Balance at the Top of Fuller Seminary [Book Week]

October 6, 2014 By Tony Jones

I’m going to focus on books this week — some that I’ve read, some that I am reading.

When Richard Mouw announced his retirement from the presidency of Fuller Theological Seminary, I was nervous. I’m both an alumnus and a part-time employee of Fuller, and I’m very much a product of that place. In face, I’d say that who I am as a theologian is much more a reflection of Fuller (M.Div.) than of Princeton (Ph.D.). That’s as much because of my time of life (mid-20s vs. mid-30s) when I matriculated at each school.

Mouw was an emissary of evangelicalism, establishing dialogues with Mormons, Muslims, and others. He engaged in the religion-and-science debates, and he regularly debated fellow PC(USA) leaders who were more liberal than he. Although Mouw is fiercely Reformed (in the Kuyperian sense), he was always relatively generous and civil with his evangelicalism (marriage equality being one notable exception).

So when he was leaving, and Fuller was looking for his successor, I wondered who could fill that chair with the same generous spirit. Because, honestly, a moderate evangelical leader is hard to find these days.

As I reported at the time, I was pleased to hear that Mark Labberton was chosen to lead Fuller. In my previous encounters with Mark, he was just the kind of generous, centrist evangelical who embodies what Fuller should be on the landscape of American Christianity. And now, with his first book since assuming that job, we know a bit more about Labberton’s vision.

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Another Seminary Hits the Skids, Firing Eight Professors

September 30, 2014 By Tony Jones

The crest of General Theological Seminary in New York City.

I’ve been beating the drum that seminaries across the land are in a time of crisis. Here are some examples:

Now at General Theological Seminary in New York City, the flagship school of the Episcopal Church, a situation is happening that some describe as war. Eight professors, in conflict with the dean, walked out of GTS, refusing to teach, attend meetings, or participate in common worship, then they were fired. The professors wrote:

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Official Seminary Response

September 15, 2014 By Tony Jones

As a blogger, one never knows. Most posts are crickets. Sometimes, a post captures the attention of an audience and goes a bit viral. That’s what happened to last week’s post about the three major Protestant seminaries in the Twin Cities (though the traffic to that post still paled in comparison to the previous posts on Driscoll and Pannenberg).

There’s been conversation online about that post, and a fair amount of criticism of what I wrote (you can see the pros and cons in the comments to the original post). Fair enough. Many have seen my bigger point that the seminary landscape is shifting, while some have taken issue with my numbers. It’s a fair criticism. But we’re all shooting in the dark a bit, since I’m using anecdotal evidence about this fall’s matriculations, and others are referring to publicly available data from past years, from the Association of Theological Schools (ATS).

The only way that we could really know about this year’s numbers is from the respective schools, so I reached out to each of the three schools and invited them to write a response. United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities did not respond. Bethel Seminary wrote to tell me that my numbers were incorrect, but they did not send an official response. United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities told me they would not be submitting an official response. Luther Seminary responded. The following is from Carrie Carroll, vice president of enrollment at Luther: (more…)

Obituary for the Residential Seminary

April 4, 2013 By Tony Jones

There’s lots of talk around the Twin Cities about what’s going on at Luther Seminary in St. Paul. The largest seminary of the ELCA, Luther’s president and CFO resigned late last year after disclosing a $6 million shortfall in 2012 (our of a $27 million annual budget). More recently, the interim president announced big cutbacks:

18 of 125 staff were laid off immediately
8 of 44 faculty members will retire this year and not be replaced
5 more faculty will retire next year
The Masters of Sacred Music degree was terminated
No new PhD students will be admitted for at least 3 years

What exactly went wrong at Luther has not been disclosed, but the trends can no longer be ignored. Inside Higher Ed reports,

The changes at Luther have been unusually swift and dramatic. But the trends driving them are the same ones that seminaries are facing across the board. Enrollments are falling. Costs have increased, while student debt has become a bigger concern. Many Christian denominations, seeing their own ranks shrink, are providing less financial support than in the past. And as Americans as a whole become less religious — almost one-fifth of adults now have no religious affiliation — seminaries face an uncertain future.

The ELCA is indeed shrinking. As The Lutheran magazine reported in January,

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