Reformation scholar named Titus Street Professor
The new Titus Street Professor of Theology is Bruce Gordon, who came to YDS in 2008. A specialist in late medieval and early modern religious history, Gordon is the author of a recent biography of John Calvin, Calvin, published by Yale University Press. “Bruce’s work on the Reformation in general and especially his recent book on John Calvin have placed him among the foremost historians of Christianity of this generation,” said Harold Attridge, the Rev. Henry L. Slack Dean of YDS. Among Gordon’s other published works are The Swiss Reformation and Clerical Reformation and the Rural Reformation. The Titus Street Professorship was established in 1869 to support a chair in ecclesiastical history, through a bequest by Augustus Russell Street, who graduated from Yale College in 1812.
Divinity School plays central role at AYA assembly
Yale Divinity School was front and center at this year’s Association of Yale Alumni assembly, which had as its theme “Transformational Dialogue: Spiritual and Religious Engagement at Yale and in the World.” Featured speakers at the November assembly included Dean Harold Attridge and Miroslav Volf, director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Several smaller breakout sessions were moderated by Yale Divinity faculty and alums, and the final reception was held at YDS. Attridge framed his talk around the Divinity School’s decision to create a faculty position in the area of “spirituality and ministerial leadership,” an idea that had been greeted with initial skepticism fueled by concerns about “New Age” thinking. Pointing to Martin Luther King Jr. and William Sloane Coffin Jr. ’49, ’56BD, Attridge concluded, “These are the models of the kind of spirituality that we hope to cultivate in the religious leaders we produce for the future, men and women of deep conviction who have thought long and hard about what those convictions entail, who have developed the traits of character, the heart, that will sustain the effort it takes to work those convictions out in practice.”
Difficult issues addressed at conference on faith in the military
A two-star general, the first Islamic chaplain in the U.S. Armed Forces, one of the nation’s foremost legal experts on faith in the military, and a YDS professor who ignited national discussion about proselytizing at the Air Force Academy were among participants at a November conference on faith in the military cosponsored by the Divinity School and the Law School. Conversation was civil, yet it was clear that resolution of differing viewpoints on weighty matters of religious expression in the military—such as the controversial “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy—awaits another day. Asked what might happen if the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays in the military were reversed, Eugene Fidell, the Florence Rogatz Lecturer in Law at the Law School, said, “For some chaplains that is going to be tremendously difficult. Some chaplains may look for the exit if they find the military environment is no longer compatible with their deeply held views. On the other hand, there will presumably be some gay chaplains coming in who will be out of the closet.” Fidell and YDS associate professor of pastoral care and counseling Kristen Leslie spearheaded organization of the conference.
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