HTR Centennial celebration: words of welcome.(Harvard Theological Review)(Speech)

Good morning and welcome to all of you who have gathered on this extremely proud day for Harvard Divinity School to mark the centennial celebration of the HTR, the Harvard Theological Review.

I am honored to have been asked by our Editor, Francois Bovon, to begin the day by paying brief tribute to this trail-blazing publication in theological and religious studies, and especially in American theological and religious studies. Since its first print run in 1908, the Review has had a significant role in defining the ways in which essential religious questions are posed, analyzed, and taken in new and compelling directions in scholarship, both in this country and abroad.

However, we should not think today that this was, even in the beginning, a hundred years ago, an undertaking that had smooth sailing. One can glean something of that, I think, from the very first article in the inaugural HTR issue, 1:1, of January 1, 1908, which was written by Francis Peabody and entitled "The Call to Theology." in his very first paragraph, Peabody remarks that theology was not uncontested in society at large, however positively it might have been treated in the academy at the time:

 
   The time may appear to many persons inopportune for the launching 
   of a Journal of Theology. The …