A bishop in the Church of Ireland who serves in Belfast, a hospital chaplain and Baptist minister from a small African-American church in Oklahoma City, and the pastor of an English and Spanish congregation in Southern California are among the eight ministers who have been named Merrill Fellows at the Divinity School for 1996-97. Four Merrill Fellows will be in residence at the School each term as full-time students to read, study, take courses, and attend a weekly colloquium.

The Merrill Fellows Program was begun in 1964 to offer continuing theological education to parish ministers who seek to strengthen their ministry by a period of study in a university setting. Funded since its inception by Charles E. Merrill '42, the program is intended as a concentrated time for "academic rigor and recaptured discipline as well as unhurried reflection." The Divinity School hopes to build an endowment for the program in order to increase the stipends of the Fellows and to continue to attract applicants from urban settings.

The new Fellows will be: the Rev. Victoria Alford Guest, MTS '78, MDiv '82, co-pastor of the United Church of Christ in Walpole, Mass.; the Rev. Bebb Wheeler Stone, associate minister of Third Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, Pa.; the Rev. George Edwin Young, chaplain at St. Anthony's Hospital and pastor of Antioch Baptist Church in Oklahoma City; the Rev. Roland J. Follis, chaplain at Mississippi Baptist Medical Center; the Rev. Aureliano Flores, senior pastor at Church of the Redeemer in Baldwin Park, Calif.; the Rt. Rev. Dr. Gordon McMullan, bishop of the Diocese of Down and Dromore in the Church of Ireland; Father David Kevin O'Rourke, pastoral associate at St. Mary Magdalen Church in Berkeley, Calif.; and the Rev. M. Dillman Baker Sorrells, MDiv '87, minister at the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Rochester, Minn.