Davie Napier
1915-Feb. 24, 2007
Pilgrim Place, California

Davie Napier, former Stanford University dean of the chapel and professor of religious studies, died Feb. 24 at Pilgrim Place, a retirement community for theologians in Southern California. He was 91.

Napier was dean of the chapel during the turbulent years of antiwar protests on campus from 1966 to 1972. A Congregational Church minister, Napier was born in Kuling, China, in 1915 to missionaries, Dr. and Mrs. A.Y. Napier.

He attended schools in China and Japan, eventually graduating from high school and college in Birmingham, Ala. Growing up in the South later influenced his sense of social justice.

Napier received his bachelor of divinity degree in 1939 and his doctorate in 1944 from Yale. He joined Yale Divinity School's faculty in 1949 and served as master of Yale's Calhoun College from 1964 to 1965 before coming to Stanford. At Stanford, Napier became known for attempting to relate the political troubles of the 1960s to Scripture. In 1971, he was among a small group of clergy who used civil disobedience to block the entrance to the San Mateo Draft Board.

His daughter, Anne Napier Caffery, said that he and her mother, Joy, kept an open-door policy for students when they lived on campus.

"It was a time where he engaged in a political manner, which was much harder to do at Yale," she said. "It was a time of tremendous innovation for Dad and tremendous synergy with the students."

But Napier became noticed at Yale when Time magazine published an article in 1966 about a "renaissance of religion" at the university linked to his role as chaplain. Napier left Stanford in 1972 to become president of the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley but retained close ties with Stanford colleagues. He led the baccalaureate service during commencement weekend in 1985. He returned to Yale's Calhoun College to serve as master from 1980 to 1984.

He and his wife, Joy Robertson White, now deceased, were married in 1941. In addition to a daughter, they had a son, John, who is deceased.

Napier is survived by his daughter, Anne Napier Caffery; three granddaughters and three great-grandchildren.

Tags: teacher/educator