Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York

Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York is a preeminent independent graduate school of theology, located in Manhattan between Claremont Avenue and Broadway, 120th to 122nd Streets. The seminary was founded in 1836 under the Presbyterian Church,^[2] and is affiliated with nearby Columbia University.

Campus

The brick and limestone English Gothic architecture, by Francis R. Allen (1844 – 1931) and Collins, completed in 1910, includes the tower (pictured), which adapts features of the crossing tower of Durham Cathedral. The Seminary is also adjacent to Teachers College, Barnard College, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the Manhattan School of Music and has cross-registration and library access agreements with several of these schools. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 23, 1980. Some sections of the campus are now on long-term lease to Columbia University.

Library

The Burke Theological Library, which is the largest theological library in the western hemisphere, contains holdings of over 700,000 items. The Library is recognized as one of the premier theological libraries in the world and includes extensive holdings of unique and special materials including, including Greek census records from 20 CE, a rare twelfth century manuscript of the Life of St. Boniface, a 1520 imprint of Martin Luther’s first published writing, and one of the first African-American hymnals, published in Philadelphia in 1818. In 2004 Union's famed Burke Library became fully integrated into the Columbia University Library system which holds over 10 million volumes. The Library is named in honor of Walter Burke, a generous benefactor to the Library who served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Seminary from 1976 to 1982.

History

The seminary was founded in 1836, and is one of the most prestigious divinity schools in the country. During the late-19th Century, Union Theological Seminary (UTS) became one of the leading centers of liberal Christianity in the United States. In 1939 the Auburn Theological Seminary moved to its campus.^[3]

Among its graduates were the historian of Christianity Arthur McGiffert, biblical scholar James Moffatt, Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor of Riverside Church, who served as professor during his tenure there, and the Socialist leader Norman Thomas. It is home to the Burke Theological Library, which is the largest theological library in the Western Hemisphere and serves a national and international field of scholars, pastors, and students. It contains more than 700,000 volumes, periodicals, manuscripts, scores, and rare historic materials.

In 1895, members of the Union Theological Seminary Alumni Club founded Union Settlement Association, one of one of the oldest settlement houses in New York City. After visiting Toynbee Hall in London, and inspired by the example of Hull House in Chicago, the alumni decided to create a settlement house in the area of Manhattan enclosed on the north and south by East 96th and 110th Streets and on the east and west by the East River and Central Park. Known as East Harlem, it was a neighborhood filled with new tenements but devoid of any civic services. The ethos of the settlement house movement called for its workers to “settle” in such neighborhoods in order to learn first-hand the problems of the residents. “It seemed to us that, as early settlers, we had a chance to grow up with the community and affect its development,” wrote William Adams Brown, Theology Professor, Union Theological Society (1892–1930) and President, Union Settlement Association (1915–1919).^[4] Union Settlement still exists, providing community-based services and programs to support the immigrant and low-income residents of East Harlem. One of East Harlem’s largest social service agencies, Union Settlement reaches more than 13,000 people annually at 17 locations throughout East Harlem, through a range of programs, including early childhood education, youth development, senior services, job training, the arts, adult education, nutrition, counseling, a farmers' market, community development and neighborhood cultural events.

On July 1, 2008, feminist theologian Serene Jones became Union's first female president in its 172-year history, succeeding Joseph C. Hough, Jr.^[5]

"Union has a distinguished history among graduate theological institutions. Its faculty has always ranked among the best in the world and has included such luminaries as Walter Rauschenbusch, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, James Cone, Cornel West, and others. Its students come from around the country and the world. The seminary is known for its progressive understanding of religion in general, and Christianity in particular, and has long been at the forefront of the great social movements in this nation's history."^[6]

Faculty

Dr. Serene Jones, the seminary's first female president, was inaugurated in November 2008. Dr. Joseph Hough, UTS' immediate past president, is an important Christian Democratic Socialist. Henry Sloane Coffin was a past president. Noted philosopher and Civil Rights Activist Cornel West will join the faculty in July 2012. Dr. James Hal Cone is one of the founders of liberation theology and is especially important in the development of African-American theology. Union has also been home to many prominent Womanist theologians such as Delores Williams. Dr. Gary Dorrien is a leading social ethicist. Dr. James A. Forbes, the former senior pastor of the adjacent Riverside Church, is an adjunct professor at the seminary and had been a full-time, chaired professor before accepting the Riverside post.

Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich made UTS the center of both liberal and neo-orthodox Protestantism in the post-War period. Prominent public intellectual Dr. Cornel West commenced a promising academic career at UTS in 1977. As liberalism lost ground to conservatism after the 1960s (while neo-orthodoxy dissipated) and thus declined in prestige, UTS ran into financial difficulties, and shrank significantly because of a reduced student base. Eventually, the school agreed to lease some of its buildings to Columbia University and to transfer ownership of and responsibility for the Burke Library to Columbia. These agreements helped stabilize the school's finances, which had been hobbled by increasing library costs and the need for substantial campus repairs.

Degrees

The school confers Master of Arts, Master of Divinity, Master of Sacred Theology, Doctor of Theology, Doctor of Philosophy, and offers joint degree programs with Columbia University. The school has long been associated with ecumenism.

List of founders

• Charles Butler (1802–97)

Notable current faculty

• Mary C. Boys — Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology
• Euan K. Cameron — Henry Luce III Professor of Reformation Church History (1958–)
• David M. Carr — Professor of Old Testament; contributed to Genesis in the New Oxford Annotated Bible (New Revised Standard Version)
• James Cone — Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology – Founder of Black Liberation Theology.
• Gary Dorrien — Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics
• Roger Haight — Visiting Professor of Systematic Theology
• Brigitte Kahl — Professor of New Testament
• Paul F. Knitter — Paul Tillich Professor of Theology
• Chung Hyun Kyung — Associate Professor of Ecumenical Theology
• Barbara Lundblad — Joe R. Engle Associate Professor of Preaching
• Daisy L. Machado — Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of the History of Christianity; first U.S. Latina ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
• Christopher Morse — Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor of Theology & Ethics
• Very Revd. Dr. John Anthony McGuckin — Nielsen Professor of Early and Byzantine Church History, President of the Sophia Institute, Archpriest of the Orthodox Church
• Hal Taussig — Visiting Professor of New Testament
• Ann Belford Ulanov — Christiane Brooks Johnson Memorial Professor of Psychiatry and Religion
• Janet Walton — Professor of Worship
• Cornel West -- Professor of Religious Philosophy and Christian Practice

Several of Union's members also teach in the Religious Studies department at Columbia University and at the Teachers College, Columbia University, and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

Former theologians and faculty

• William Greenough Thayer Shedd — professor of sacred literature (1863–1874) and of systematic theology (1874–1890).
• Charles Augustus Briggs — professor of Hebrew and cognate languages (1874–1891) and of Biblical theology (1891–1904); an important early leader of the Modernist movement.
• Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) — professor of Applied Christianity – Christian social ethics, author of the influential The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941), and the Serenity Prayer (popularized through the Twelve-step program).
• Paul Tillich (1886–1965) — German-American theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher.
• James Cone, Black liberation theologian
• John Macquarrie — professor of Systematic Theology 1962–70, afterwards Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford and Canon Residentiary of Christ Church, Oxford 1970–1986.
• Robert Pollack — professor of Science and Religion
• Raymond E. Brown (1928–1998) — One of America's preeminent New Testament scholars and member of Pontificial Bible Commission was professor in UTS for 23 years.
• Edward Robinson, Biblical scholar and discoverer of Robinson's Arch and Hezekiah's Tunnel in Jerusalem.
• Dorothee Soelle Socially-engaged German theologian
• Harry Emerson Fosdick — First minister of Riverside Church and professor of homiletics
• Harry F. Ward, chairman of the ACLU and professor of ethics
• Roger Haight, theologian banned from teaching by the Holy Office.^[7]

Notable alumni

• Rubem Alves — Brazilian theologian and writer
• William Scott Ament (Bachelor of Divinity, 1877) — controversial American missionary to China (1877–1909).
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer — German Lutheran theologian and Nazi resister who spent half a year at UTS. Of UTS he wrote: "There is no theology here....they talk a blue streak without the slightest substantive foundation and with no evidence of any criteria. The students....are completely clueless with respect to what dogmatics is really about. They are unfamiliar with even the most basic questions. They become intoxicated with liberal and humanistic phrases, laugh at the fundamentalists, and yet basically are not even up to their level." ^[8]
• Anton Boisen — founder of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) movement
• Marcus Borg — Popular lecturer and writer, Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University
• Frederick Buechner — Writer
• Frederick Buckley Newell (Bachelor of Divinity, 1916) — Bishop of The Methodist Church
• Edwin Otway Burnham (Bachelor of Divinity, 1855) — a rifle shooting Presbyterian missionary in Sioux Indian territory who could bark a squirrel, swing an axe or dispense Gospel with equal ferver and efficiency.
• Walter Brueggemann — William Marcellus McPheeters professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary
• Gladwyn M. Childs — Anthropologist and missionary
• Nelson Cruikshank (Master of divinity, 1929) — Labor union activist and strategist responsible for the passage of Medicare
• David Dellinger — Noted American peace activist and member of the Chicago Seven.
• Helen Flanders Dunbar (B.D. 1927) — an important early figure in U.S. psychosomatic medicine.
• Franklin I. Gamwell — Shailer Mathews Professor of Religious Ethics, the Philosophy of Religion, and Theology at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago
• David P. Gushee — Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University. Author of 9 books and over 70 articles^[9]
• Mark Hanson — current Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
• Richard Holloway — Scottish writer and broadcaster and was formerly Bishop of Edinburgh.
• Dwight Hopkins — Professor of Theology at the Divinity School at the University of Chicago
• Myles Horton — Co-founder of the Highlander Center
• William H. Hudnut III — former Mayor of Indianapolis, Indiana (1976–1992)
• Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz — Professor of Ethics and Theology at Drew University
• Mark Juergensmeyer — Professor of Sociology, Religious Studies and Global Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies.
• Norman J. Kansfield – President New Brunswick Theological Seminary 1993–2005. Senior Scholar in Residence, Theological School, Drew University.
• James Franklin Kay – Professor of Homiletics and Liturgics at Princeton Theological Seminary
• James David Manning — chief pastor at the ATLAH World Missionary Church.
• Andrew McLellan — former Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
• Bruce McLeod (PhD) — Moderator of the United Church of Canada
• William P. Merrill — first president on the Church Peace Union, writer of "Rise Up, O Men of God"
• Scott Rennie — Minister of the Church of Scotland at Queen's Cross Church, Aberdeen
• Paul Sherry - President of the United Church of Christ (1989-1999)
• Andrea Smith — Cherokee intellectual and anti-violence activist
• John Sung – A renowned Chinese Christian evangelist who played an instrumental role in the revival movement among the Chinese in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia during the 1920s and 1930s.
• John Stoltenberg — feminist writer
• Norman Thomas — American Socialist
• K. H. Ting — President emeritus of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and China Christian Council
• George W. Webber (1920–2010), President of the New York Theological Seminary.^[10]
• Delores Williams — Womanist theologian
• Lynn de Silva (Master of Sacred Theology) — Sri Lankan theologian, former director of the Ecumenical Institute for Study and Dialogue, Methodist minister, and a pioneer in promoting Buddhist–Christian dialogue
• E.P. Sanders — A principle founder in the New Perspective on Paul movement

References

External links

• Union Theological Seminary webpage
• Union Podcast
• The WPA Guide to New York City 1939, reprint 1982.
• Union Theological Seminary in Columbia University's Wiki