Original and Ongoing Theological Issues through One Hundred Years of the Harvard Theological Review

Abstract

The first words of the inaugural issue of the Harvard Theological Review in January 1908 were those of Francis Greenwood Peabody, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and sometime Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, from 1901–1906. An ordained Unitarian minister, Peabo, as he was affectionately called by the undergraduates, was known most prominently around College haunts for having convinced the Corporation (the President and Fellows of Harvard College) to make Chapel attendance optional while he was Preacher to the University. More importantly, however, he was the main proponent of Social Ethics in both the College and the Divinity School and Harvard's own expositor of the Social Gospel some years before Walter Rauschenbusch made that term popular. Peabody was also a key professor of German thought and theology in the Divinity School.