Breaking the Pattern

Crew-cut Jerry Brauer, 34, officially became the youngest head of a U.S. theological faculty last week. It was fitting that it should be at the University of Chicago, where young leadership is a tradition (William Rainey Harper was 35 when he became first president of the new university, ex-Chancellor Robert Hutchins took over at 30). As he moved in as the new boss of Chicago's Federated Theological Faculty, Midwesterner Brauer (from Fond du Lac, Wis.) immediately announced completion of a detailed 16-point program to revolutionize the seminary.

Highlights of his proposals: 1) extend the three-year Bachelor of Divinity course by another full year devoted to "interning" in a parish; 2) set up joint professorships, tying theology into the academic work of the university in such fields as law, history, philosophy, the social sciences; 3) organize a research center to develop "a new theory of missions."

In his inaugural address, Lutheran Brauer, who studied at Northwestern Lutheran Theological Seminary in Minneapolis and taught four years at Federated, found nothing to cheer about in the spiritual status quo. "The theological profession is becoming so respectable that it is rapidly becoming uncomfortable," he said. As for U.S. theological schools, said the young dean before his address, "too many men are still teaching the same confounded things . . . We're out to break the pattern."

A pattern was being broken at Chicago's Presbyterian McCormick Theological Seminary--so named since 1886 because of the generous endowments of Farm Machinery Maker Cyrus H. McCormick. Last week a theology professor was showing a visitor around. "By the way," he remarked, "we never refer to death as the Grim Reaper around here. It's always the International Harvester."

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