In 2005–2006 Harvard Divinity School observed the fiftieth anniversary of the admission of women to the school, and the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Women's Studies in Religion Program. This special issue of the Harvard Theological Review extends the celebration of these two anniversaries by gathering highlights of their intellectual fruit. The year-long celebration began with a convocation at which Harvard President Lawrence Summers joined Divinity School Dean William Graham and the faculty, staff and students in marking the historic anniversary. The convocation address, “A Short Half-Century: Fifty Years of Women at Harvard Divinity School,” is included as the first entry in this issue. Throughout the year, distinguished alumnae delivered prestigious named lectures, and panels recalled particularly salient outcomes of women's presence. The year concluded with a session at which the first women students who entered in 1955 returned to HDS to reflect on their experiences and careers.

President Summers, Dean Graham, esteemed colleagues, honored guests, students and graduates of the Divinity School, new and old. It is a great pleasure to address you on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the admission of women to Harvard Divinity School. I am particularly honored by the presence of those of you who were here in 1955 when women first enrolled as students. For some of us who were not, 1955 may seem long ago—part of an archaic past of the Cold War, McCarthyism, and racial segregation, when women were welcome in few professional settings and ordained by few denominations.

Before melancholy, gratitude. First to Elizabeth and Ernest Monrad, for their countless gifts to Harvard University and, today in particular, to the Divinity School. It is a great honor to hold the Elizabeth H. Monrad Chair in Christian Studies and I hope I can do so in ways that at least partially reflect the grace and generosity of the chair's namesake and of its donors. My gratitude to Bill Graham, Dean of the Divinity School, is enormous, both for his professional confidence in me and for his persistent and inspiring vision of what Harvard Divinity School is and can be. It is wonderful to be here and for that I thank my colleagues—the faculty, administration, staff, and students of HDS. And finally, for helping me think through this particular bit of work, special thanks to Constance Furey, Stephanie Paulsell, and Melissa Zeiger.

In 1943 the SS Gauleiter, “district administrator,” of Vienna, Baldur von Schirach, commissioned a performance of The Merchant of Venice at the famed Burgtheater to celebrate the deportation of allthe Jews;Vienna had become Judenrein “cleansed of Jews.” When Werner Krauss, the Nazis'leading actor, first appeared on stage as Shylock, he made the audience shudder. According to the newspaper account:With a crash and a weird train of shadows, something revoltingly alien and startlingly repulsive crawled across the stage…. The pale pink face, surrounded by bright red hair and beard, with its unsteady, cunning little eyes;the greasy caftan with the yellow prayershawl slung round; the splay-footed, shuffling walk; the foot stamping with rage; the claw-like gestures with the hands; the voice, now bawling, now muttering—all add up to a pathological image of the East European Jewish type, expressing all its inner and outer uncleanliness, emphasizing danger through humor.

Religion is deeply implicated in contemporary U.S. public life, as demonstrated in the increasing analysis of faith in any given presidential, congressional, or judicial candidate's political viewpoints; in ongoing presidential executive orders that approve government support and funding for faith-based initiatives; and in the continued lobbying by religious groups about a variety of moral and social justice issues such as euthanasia and immigration, to name a sample of recent flashpoint issues. What role do religious claims play in U.S. public life? How does Christian theology help clarify that role? What is the particular contribution of Christian feminist theology to understanding and rethinking that role?

Paul Tillich and I arrived at Harvard Divinity School in the fall of 1955. It is the 50th anniversary of Tillich's inaugural year (1955–1956) as University Professor at Harvard University and my 50th anniversary as one of the first women students to attend the Harvard Divinity School. It is no accident that we came at the same time, for I chose to come to Harvard for my ministerial studies just so I could be part of its renewal, and study with professors such as Paul Tillich.

There is something right about the hoary old claim that Protestantism spawned individualism. It has been challengedfrom all sides: by those who argue the reverse, by historians of religion who point out that introspective piety was not unique to the early modern period, and by scholars who demonstrate that early Protestants were deeply invested in ecclesiology and communal rituals. Yet this claim—even though clunky and inadequate—remains important, not least because it highlights an enduring link between the way we interpret early Protestant texts and the way we understand individualism today. Consider John Donne's famous denial of isolation, written nearly four hundred years ago: “No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe.” This statement compels us because it refutes what often feels irrefutable: that each person is, essentially, a solitary being, and that, while this existential state may be ameliorated, it is an unavoidable fact of life.

At the climactic moment of the cosmic drama in the book of Revelation, the seer tells how two great portents appeared in heaven, the first a woman “clothed with the sun”(12:1). Asin a dream, the scene changes, and he sees her pregnant, “crying out in the agony of giving birth,” being menaced by a “great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns on each of its heads” (12:3); thus the seer pictures Israel in danger, confronting her enemies, the foreign oppressors.