Fletcher Essay Winner

THE Rev. Herbert R. Loring '38, a member of the faculty of the Missouri School of Religion, has won the Richard Fletcher Prize Essay Contest sponsored nationally by Dartmouth College. Professor Loring discussed "Christianity and Our Skepticism" in the essay that won the $5OO prize under a revised version of the biennial contest originally established by Richard Fletcher, Class of 1806.

Dean Fred Berthold Jr. '45 of Dartmouth's William Jewett Tucker Foundation, who was one of the contest judges, described the winning essay as "a very acute analysis of many of the doubts which have plagued men in recent decades, and it also gives an eloquent statement of the positive contribution Christianity has had to make in overcoming these doubts."

Professor Loring received a bachelor of divinity degree from Chicago Theological Seminary in 1942 and a doctorate in theology at the Boston University School of Theology in 1951. He has been minister of Congregational churches in Galesburg, Ill., Peabody, Mass., and Chicago, and served as an Army Air Corps chaplain in World War II. He taught religion at Doane College, Nebraska, for four years before becoming associate professor of church history at the Missouri School of Religion in 1958.

The next Richard Fletcher Prize Essay Contest, eliciting essays "on the truth and practical power of the Christian faith and its relevance to the problems of our time," will be held in 1963.