Horton New Dean Of Divinity School

Douglas Horton, Minister of the General Council of Congregational Christian Churches, is the new dean of the Divinity School.

President Pusey announced Horton's appointment to the post, vacant for the past two years, in a special release last night. George H. Williams, associate professor of History, has served as Acting Dean of the school during an unusually long vacancy, since the retirement in January, 1953 of the late Dean Willard L. Sperry. Horton's name had first been mentioned for the position as early as the fall of 1953.

Horton has been a leader in the ecumenical movement of Protestant churches throughout the world. He thus fits the aim of the rejuvenated Divinity School, announced last fall, to build a specifically ecumenical faculty from as many religious traditions, in an effort to combine as many of the mainstreams of religious thought as possible within the school's faculty.

Horton is active on the National Council of Churches and served for several years on the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches. In 1937 he edited "The Basic Formula for Church Union."

Since 1943, he has been Lecturer on Congregational Polity at Union Theological Seminary. Earlier he taught at Newton Theological Institution, while the minister of the Leyden Congregational Church of Brookline from 1925 to 1931. He has also taught at the University of Chicago Theological Seminary.

Graduate of Princeton

Horton received his A. B. degree from Princeton in 1912. He later studied at the University of Edinburgh, Oxford, and Tuebingen, receiving the B. D. degree from Hartford Theological Seminary in 1915.

He holds honorary degrees from Princeton, Chicago, Carleton College, Lawrence College, and Marietta College. Until recently he served as Moderator of the International Congregational Council. He is also Chairman of the Board of the American University at Cairo, and a trustee of Princeton and of Union Theological Seminary.

"Dr. Horton," President Pusey commented last night, "with his deep concern for the Church Universal, has the point of view, the skill, the experience, and the learning both to lead the Divinity School into the mainstream of scholarly activity within the University, and at the same time to keep its work helpfully related to living religion in the churches and among the people of this nation and the world. We feel singularly fortunate to have secured his services to help us in the advancing program of our Divinity School."