Pastoral Dean

When Henry Dunster, first president of Harvard, became convinced that the Baptist position on infant baptism was sound, he felt that he had drifted so far from Puritan orthodoxy there was only one thing to do: resign. He would have been pleased at last week's announcement of a new dean for Harvard Divinity School. Dr. Samuel Howard Miller will be the first Baptist dean in its 147-year history.

Few people disapproved. "Perhaps," said Baptist Miller, "we've reached the point where these traditional divisions are no longer terribly important--and we've learned to take each other less seriously." Yet quite a few people were surprised at his appointment to succeed retiring Congregationalist Douglas Horton, 67: Harvard, with such top scholars on its faculty as Paul Tillich, Richard Niebuhr, Amos Wilder, and Britain's Christopher Dawson, had chosen a parish pastor.

Philadelphia-born Samuel Miller, 59, graduated from Colgate University, ministered to Baptist churches in Belmar, Arlington and Clifton, N.J. before becoming minister of the Old Cambridge Baptist Church in 1933. In 1955, during Harvard Divinity's $5,000,000 renaissance, Pastor Miller became Professor Miller--lecturing on pastoral theology at Harvard and the philosophy of religion at Andover-Newton Theological School.

Tall, grey-haired Professor Miller's scholar colleagues are happy about his appointment. "If you turn a scholar into a dean," said one, "you are likely to end up with a frustrated man. Miller knows what's going on in the world of scholarship, but he isn't going to be torn apart."

The author of four books, including The Life of the Soul, The Life of the Church, The Great Realities, Dr. Miller has also taught a course at the Divinity School on the novels of Dostoevsky, Kafka, Camus and Graham Greene. His other major interest, surprising for a Baptist, is liturgy. Said he last week: "I believe the act of worship is the church's most distinctive contribution to society. There is no other source of power which will enable society to achieve any sort of unity."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.