Unless a Seed Falls: Cultivating Liberal Institutions

I have inherited a paradox. As the inaugural holder of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association chair, I am accountable in some sense to a man who once told the graduates of this school to “cast behind [them] all conformity” to what they had learned at school, relying on themselves...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: McKanan, Dan (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge Univ. Press 2010
In: Harvard theological review
Year: 2010, Volume: 103, Issue: 3, Pages: 291-308
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Summary:I have inherited a paradox. As the inaugural holder of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association chair, I am accountable in some sense to a man who once told the graduates of this school to “cast behind [them] all conformity” to what they had learned at school, relying on themselves rather than on the institutions of “historical Christianity.” But I am also accountable to one of those institutions—indeed, to the very denominational tradition that Emerson was leaving behind when he urged our students to “acquaint men at first hand with deity.”1 This level of institutional accountability in a Harvard chair has few precedents. Among my colleagues, only Francis Schussler Fiorenza has the name of a denomination in his title, and while the Charles Chauncy Stillman chair of Roman Catholic studies may contain its own paradoxes, I am guessing that the pope was not as intimately involved in its creation as Unitarian Universalist president Bill Sinkford was in the funding of the Emerson chair.
ISSN:1475-4517
Contains:Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S0017816010000647