United Ministry Holds Seminars

Tackling topics ranging from "Art--Its Meaning as Language" to Demythologization in the Interpretation of the Gospel of John," Harvard and Radcliffe students began meeting last week in a series of seminars, sponsored by the United Ministry.

To answer a need for something more disciplined than a "bull session" but less structured than a lecture series, the Rev. Richard E. Mumma, member of the United Ministry at Harvard and Radcliffe, launched the program of non-credit seminars two years ago.

One Cancelled

Offering its fifth group of seminars this fall, the United Ministry expects to enroll over 90 students in 14 seminars. All but one of the seminars originally offered will be held. "Freedom of the Will," a seminar to have been taught by John B. Moore, teaching fellow in Philosophy, was cancelled when only two students signed up.

Taught mainly by Faculty members, the seminars are limited to eight or nine participants and meet once weekly for six weeks. Although most deal with religious topics, the majority of the students enrolled are not among those regularly active in a religious group around the Square.

Contrasting the registration of students in this fall's program with the enrollment of church members in a series of Lenten seminars offered last spring, Mumma says: "When we do a thing within the religious community our response is not as good as when we open it to the University as a whole."

"Looks Like Fun"

Mumma reports that 40 of 100 persons whom he invited to teach a seminar expressed "a willingness and an eagerness" to handle such a project. Walter Grossman lecturer on History and Literature, is conducting a group "to see how basic theological concerns come up in modern secular literature," because, as he says, "I thought it would be fun."

Almost all of the seminars will have assigned readings. Grossman will have his students reading Goethe's Faust, Part I, Gotthelf's Black Spider, and Brecht's Good Woman of Setzuan. Af- fred B. Lord, professor of Slavic and of Comparative Literature, will assign various Bible readings for his seminar, "Myth and Oral Tradition in the Bible," in order to promote "informal but informed discussion.

Dr. Alfred E. Miller, assistant surgeon to the University Health Services, determined to tackle the C.P. Snow's cultures" problem in his seminar, Impact of Modern Science on the Arts and Humanities." Snow's problem exemplified at Harvard, according Miller, in "the lack of communication the graduate schools among the different departments.