Henry Pitt Van Dusen
1897-1975
committed suicide with Wife 1975
Henry Pitt Van Dusen’s definition broadens our view:
“Religion is the reaching out of one’s whole beingmind, body, spirit, emotions, intuitions, willfor completion, for inner unity, for true relation with those about us, for right relation to the universe in which we live.”
In the 1957, New York crusade, Billy Graham had Henry Pitt Van Dusen, President of Union Theological Seminary take a place of responsibility and authority. U.S. News wrote that Van Dusen's school was one of the most liberal and left-wing schools in America. Yet for all this, they wrote that Dr. Van Dusen is considered by Graham as a great religious leader.
In the 1930s and 1940s the Seminary contributed vigorously to the revival of Protestant theology. The work of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, among others, received strong encouragement from President Henry Sloane Coffin (1926-45). In the post-World War II presidency of Henry P. Van Dusen (1945-63), the Seminary reaffirmed its long-standing commitment to the missionary and ecumenical movements. Union became a center to which students and teachers came from throughout the world. The special needs of the church in urban settings also continued to be emphasized.
In Princeton a renowned educator, Henry Pit Van Dusen, and his wife, living in the descent of life with powers waning, decide to take overdoses of sleeping pills. Mrs. Van Dusen dies immediately; the former president of Union Theological Seminary lingers two weeks. Nature has always sent its springlike burst of joy at birth and its muted wintry chill of death. We have passively accepted, as if from God’s hand, what nature gives. Now nature and providence are challenged by our assertive will at those once-sacrosanct thresholds: life’s inception and life’s demise. Yet we remain uneasy with our intrusions.
Henry Pitt Van Dusen has written: The Holy Spirit is God's gift to the church, but never the possession of the church. The Spirit is too elusive to be possessed. It is the extension of the incarnation, the presence of the Spirit in the church.
Dusen, age 77, was the former president of New York’s Union Theological Seminary and a distinguished Presbyterian minister. He and his wife, Elizabeth, age 80, discussed suicide with their friends and then signed a pact before taking an overdose of sleeping pills. She wrote:
We have both had very full and satisfying lives. . . . But since Pitney had his stroke five years ago, we have not been able to do any of the things we want to do . . . and my arthritis is much worse. There are also many helpless old people who without modern medicinal care would have died, and we feel God would have allowed them to die when their time had come. Nowadays it is difficult to die. We feel that this way we are taking will become more usual and acceptable as the years pass. We are both increasingly weak and unwell, and who would want to die in a nursing home? . . . O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace.
The Van Dusens realized that some nursing homes are virtual tombs where the elderly are buried alive. They asked for God’s forgiveness in advance for any wrong they might be committing by their decision to leave this life before they needlessly suffered even more. Although they did not say so, they were probably also disturbed by the thought of the loneliness that would follow if one survived the other.
Henry Pitney Van Dusen
Also known as: Henry P(itney) Van Dusen, Henry P. Van Dusen
Birth: December 11, 1897 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States Death: February 13, 1975 in Belle Meade, New Jersey Occupation: Educator, United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Source: Religious Leaders of America, 2nd ed. Gale Group, 1999.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
{HYPERLINK \l b_Essay}Biographical Essay {HYPERLINK \l b_Readings}Further Readings {HYPERLINK \l b_Personal}Personal Information {HYPERLINK \l sourceCitation}Source Citation
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Henry Pitney Van Dusen, ecumenical leader and president of both Union Theological Seminary and Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City for over 25 years, was the son of Katherine James Pitney and George Richstein Van Dusen. He attended Princeton University, from which he received his A.B. degree. He later pursued graduate work abroad at New College in Edinburgh, Scotland, but returned to the United States to complete his B.D. in 1924 at Union Theological Seminary. He joined the faculty at Union in 1926 as an instructor and was named assistant professor in 1928 and associate professor in 1931, the same year of his marriage to Elizabeth Bartholomew. In 1932 he completed the requirements for his Ph.D. from Edinburgh University.
By the time he received his doctorate, Van Dusen was already well into what was to be a long and distinguished career at Union and the associated Auburn Seminary. In 1936 he was named Roosevelt Professor of Systematic Theology, a post he would retain for the next 23 years. In 1954, however, he also assumed additional duties as president of both Union and Auburn, a position he retained until his retirement in 1963. He emerged as a major advocate and defender of modern liberal theology.
Van Dusen's position at Union served as a launching pad for involvement in the ecumenical movement. In 1939 he became a member of the provisional and administrative committees which would lead to the formation of the World Council of Churches in 1948. He continued as a member of its study committee until 1954 and then served for seven years on the joint committee of the World Council and the International Missionary Council (I.M.C.). During this same period he served on a number of committees of the Federal Council of Churches (and the later National Council of Churches).
During his career Van Dusen was also the author of a number of books beginning with In Quest of Life's Meaning, published in 1926. Among his theological titles were The Plain Man Seeks for God (1933); Spirit, Son and Father: Christian Faith in the Light of the Hol Spirit (1958); and The Vindication of Liberal Theology (1963). Concerning ecumenical issues, he authored For the Healing of the Nations: Impressions of Christianity Around the World (1940); What IS the Church Doing? (1943); and One Great Ground of Hope: Christian Missions and Christian Unity (1961). His last book was Dag Hammarskjold: The Statesman and His Faith (1967). He edited a number of volumes as well, the most famous being The Library of Christian Classics (with John T. McNeil and John Baillie), a 26-volume work. He also served on the editorial board of Religion in Life, Christianity and Crisis, Christendom, and Ecumenical Review.
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Religion: Reformed/Presbyterian.
FURTHER READINGS
Van Dusen, Henry P. In Quest of Life's Meaning. New York: Association Press, 1926.
------. One Great Ground of Hope: Christian Missions and Christian Unity. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961.
------. The Plain Man Seeks for God. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933.
------. Spirit, Son and Father: Christian Faith in the Light of the Holy Spirit. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958.
------. What Is the Church Doing? New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1943.
SOURCE CITATION
Henry Pitney Van Dusen. Religious Leaders of America, 2nd ed. Gale Group, 1999. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2002. http://www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC
[See also the following webpage:]
http://etc.princeton.edu/CampusWWW/Companion/van_dusen_henry.ht ml
Van Dusen, Henry Pitney
Van Dusen, Henry Pitney '19 (1897-1975), world churchman, Christian statesman, and a long-time University trustee, came from a family with strong Princeton associations. His father, George R. Van Dusen 1877, was a lawyer, as were his maternal grandfather, New Jersey Vice-Chancellor Henry C. Pitney 1848, and three uncles, Henry C. Pitney, Jr. 1877, Supreme Court Justice Mahlon Pitney 1879, and Princeton trustee John O. H. Pitney 1881.
Pit Van Dusen was one of the leaders of his college generation, serving as chairman of the Undergraduate Council, president of the Philadelphian Society (the student Christian association), and captain of the University debating team. As a sophomore, he took part in the revolt against the eating clubs led by his classmate, Richard F. Cleveland. The winner of Phi Beta Kappa honors, he gave the Ivy oration on Class Day and the Valedictory at Commencement, and was voted by his class ``the best all-round man outside athletics'' and the ``most likely to succeed.''
After college, Van Dusen served as graduate secretary of the Philadelphian Society for two years and then took up theological study, the first year at New College, Edinburgh, the next two at Union Theological Seminary in New York, obtaining his bachelor of divinity degree there, summa cum laude, in 1924. Later, in the early 1930s, he returned to Scotland, where he completed graduate work for his Ph.D. at Edinburgh and was married in Inverness to Elizabeth Coghill Bartholomew, daughter of the late cartographer to the king.
The year he graduated from Union, his ordination was challenged by a conservative-minded judicial commission of the Presbyterian General Assembly because he declined to affirm the literal Biblical account of the virgin birth. He overcame the challenge with the help of a notable brief in his support by John Foster Dulles '08.
Following his ordination, Van Dusen spent two years visiting American colleges from coast to coast seeking to interpret religion to undergraduates, and then began his long career at Union Theological Seminary as an instructor in 1926. EIe became dean of students in 1932, Roosevelt professor of systematic theology in 1936, and tenth president in 1945, occupying that office for eighteen years. Under his vigorous leadership, the seminary attained worldwide significance as a center for theological study.
Van Dusen left his mark on world Christianity as a leader in the ecumenical movement, playing a prominent part in the founding of the World Council of Churches and paving the way for its union with the International Missionary Council as chairman of the joint commission representing both bodies. He traveled around the world twice, touching down at some sixty countries on six continents.
A tireless worker, he was a trustee of a dozen institutions, among them the Rockefeller Foundation, Vassar, and Smith -- as well as Princeton, where he held one of the University's longest trustee tenures: thirty-four years, twenty-one of them as chairman of the curriculum committee. Also included among some fifty extracurricular responsibilities were his services as chairman of numerous committees of various religious organizations, and as president or board chairman of the Association of American Theological Schools, the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, and the Union Settlement Association.
Van Dusen was the author or editor of some twenty-five books, among them For the Healing of the Nations: Impressions of Christianity Around the World (1940), The Vindication of Liberal Theology (1963), and Dag Hammarskj”ld: The Statesman and His Faith (1967), written in tribute to the United Nations' second Secretary- General, who, in Van Dusen's words, ``affirmed `The Communion of Saints' and -- within it -- an eternal life.''
Van Dusen's achievements were acclaimed by the Union Faculty and Board of Directors in their final tributes. ``In the long history of the Seminary,'' the Faculty declared, ``Van Dusen's presidency stands out as the high-water mark of its achievement. He . . . enlarged not only the personal and physical resources of the Seminary, but above all, its spirit and its outreach.'' The Board of Directors saluted him as ``one of the first World Churchmen of our era, a scholar, a statesman, a leader, and - - not least -- a friend.''
After his retirement as president of Union Seminary in 1963, Van Dusen and his wife made their home in Princeton. Besides continuing to write, he served on various boards, and visited churches around the world to keep in touch with seminary alumni and to promote world Christianity -- until 1970, when he suffered a severe stroke that limited his physical activity and made normal speech impossible. At the same time, Mrs. Van Dusen was the victim of a steadily worsening and increasingly painful arthritic condition. In January 1975, the Van Dusens -- both members of the Euthanasia Society -- took overdoses of sleeping pills to end their lives. Mrs. Van Dusen died immediately, Van Dusen fifteen days later. A letter they left for their three sons and other relatives and friends said that they had led happy lives, but that increasingly poor health no longer permitted them to do what they wanted to do, and that they were not afraid to die. They acknowledged that some would be disappointed, and asked for their understanding.
One of Van Dusen's successors as president of Union Theological Seminary, Roger L. Shinn, said he had never seen anybody physically or mentally less cut out to be an invalid: ``He had a very strong belief in immortality. His attitude was that, when your time is up, when you have lived out the possibilities, it is all right to stop, and to go on to the next life.''
Van Dusen's letter concluded with this prayer: ``O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, grant us Thy peace.''
From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University Press (1978).
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