Div School Gives Hall Tenure

A world-renowned scholar of American religious history has crossed the Charles River to join the Harvard Divinity School faculty.

Former Boston University Professor of History David D. Hall '58 will help expand the masters and doctoral programs in Unitarian Universalist Studies at the Div School, filling the gap left by the 1987 retirement of Professor C. Conrad Wright.

"He was a nurturing and concerned professor who worked particularly well with graduate students," said William R. Keylor, chair of the B.U. history department and Hall's longstanding colleague. "I'm very sad to see him go."

Harvard, on the other hand, is quite delighted to have Hall. "He's an excellent addition to our faculty and to the university for research and teaching of American colonial history," said Charles Hutchison, Charles Warren Professor of the History of Religion in Colonial America.

Hall's scholarship has focused on the role of the Unitarian Universalist church in early America. He has written four books and 30 articles on religion during this period.

Hall is on leave this fall, but will teach a course entitled "Liberalism and Orthodoxy, 1750-1890" in the spring. He was brought to Harvard with a grant from the Ralph Waldo Emerson Fund for Unitarian Universalist Studies, an endowment created last year by several Unitarian Universalist groups.

The Unitarian Universalist Church is a small but historically important liberal religious movement which broke away from the orthodox New England Congregationalist Church in the early 19th century, Hutchison said. He also cited the movement as a major inspiration for early transcendentalists such as Emerson.

"Harvard seems to be the leading center in America for Unitarian Universalist studies, though it's only a small part of the Divinity School program," Hutchison added.

According to Hall, this is no coincidence, "Harvard itself, in its 19th and 20th century incarnation, has been strongly shaped by Unitarian Universalism."