Chicago at 100

John D. Rockefeller Sr. was a Baptist of conventional piety, hardly the sort of man to launch a religious insurrection. Without intending to, he did. As the price for bankrolling the founding of the University of Chicago in 1890, he insisted that Chicago's struggling, sectarian Baptist Seminary become the nucleus of the university. This year Chicago's Divinity School, older than the university because it dates from the seminary's founding, celebrates its 100th anniversary-respected everywhere for dynamism, innovation and influence.

In the free environment of the new University of Chicago, the Divinity School quickly lost its denominational character, became committed to the then jarring notion that Christianity is a historical religion that can find its full meaning only within a total concept of human culture. This conviction led the Divinity School to ride the crest of each successive wave of American Protestant thought. First, as a citadel of liberalism, it warred on fundamentalism. Then it pioneered in historical criticism of the Bible, developed professional standards for Sunday-school teachers. Later the school was swept by Karl Earth's neo-orthodoxy and Paul Tillich's existential theology. And it was in the library of fortresslike Swift Hall in 1955 that Student Thomas Altizer, now professor of religion at Atlanta's Emory University, came suddenly to the conclusion that "God is dead" for modern society.

Today Chicago's student enrollment of 375 is an ecumenical admixture of Protestants (including 55 Methodists, 54 Lutherans, 40 Baptists, 31 Presbyterians, 25 Episcopalians) seasoned with 17 Roman Catholics, four Jews and a solitary Buddhist. Characteristically, they put their theological studies ahead of formal religion; Professor Joseph Sittler mournfully notes that there are seldom more than 20 to 30 students at midweek services in Bond Chapel.

Magnet for Teachers. This history and atmosphere has drawn to the school some of the most lively, creative and talented theologians and church historians currently teaching in the U.S. They include:

> JERALD BRAUER, 43, Lutheran, the dean. Brauer's scholarly field is English Puritanism, and his modern interest is the effect of religion in politics and education. Appointed dean eleven years ago, he is committed to the credo that "knowledge, although of value for its own sake," must lead to social action. >GIBSON WINTER, 49, Episcopalian, professor of ethics and society. Having earned a Ph.D. in sociology at Harvard, he went on to be a pioneer of church renewal and writer of the provocative Suburban Captivity of the Churches. >ROBERT GRANT, 48, Episcopalian, professor of New Testament. The top expert on patristics (the study of the writings of the early church fathers) and gnosticism in the U.S., Grant writes limericks ("Most of them can't be printed"), short plays and books, ineluding one on World War I antisubmarine warfare.

>MIRCEA ELIADE, 59, Rumanian Orthodox, professor of the history of religions and the world's leading authority on ancient mythology (TIME, Feb. 11). "I teach," says Rumanian-born Eliade, "without any theological implications, and they accept it here." >NATHAN SCOTT, 40, Episcopalian, professor of theology and literature. A Detroit Negro educated at Manhattan's Union Theological Seminary, Scott did a stint of teaching at Howard before going to Chicago in 1955. His books include studies on Camus and Beckett.

"The genius of this place," says Scott, "is the concept of theology as an interdisciplinary undertaking." >JOSEPH SITTLER, 61, Lutheran, professor of theology. The leading campus spokesman for ecumenism, he combined parish ministry with teaching at a Lutheran seminary before coming to Chicago. He says Chicago "is not protecting any theological tradition. The tradition here is hard-nosed research."

> LANGDON GILKEY, 47, Baptist, professor of theology. A teacher in China, he spent World War II in a Japanese prison camp, told of the experience in Shantung Compound. The greatness of Chicago, says Gilkey, "is that it views Christianity not as separate from culture, but as its spiritual essence." -MARTIN MARTY, 37, Lutheran, associate professor of church history. Among the top historians of the Christian church in America, Marty served for eight years as a parish minister, is an associate editor of the Christian Century. He went to Chicago Divinity because it "is short on ideology and because pragmatism has never been a dirty word here."

Theologians of such diverse backgrounds came together at Chicago, says Dean Brauer, because they believe that "religion is of the utmost importance if man is to retain his humanity. For them, the crisis of our time is not simply a Christian problem, but a crisis as to the meaning and possibility of religion in any form."

A Debt of Gratitude. Chicago's questioning empiricism has made it preeminently a school for training scholars and theologians rather than parish ministers. The role of Chicago as a teacher of teachers persuaded Paul Tillich to spend his last years "repaying the debt" of gratitude to the school that has "prepared more professors than any other theological center in America." Among alumni are 35 seminary presidents and 2,000 professors and school administrators. Through them the school's pragmatic Christianity has percolated to every corner of the U.S.

Chicago demands from its students that they think for themselves. The gruelling 21-hour oral doctoral exam tests them on whether they have constructed "a theological position of their own and can defend it rationally," says the Rev. Philip Hefner, professor at

Gettysburg's Lutheran Theological Seminary, who was so tested in 1962.

Chicago's love for theological tinkering has, says Sittler, led many schools in the U.S. "to hold Chicago at arm's length, like a firecracker with an indeterminate fuse." For Brauer, the willingness to probe, to question, to risk and sometimes to err is the essential quality that a theological school should aspire to. At Chicago, religion is regarded as a prophetic force that must question its own fundamental beliefs in or der to retain its relevance and to renew itself and survive for tomorrow.

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