page_title: Harvard Divinity School
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Harvard Divinity School / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Andover Hall, home to the Harvard Divinity School at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The building was completed in 1911 and named for the Andover Theological Seminary, who financed its construction.
context_page_description: Harvard Divinity School is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school's mission is to educate its students either in the academic study of religion or for leadership roles in religion, government, and service. It also caters to students from other Harvard schools that are interested in the former field. HDS is among a small group of university-based, non-denominational divinity schools in the United States.
context_section_description: Harvard College was founded in 1636 as a Puritan/Congregationalist institution and trained ministers for many years.  The separate institution of the Divinity School, however, dates from 1816, when it was established as the first non-denominational divinity school in the United States. (Princeton Theological Seminary had been founded as a Presbyterian institution in 1812. Andover Theological Seminary was founded in 1807 by orthodox Calvinists who fled Harvard College after it appointed liberal theologian Henry Ware to the Hollis Professorship of Divinity in 1805.)
  During its first century, Harvard Divinity School was unofficially associated with American Unitarianism. However, it also retains a historical tie to one of the successor denominations of American Congregationalism, the United Church of Christ.
caption: Andover Hall
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