Willard L. Sperry (1882-1954) was dean of the Harvard Divinity School for thirty years during a period of major adjustment in liberal Protestant theology. With a New England Congregational background Sperry prepared his career in theology at Queens College, Oxford, among the first group of Rhodes Scholars. Unlike many others after the Great War who became disillusioned with liberal positions, Sperry discovered a neglected middle ground, where he could reconcile the romanticism of Wordsworth with the austerity of Calvin. His sense of irony and paradox anticipated Reinhold Niebuhr by ten years.
"William Fox' account of Sperry, an original thinker among the theologians of his time, is an excellent contribution to scholarship on Protestant liberalism. Well-written and thoroughly researched, it breaks new ground in testing some of the prevailing views concerning that movement. It also illuminates interesting facets of early twentieth-century culture." (Dewey D. Wallace, Jr., George Washington University)