Ford Discusses 'False Direction' In Religious Rift

Last spring's Memorial Church controversy stemmed more from a general feeling that "a false direction" was being adopted by the Pusey administration than from concern over specific issues, Franklin L. Ford, professor of History and Allston Burr Senior Tutor of Lowell House, told the Congregational-Presbyterian Youth Fellowship last night.

Speaking on "The Church in the University" at the First Church in Cambridge, Ford said that misunderstanding has surrounded the University's relationship to Protestantism, and that many faculty members would view any effort to link the two as a direct assault on academic freedom.

"Anti-Clerical Feeling"

He noted that an "old-fashioned anticlerical feeling" still exists in some quarters. This feeling Ford deemed replete with "tremors of remembered suspicion and continuing distaste on the part of the non-religious person for what he takes as a potential intrusion by organized religion."

On the other hand, he added, some religious persons are suspicious enough of the secular university to believe that an organization like the Fellowship can "do no more than save a few souls from the encompassing holocaust."

Ford advised the Congregational-Presbyterian group to avoid a campaign for renewal of University reaffirmation of a "Protestant-Puritan" tradition and to omit "explicit, self-conscious missionary activity." College religious groups can make their greatest contribution by assisting the individual to acquire "a sense of integrity and consistency" during a period of constantly changing values and aspirations, Ford declared.