Letter from Wallace Tavener to St. Mark

The ts letter from Wallace Tavener, Minister of St. Mark's Unitarian Church, to The Warden, Newbattle Abbey College, is dated 20 July 1951, and is signed by Tavener. He was applying for the Lectureship in Philosophy and Political Theory.

Tavener explains that he had lectured extensively in the subjects of philosophy and political theory, for the Extra-Mural Department at Edinburgh University and for the Workers' Educational Association (WEA). He writes, 'I am afraid my academic qualifications are insufficient. After the 1914 war I did not return, owing to a healthy repugnance, to my graduation studies'.

From 1927 to 1958 Wallace Tavener was minister of St. Mark's Unitarian Church, Castle Terrace, Edinburgh. On Sunday evenings he gave political commentaries. He was the third in a series of ministers who took social and political criticism from a faith perspective very seriously. The others were Raymond Holt and Sydney Spencer. Tavener was an exponent of humanistic theology before it became a significant factor in British Unitarian thought.

He wrote The path of humanism (1968).

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Material acquired by purchase. Accession no: E2014.40.

Catalogued by Graeme D. Eddie 6 June 2014