Dr. Walter Huston Clark, a retired professor of psychology of
religion at Andover Newton Theological School in Massachussetts and a
former dean at Hartford Seminary, died Thursday [December 15, 1994] at
his home in Cape Elizabeth, Me. He was 92. Dr. Clark taught at Andover
Newton in Newton Center near Boston from 1962 until his retirement in
1969. Before that, starting in 1951, he was dean of the School of
Religious Education at the seminary. He explored the importance that
mystical experience can have in religion, which led to an association
with Dr. Timothy
Leary and others who advocated the use of hallucinogens
to expand their consciousness. In the early 1960's Dr. Clark took part
in religious ceremonies in which peyote,
mescaline and similar
hallucinogens were taken. He spoke out for people arrested for using LSD
and other hallucinogenic substances for what they said were solely
religious purposes. He was born in Westfield, N.J., graduated from
Williams College in 1928 and received a doctorate in psychology and
education from Harvard University in 1944. In 1926 he was one of four
founders of the now-defunct Lenox School in Lenox, Mass., which was
formed as an alternative to the more expensive Episcopal boys' schools
in the area. Dr. Clark taught at Lenox for 19 years, and subsequently
was on the faculty of Bowdoin College and Middlebury College until his
appointment as Dean in Hartford. While still studying at Williams
College, he found lifelong interest in understanding the significance
of religious
experience as distinct from belief. It began when he attended a
revival meeting led by Frank N.D. Buchman, the American evangelist and
founder of an international movement variously called the First
Century Christian Fellowship , the Oxford Group, Moral Re-Armament and
Buchmanism. It was an evangelism of personal and national spiritual
reconstruction or as Mr. Buchman put it, "world changing through
life changing." Dr. Clark wrote about it in his "The Oxford
Group: Its History and Significance" (Bookman Associates, 1951).
He also wrote a textbook "The Psychology of Religion"
(Macmillan 1958). Another book "Chemical Ecstasy" sought to
define the parameters of the use of hallucinogens in religion... He is
also the author of "Religious Experience: Its Nature and Function
in the Human Psyche" (Charles T. Thomas 1973), which records
several lectures he gave on the use of psychedelics at Fuller
Theological Seminary...
--from The New York Times dated 12/21/1994
--from the Internet
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