Biblical injunctions like 'Be fruitful and multiply.'"

Their job, as he sees it, is to relate population control to the "Love Thy Neighbor" precept by showing people that "they aren't doing their neighbors a favor by cluttering up the earth."

Like most of the other world-oriented theologians, Dyck and Potter have had training in sociology and ethics. This double-barreled education allows them to conduct scientific analyses as rigorous as those done by secular scientists. "We can't suppose that the Bible gives us any special source of knowledge that no one else can tap," Dyck says. "We have to know what we are talking about."

Potter is especially impressed with his colleagues' can-do attitude. "We can't just sit back and say it's God's will that there is a flood in the Middle West," he says. "We have the technology to handle things like that and we have to use it. Throwing up our hands in despair won't get us anywhere."

One man who follows the can-do philosophy is Harvey Cox, who claims to be the only member of the University faculty living in Roxbury. His chief interest--ruling passion would be closer to the truth--is civil rights. He serves on the Steering Committee of the Massachusetts branch of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and directs a group of Divinity School students working in the South End.

Bible-Thumpers and Jews

Cox attributes the success of the School's projects to its students. The student body includes "everything from Bible-thumping Baptists to Unitarians, not to mention Roman and Eastern Catholics, atheists, and a number of Jews." About half of them are studying for the ministry, but the majority of the others will teach religion in colleges and seminaries.

"It used to be that someone studying for the Protestant ministry would practically never meet a Catholic," Cox says. "But now, with the diverse body and field-work program, we are giving the students the same kind of on-the-job training that medical students get.

"The result of all this," Cox continues, "is a new image of the ministry. Five years ago when you thought of a minister you thought of a bland, unexciting man somewhat removed from the stress of real life. Today's image is more robust; it is the image of a man who wants to lead people in the application of ideals in the secular world, not merely to preside over a religious establishment."

New Kind of Priest

Cox predicts the swing to field work will continue and that the Bachelor of Divinity will be revised to include more of it. He expects that eventually Catholics studying for the priesthood will receive some instruction in a non-denominational divinity school like Harvard's. "I don't think we will be training priests here for a while," he says, "But I think that the Church is leaning in the direction of a broader education."

Dr. James L. Adams, chairman of the Christian ethics department, is also concerned with ending segregation. But Adams views the racial and religious conflicts as examples of the more general problem of separation and alienation. To illustrate the point, he tells a story about two graduate students who found themselves seated next to each other at dinner. "My field is mathematics, what's yours?" one asked. "New Testament," the other replied. At that point the conversation ended.

Segregation of classes, of disciplines, of neighborhoods--these are, according to Adams, the things that mark an ailing society. "Churches almost inevitably participate in these segregations," he says. "The local congrega-5ARTHUR J. DYCK (left) and RALPH B. POTTER JR., part-time teachers, part-time population experts, try to teach "love thy neighbor," not "be fruitful and multiply."