Tom Faw Driver papers, 1943 -- 2010

Tom F. Driver was born in Johnson City, Tennessee on May 31, 1925, the son of Leslie and Sarah Driver. Brought up in southern Methodism, he was ordained deacon in the Holston Conference of the United Methodist Church in 1951. Driver earned a B.A. from Duke University in 1950, and then entered Union Theological Seminary to study for pastoral ministry. A strong interest in theater, acquired in childhood and cultivated in college, influenced his decision to study in New York City. This interest was encouraged by his teachers and other mentors at the Seminary, among whom were Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, James Muilenburg, and in particular, President Henry Pitney Van Dusen. Van Dusen arranged for Driver to receive a Kent Fellowship in 1953, and following the completion of his B.D. (later known as M.Div.) degree at Union, Driver entered the Ph.D. program of the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in order to do advanced study in the history of dramatic literature and theater practice. This resulted in his published dissertation, The Sense of History in Greek and Shakespearean Drama (Columbia University Press, 1960), which combined literary and theological concerns. In August, 1956, President Van Dusen invited Driver to return to Union Seminary as the assistant to Visiting Professor E. Martin Browne, who came from England to be the Director of the newly created Program in Religious Drama. He stage-managed several plays and directed two for the program, including the first New York City production of David by D. H. Lawrence. Driver offered courses in theology and literature at Union Seminary beginning in 1957, including in earlier years titles such as "Imagination and Revelation", "Interpretations of History", and "Modern Poetry and the Christian Gospel". Later, Driver expanded his repertoire, adding courses such as "The Experiential Basis of Theological Formation", "The Theology of Paul Tillich", and "Theology of Culture". Driver also took active part in faculty debate at Union, and participated in committee work and chapel worship. He had an influential part in the adoption of two Seminary policies with long-lasting results. First, he successfully advocated shifting from a system of letter-grading in favor of a Credit/No Credit system with essay-type evaluations of students' course work. Second, he pushed to bring gender and racial balance to the student body that would increase the enrollment of women to 50% of the total and racial/ethnic minorities to 10%, with similar distributions in the faculty and Board of Directors.

In the late 1960s, Driver's academic and pedagogical interests began to shift. A visit to The Esalen Institute in California in 1960 introduced him to the ideas and techniques of Gestalt psychology. The latter meshed with his interests in theatrical performance as well as his roots in Methodism. Thus in 1971 he offered a course of the Seminary's "Introduction to Christian Theology," emphasizing the role of experience in theological formation and employing for pedagogical use many of the techniques of Gestalt therapy. In this period he also began to examine critically the strong influence that Paul Tillich had had upon his thought, which resulted in the writing of Patterns of Grace: Human Experience as Word of God (Harper, 1977). Driver was named Paul Tillich Professor of Christian Theology at Union in 1973, a position he held until his retirement from teaching in 1993. Outside of UTS, Driver's interests included the social problems facing the world around him. His attention to the ethical implications of theological thinking was heightened by involvement in three social movements of the 1960s and 70s: Civil Rights, anti-war (over Vietnam), and feminism. Concerns of this kind underlay the writing of Christ in a Changing World: Toward an Ethical Christology (Crossroads, 1982). He also explored areas of anthropology and extended his travels beyond Europe and the Mediterranean, to include eventually Central America, the Caribbean, New Zealand, Melanesia, and Asia. Driver's trip to Haiti (1980) engendered a strong love of that country and ongoing study of its religious and ritual life. His interests in theater, theology, ethics, and anthropology were beginning to find convergence in the study of ritual. This led to a course at UTS on "Ritual and Sacrament," and to the launching of the Ritual Studies Group in the American Academy of Religion with Ronald Grimes, a former student. It also led to the writing of various articles and eventually a book: The Magic of Ritual: Our Need for Liberating Rites that Transform our Lives and our Communities (Harper, 1991). Driver joined a Witness for Peace delegation to Nicaragua during the Contra War in 1988, and returned very devoted to the aims and non-violent methods of that organization. When it began to take an interest in Haiti in 1993, he became a volunteer activistin the cause of working for peace and justice in Haiti, as well as other countries including Colombia. In addition to his social and teaching activities, Driver did a great deal of writing. He served as theater critic for Christian Century magazine from 1956-1962, and worked as a drama critic for other magazines and radio stations as well. Driver also served as a visiting professor at numerous universities, including posts in New Zealand and Japan. Driver married Anne Barstow in 1952, and the couple had three children: Katharine Anne; Paul Barstow; and Susannah Ambrose. Now Driver is the Paul Tillich Professor of Theology and Culture Emeritus of Union Theological Seminary.