Director of Media Relations
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AMHERST, Mass.—Amherst College will formally install its new Protestant religious advisor, the Reverend Dr. Leon Tilson Burrows, on Sunday, Oct. 15, at 4 p.m. in Johnson Chapel. The Reverend Dr. William J. Shaw will be the featured speaker. A reception will follow at 5:30 p.m. in the Gerald Penny Cultural Center at Amherst.
Reverend Burrows, who is also the chaplain at Smith College, will be formally inducted on Sunday morning at 10:30 in an Ecumenical Christian Church service of installation in the Helen Hills Hills Chapel at Smith.
Previously the pastor of the East Bethel Baptist Church in Philadelphia, Burrows has been serving as an interim religious advisor at Amherst and Smith. He has degrees in divinity and sacred music from Yale and a D. Min. degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary of Philadelphia. Since his arrival at Amherst College, Burrows has organized weekly Protestant religious services on campus, in addition to the Bi-Semester Worship Program, which offers services in the African-American worship tradition.
Reverend Dr. William J. Shaw, president of the National Baptist Convention and the pastor of the White Rock Baptist Church in Philadelphia, preached his first sermon in Texas when he was 11 years old. He went on to earn degrees from Bishop College, Union Theological Seminary and Colgate Rochester Divinity School.
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