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Rethinking theological education
New strategies include partnerships, distance learning
Given changing enrollments and challenged finances, alternatives already in place involve distance learning and partnerships among the 11 Episcopal Church-affiliated seminaries and with other theological institutions.
For instance, four people – and a few others "who are dipping their toes into the water" – are enrolled in the new Certificate of Anglican Studies Program at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School (CRDS), said the Rev. Denise Yarborough, program director. They eventually will receive master of divinity degrees from the school, but their certificates in Anglican studies will come from the program run jointly with General Theological Seminary (GTS), the Episcopal Church-affiliated seminary downstate, and the Diocese of Rochester. Funding for the program comes largely from the diocese, which saw the need for continued access to local theological education when Bexley Hall, another Episcopal Church-affiliated seminary, decided in March 2008 to close its satellite campus in Rochester.
"CRDS is the nearest seminary we've got ... [T]rying to get another Episcopal seminary to open a satellite here is hard because then you're trying to fund a whole standalone institution," Yarborough said. "We've already got a very high-caliber, ecumenical Christian seminary that fits our theology, that we have no problems with, that has excellent scholars. It's there, it's functioning; why should we reinvent the wheel?"
Episcopal students must take six courses to earn the certificate. Some classes come to Rochester via videoconference technology (although Rochester students cannot yet participate with GTS students in real time).
Students also must spend at least one January or June intensive term at GTS and may choose to spend a full semester at the New York school.
The Rochester diocese employs Yarborough as canon for Christian formation and theological education, thus covering the portion of her work that goes to the CRDS program. It also helped to pay for some of the technology needed to make the program work, Yarborough said.
With both seminaries and dioceses struggling for money, Yarborough said, "if you want to do creative things, somebody's got to help financially. We're helping financially."
Gains through collaboration
The CRDS-GTS-Diocese of Rochester collaboration "provides a really great opportunity for students to get a really solid Episcopal-Anglican experience with an Episcopal seminary, but they also get the benefits of an ecumenical environment. And it meets the needs of students who can't drop out of life for three years to do the M. Div. full time," she said. "There's a lot of those folks around these days."
While some may worry about what may be lost when students do not live full-time at an Episcopal Church seminary, Yarborough sees many gains. "My personal bias is that ecumenical theological education is really a wonderful way to get your theological education," she said. "I think Episcopalians can be very well formed in their Episcopal identity by being in classes with people who aren't Episcopalian, having to define themselves as Episcopalians in conversation with Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians and [United Church of Christ members] and people who may or may not think like them."
"Let's face it, when you get out in the world and you are in a parish, you're not only dealing with Episcopal clergy. Most people in small towns – and even in large cities – are doing things ecumenically all the time, and you need to understand who the other Christians are."
Common struggle
When the economic crisis hit in the fall of 2008, all seminaries, regardless of denomination, had been struggling with how to respond to the needs of potential students who cannot or will not spend years on campus earning a degree. Students were opting to take classes or entire degree programs at seminaries closer to home that were not affiliated with their churches. Enrollments at many Episcopal Church-affiliated seminaries were declining or, at best, holding steady (one notable exception is a 40 percent increase at the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, for the 2009-2010 academic year).
"I spent a lot of time last year figuring out how to take $800,000 out of a budget. I didn't have a lot of time to think about a lot of other stuff, and neither did any of the rest of [the deans]," said Donn Morgan, president and dean of Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP), the Episcopal Church-affiliated seminary in Berkeley, California.
Morgan was one of the deans who, along with GTS' the Rev. Ward Ewing, spurred conversations a few years ago about revamping theological education in the Episcopal Church.
Bexley's decision to move out of Rochester came in the midst of those discussions. It now operates solely from the campus of Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, in another example of the changing nature of the church's seminaries. And in late June, when Robert E. Reber and the Rev. William Doubleday were chosen as Bexley's new president pro tem and interim dean, respectively, they said they intended to cement the school's relationship with its Lutheran hosts and pursue additional partnerships with dioceses and other centers of theological education.
Changes over time
Such efforts are not new. CRDS is a product of many mergers. Episcopal Divinity School (EDS) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, grew from the 1974 combination of two Episcopal seminaries: Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge and Philadelphia Divinity School. The Atlanta-based Candler School of Theology at Emory University began enrolling Episcopalians in the mid-1970s.
In late 2007 and early 2008, Bexley was but one Episcopal seminary that announced major changes. Seabury-Western in suburban Chicago announced that it would stop offering a traditional residential master of divinity degree, which at one time had been the norm in Episcopal seminaries.
In July of this year, Seabury sold its property to its neighbor, Northwestern University, for $13 million. Seabury since has entered into a joint doctor of divinity degree on congregational development with CDSP. The school now offers a diploma in Anglican studies, consisting of eight courses and designed for people preparing for ministry in the Episcopal Church who are not attending an Episcopal seminary full time. The courses combine online work with on-campus classes in an intensive format that includes worship and formation. CDSP has offered online education for many years, and EDS has increased such offerings as well.
EDS sold much of its property to nearby Lesley University in a March 2008 move that later cushioned some of the blows of the past year's economic crisis. EDS has begun to offer alternatives for students who cannot relocate to its campus full time to earn a degree.
Morgan suggested that money gained from selling property or attempting to expand a school's market only would go so far.
"I would say right now most of the seminaries are pretty deeply involved in their own work and that there isn't a lot of big vision for doing things. I think they're all into survival mode," he said. "I would [like] to think that they all believe – because I believe it – that partnership in some way, shape or form is one of the things that the future demands of all of us. The question becomes with whom, for what and how will that happen? It's hard to get their attention around that." And, Morgan said, when General Convention cut $23 million from the church's 2010-2012 budget in July, it meant eliminating some programs at the church center in New York and elsewhere. Those cuts included offices many saw as advocates for theological education.
"There is nothing from the bishops or the church saying: '[These] are the kind of things we need, now you guys get together and figure it out,'" Morgan said. Part of the issue is that, while many people, including Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, have acknowledged that Episcopal seminaries must change, he noted, no person or church body has the authority to force any movement.
"I'm not sure that I want a system where General Convention can vote to close seminaries," said Atlanta's Alexander, himself a former seminary professor.
Few official ties
The Episcopal Church-affiliated seminaries have very few official ties to the church, beyond General Convention's authority to elect six of General Theological Seminary's trustees. Even then, the convention does not budget money to pay those trustees' expenses. The Episcopal Church does not pay for any portion of the cost of educating seminarians and, unlike some denominations, does not require those studying for ordination to attend church-affiliated seminaries. If the latter were the case, many seminaries would not be dealing with declining enrollments, Alexander said, adding that chances were "pretty slim" that such a requirement would be established.
So "we operate on a complete free-market economy," he said, and trustees of the individual seminaries are "elected to preserve their school's own legacy."
Alexander said he wanted to "broaden the conversation" that has begun about Episcopal theological education to include those non-Episcopal seminaries, universities and divinity schools that are training a significant number of the church's ordinands. "We're going to have to cooperate with them rather than act like they're not there," he said. Doing so may have "a detrimental effect on some of our seminaries, and I regret that," he added. Such conversations will be included in what Alexander called "an Episcopal Church summit on theological education" to be held sometime this spring.
He said he hoped the gathering would result in agreement on major issues and principles to guide further efforts to revamp the church's approach to educating people for ministry.
Although the conversations that took place a few years ago have "slowed down because of local realities," Alexander said, he is "delighted that there's such a wonderful spirit on the part of the seminary deans and the institutions to really do some hard work and thinking about the future of theological education."
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