Union Finds a President

Few prudent men would walk lightly into a university presidency today, and the presidency of the nation's most renowned Protestant seminary is no exception. At Manhattan's Union Theological Seminary, where campus dissensions are exacerbated by increasingly divergent views on the application of the Christian Gospel, the search for a new president has lasted for more than two years. Last week Union's board finally settled on a personable, activist cleric whose chief credentials are administrative ability and courage: the Rt. Rev. J. (for John) Brooke Mosley, 54, former Episcopal Bishop of Delaware and currently Deputy for Overseas Relations of the Episcopal Church.

Mosley will be a distinct departure for Union. Though the seminary was interdenominational from the start, Mosley is the first president who has not come out of a Calvinist tradition. He is not an academic like current President John C. Bennett, a pioneering scholar in modern Christian social ethics. Nor is he likely to emulate the firm-handed rule of another distinguished theologian, Henry Pitney Van Dusen, whose 18-year tenure (1945-63) brought Union to its peak of prestige.

Mosley comes from a pastoral background that may be particularly relevant to present-day conditions. One of Union's problems is how to react to its inner-city environment on the edge of Harlem. Mosley, as a young priest, successfully built up an inner-city parish in Cincinnati. Another growing problem is fundraising, a fact of life that

Mosley learned well as a bishop. But the gravest problem at Union is direction: younger faculty and bachelor-of-divinity students want less emphasis on studies, more on involvement in society. Postgraduate students, older faculty and directors want to concentrate on preserving Union's academic excellence. Whether that gap can be bridged successfully is doubtful, but Mosley seems more than willing to try. "The groups at Union fight hard for what they want," he says, "and they want contradictory things. But I rather like that sort of process, and I'm not unused to it."

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