Harvard Divinity School
Thomas Jefferson Gore, a native of Kentucky, came to Australia in 1866 to become first pastor of the Grote Street Church of Christ, Adelaide. Perhaps because of his influence, the College of the Bible in Lexington, Kentucky became a Mecca (if such conflation of religions is permissible) for young Australian men associated with the Churches of Christ. In 1907, a College of the Bible was established at Carlton, Victoria (moved in 1910 to Glen Iris) and the strong connection to Kentucky was broken.
The Adelaide Advertiser of Tuesday 31 May 1904 published a letter from Mr. James E. Thomas in the United States: “An event that is unique, inasmuch as it was the introduction of our Australian flag to the land of the Stars and Stripes, took place at the annual entertainment of the Australian Club in Kentucky University (U.S.A.) on Friday, April 15. … The chairman was Mr. Mark Collis, minister of the Broadway Church, of Church of Christ, who went to Kentucky from Adelaide over 30 years ago. After several items of the programme had been rendered, the ceremony of unfurling the Australian national flag was performed. Miss Sarah Adelaide Collis, the beautiful daughter of the chairman, who received her name from her father's native city, made a very appropriate speech as she presented the flag to the club on behalf of the Enmore ladies. Mr. Coningsby M. Gordon, president of the club, acknowledged the treasured emblem in a feeling speech, and called on the club to salute the flag and give three British cheers. Then the members of the club, surrounding their flag, sang ‘The song of Australia.’ Those taking part in the national song were:—Arthur G. Day, Horace E. J. Kingsbury, Reginald J. H. McGeorge, of Sydney, New South Wales; Donald C. McCallum, Percy D. McCallum, and W. Cecil McCallum, of Kaniva, Victoria; J. Stuart Mill, of Melbourne; Alfred Marshman, of Dalkey, South Australia; Ira A. Paternoster, of Salisbury, South Australia; Coningsby M. Gordon, of Finniss, South Australia; and James E. Thomas, of Unley, South Australia.”
Three of these patriotic singers, Donald Campbell McCallum, William Cecil McCallum, and Coningsby Mathieson Gordon, were among the first four Australians to study at the Harvard Divinity School. The fourth, Harold Elkin Knott, was also associated with the Churches of Christ. All four of these men eventually settled in the United States. I have not found Australians attending the Harvard Divinity School again until after the Second World War. This pattern of stronger Australian-Harvard associations in the early twentieth century than later in the century resembles that observed at the Harvard Dental School and the reasons seem similar. Students came to the United States to get an education or degrees they could not get in Australia and ceased to come when other options became available at home.
Other early theological connections between Harvard and Australia include:
Wilfred Harris was an Englishman who studied at Harvard Divinity School (1893–1894). He came to Australia in 1908 as minister of the Unitarian Christian Church in Adelaide.
The first two Australians to receive degrees from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences were clergymen, Ernest Northcroft Merrington (PhD 1905, Presbyterian) and George Edgar Moore (AM 1913, Churches of Christ, later Congregational).
Arthur Sheridan Westneat (c. 1880–1965, Baptist) was born in Victoria and studied at Grenville College Ballarat. In 1908 he departed Australia for the United States, never to return. He studied at Georgetown College, Kentucky (1910–1913) and Andover Theological College (1915–1916) which shared the campus of the Harvard Divinity School.