Howlett, Duncan (Personal Name)

His Man against the church, 1954.

NUCMC data from Maine Historical Society for His Papers 1719-1999 (Rev. Duncan Howlett, D.D., was a minister, Doctor of Philosophy, author, social justice activist during the 1960s, and in later years, a tree farmer. Rev. Howlett was born on 15 May 1906 in Newton, Massachusetts. He was a resident of Center Lovell, Maine, for the last 35 years of his life, where he died May 19, 2003, at the age of 97. Rev. Howlett was first married to Margaret L. Merritt in 1931, she died in 1933. Then he married Carolyn Abbot Chance on April 26, 1943, in Summit, New Jersey. He had four children: Margaret (Susan) Howlett Hasty (b. May 28, 1932), Albert D. Howlett (b. Dec. 21, 1944), Richard C. Howlett (b. June 9, 1946), and Carolyn (Lynn) Korth (b. ca. 1949?). Duncan Howlett was born May 15, 1906, in Newton, Massachusetts. He received the SB. degree from Harvard in 1928, the LLB. Degree in 1931, and in the same year he was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar. Following the practice of law for two years, in 1933 he yielded to a lifelong interest in religion and returned to Harvard where he was awarded the STB degree with honors in 1936, while serving as Minister of the Second Church, Unitarian, in Salem, Massachusetts. Dr. Howlett was ordained to the Unitarian ministry in Salem, Massachusetts, November 17, 1935. Howlett was at that church from 1933 to 1938. From there he went to the First Unitarian Church, New Bedford, Massachusetts (1938-1946). In September of 1946 he became Minister of the First Church in Boston, Unitarian, a position he held for the next twelve years. In 1958, he was called to All Souls Church, Unitarian, in Washington, D.C., the position from which he retired in 1968. In May of that year he was appointed to Hubert Humphrey's presidential campaign staff. In addition to his concern with public affairs during the entire range of his ministry, Howlett played an active role in Unitarian denominational affairs. Among the various committees and boards on which he served were those of the Beacon Press, the Historical Library, and the Christian Register. He was President of the Unitarian Historical Society, Chairman of Commission I, "The Church and Its Leadership"; Chairman of the Washington Advisory Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Association Department of Social Responsibility; member of Harvard University Overseer's Committee to visit the Divinity School (1940-62); Chairman, D.C. Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; and member of the D.C. Commissioners' Crime Council; Executive Committee of the Washington Home Rule Commission; and the Washington Urban Institute. Duncan Howlett has written the following titles: Man Against the Church; The Struggle Between Religion and Ecclesiasticism (1954); The Essenes and Christianity; An Interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1957); The Fourth American Faith (1964); No Greater Love: The James Reeb Story (1966); The Critical Way in Religion (1980); and The Fatal Flaw at the Heart of Religious Liberalism (1995). On retiring from the active parish ministry in 1968, Howlett became deeply involved in the environmental movement, particularly in the area of forestry, after studying forestry at the University of Maine. In Maine he organized and was the first President of the Small Woodland Owners Association, popularly known as SWOAM. The conservation of natural resources emphasizing the responsible management of woodland on the part of citizen forest owners became for him a "second career." The continuing search for "truth" has motivated Dr. Howlett throughout his life, truth that is lived out in human experience.)