| Union Presbyterian Seminary | |
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| Established | 1812 |
| Type | Private |
| Religious affiliation | Presbyterian Church (USA) |
| President | Brian Blount |
| Location | Richmond, Virginia, United States |
| Website | |
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Union Seminary
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| Location: | 3401 Brook Rd., Richmond, Virginia |
| Area: | 12 acres (5 ha) |
| Built: | 1896 |
| Architect: | Multiple |
| Architectural style: | Late Victorian |
| Governing body: | Private |
| NRHP Reference#: |
83003309 [1] |
| Added to NRHP: | April 14, 1983 |
Union Presbyterian Seminary, located on the near north side of the city of Richmond, Virginia, is a theological seminary of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Through its main campus in Richmond, Virginia, a commuter campus in Charlotte, North Carolina, and an extended campus online, Union prepares men and women to serve the church as pastors, educators, scholars, chaplains, and missionaries.
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As a result of efforts undertaken together by the Synod of Virginia and the Synod of North Carolina, Union Theological Seminary was founded in 1812 as the theological department of Hampden-Sydney College, located near Farmville, Virginia, and housed in Venable Hall. In 1898, the school was relocated to its current campus location on the north side of Richmond, Virginia. The General Assembly’s Training School (ATS) for Lay Workers was founded in Richmond in 1914 as a complementary institution intended to train “workers outside of the regular ordained ministry.” In 1959 ATS was renamed the Presbyterian School of Christian Education (PSCE). PSCE offered a Masters Degree in Christian Education, and operated across the street from Union Seminary until 1997, when Union and PSCE were joined in federation, becoming Union-PSCE. In 2002, a commuter campus in Charlotte, North Carolina, began on the campus of Queens University of Charlotte, offering both M.Div. and M.A.C.E. degrees to part-time students. The Charlotte campus is known as Union Presbyterian Seminary, Charlotte Campus.
In 2009, Union's Board of Trustees voted to change the name of the institution to Union Presbyterian Seminary. In his address announcing the new name, seminary president Brian Blount emphasized the school's unique heritage of several "unions," as well as the school's Presbyterian identity.
For many years, the seminary operated WRFK, an FM radio station at 106.5 MHz. It was sold to commercial interests in 1988.
Union has a faculty of scholars in the fields of Bible, Christian education, theology, ethics, preaching, worship, church history, christian leadership and pastoral care. While the Union curriculum teaches in the Reformed theological tradition, faculty come from a range of denominational backgrounds, including Baptist, Lutheran and Methodist. These scholars have written hundreds of books and articles in their respective fields of study.
Notable faculty include womanist theologian Katie Geneva Cannon, and current president of Union Presbyterian Seminary, Brian Blount. Retired faculty include Bible scholars Paul J. Achtemeier, James L. Mays, and Dean McBride.
Union's student body is made up of about 300 students, with 220 students at the Richmond campus and another 80 students at the Charlotte campus. The majority of Union's students come from the Presbyterian tradition, but the seminary draws students from more than 20 Christian denominations, including Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian and Reformed. There are a number of international students as well from Ghana, Korea, Switzerland, and other nations.
Students at Union take part in a number of student activities and seminary initiatives, such as intramural sports (including hosting an annual Ultimate Frisbee tournament for seminaries), mission and service activities in the city of Richmond, and Project Burning Bush, the seminary's youth leadership initiative supported by the Lily Foundation.
Union's Richmond Campus includes two chapels: the historic Watts Chapel, located in Watts Hall, which also serves as a classroom and administration building, and the state of the art Lake Chapel, located in the campus's new Early Center, a classroom and office building completed in 2008. The Richmond Campus also includes the Belk student center, dormitories, student apartments and guest housing, as well as recreation fields, community gardens and tennis courts. Union's William Smith Morton Library was completed in 1996, and includes over 900,000 volumes and grows at a rate of about 5,500 volumes per year. Union shares its library resources with the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, located across Brook Road.
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