[Dialogue] 5/19/11, Spong: New Dean for the Seminary at Drew University: A Rising Star in Theological Education

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New Dean for the Seminary at Drew University: A Rising Star in Theological Education
One of the most enriching elements of my life today is the relationship I have with Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. Located about five miles from my home, Drew began its life as a theological school designed to train clergy for the Methodist Church. Only later did this theological school grow into being both a college and a university. As a direct result of this original purpose, Drew today houses the archives of the Methodist Church and serves as the repository of the documents reflecting the history of Methodism in the United States.
One of the most significant features of this university is its magnificent library, which houses 630,000 volumes on its shelves, 507,000 micro text items, 43,000 journal subscriptions and a rich array of databases. I have found it to be one of the finest theological libraries I have ever used. I am privileged to have been given access to this entire library and am frequently in its stacks doing research for my columns and books. The Dean of the Libraries at Drew is Dr. Andrew Scrimgeour, whose training is in theology and who serves today as the Chairman of the Board of the Westar Institute, the parent of the Jesus Seminar. Sometimes Andy serves, apparently willingly, as my own personal librarian for he not only helps me to locate articles in past journals not normally available without great effort, but he also provides me with my own study carrel within that library’s walls for a significant number of days at a time when I have the opportunity to work on a book, a rare but welcomed treat in my often hectic life.
When I was the bishop of Newark, I frequently encouraged candidates for the Episcopal priesthood to step outside the confining walls that constitute denominational boundaries and to get their theological education at Drew. I do not know of the existence of anything that might be called “Episcopal Biblical Studies” or “Episcopal Theology.” I know only of competent biblical scholarship or competent theological training. Drew provided my students with both. Many of our potential candidates for ordination were second career people with houses, children and an employed spouse, which made it impossible for them to move to a residential seminary. The Drew campus, to which they could commute, offered an excellent opportunity for their graduate studies. The members of the theological faculty at Drew were always helpful and supportive. They even provided for my students the means for giving these future Episcopal clergy training in those things that the Episcopal Church requires of its clergy, such as learning about Canon Law, Anglican liturgy and Episcopal Church History, subjects that might not normally be offered in a Methodist Seminary. These Drew-trained graduates are today some of the finest Episcopal priests we still have serving in my former diocese of Newark. The Drew Theological School has itself not been stuck in a denominational ghetto and regularly on that faculty are Episcopalians, who could give to my students the needed denominational ambiance and personal guidance. I think of such people as Professors Nelson Thayer, Dorothy Austin and Charles Rice.
After my retirement, I was even invited to join the adjunct faculty of this institution to teach in its short winter block between semesters, in which special courses were offered by people who lived in Drew’s larger neighborhood. My class on “The Effect of the Synagogue in Shaping the Content of the Synoptic Gospels” was a three-week course that met for four hours a day, Tuesday through Thursday, a rather intensive schedule for both students and teacher alike, but one I enjoyed enormously. Above all, I was impressed by the quality of the Drew students as well as the lay people from the immediate area, whom Drew invited to take this class as auditors. My relationship with this school was further solidified in May of 2010 when Drew honored me with the awarding of a Doctor of Humane Letters degree at its commencement.
I give you this personal background to place into a context the remarkable experience I had recently when I participated in the installation of a new dean for the Theological School at Drew. His name is Dr. Kah-Jin Jeffrey Kuan. He arrived at Drew in January from a tenured faculty position at the Pacific School of Religion, which is part of the Theological Consortium around the University of California at Berkeley. The Pacific School of Religion itself is identified not with the Methodists, but with the United Church of Christ, but like Drew its faculty is drawn from many traditions. In my opinion, the Pacific School of Religion is the one denominational seminary in America that without qualification is committed to preparing its students for realistic ministry in the 21st century. PSR thus does not attempt to coddle those students whose Sunday school images of God cannot withstand the rigors of modern education. It rather calls its students into engagement with science and with our increasingly non-religious culture. It suggests, if I might use my own phrase, that “Christianity must change or die.” No fundamentalist, evangelical, “creationist” or “intelligent design” person would likely be part of this student body; no one who wanted to continue ecclesiastical discrimination against women, people of color or homosexual persons would be comfortable there, and no one unwilling to be a critical student of the scriptures and to embrace the scholarship of the last 200 years would gravitate to this seminary. Dr. Jeffrey Kuan, an ordained Methodist minister, was their highly-respected professor of Old Testament From this Pacific Seminary he was called to be Dean of the Theological School at Drew University. This loss to that institution was keenly felt, but what he could and would bring to Drew Theological School was also greatly anticipated.
In this appointment Dr. Kuan became the first Asian-American to be made the Dean of a Methodist theological seminary in America. It was no surprise that this step would be taken by Drew for this was also the first Methodist theological seminary in the country to elect a woman to be its dean.
Dr. Kuan planned his installation as Dean of Drew in such a way as to announce to the world the understanding he would pursue in this position. The day of his installation began with a symposium on “Global Theological Education.” This symposium featured addresses by Dr. Orlando Espin, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego, Dr. Beauty Rosebury Maenzanise, Dean of the Faculty of Theology at Africa University in Zimbabwe and Dr. Choon-Leong Seow, Professor of Old Testament Language and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary. Those responding to these addresses included leaders from the faculties of the New York Theological Seminary, the Union Theological Seminary in New York and the New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Jersey. A major theme in these presentations was the necessity of moving Christianity out of the western cultural ghetto and engaging the religious yearnings of the entire world, including facing the anti-Semitism and religious imperialism of the Christian West, interacting with the rising tide of Islam and learning from the spiritual wealth of the great religions of the East. These speakers also hinted at the necessity of listening to the humanist and even the atheist voices being heard in the West like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. Seldom have I seen a theological seminary be so obvious and overt about what it believed was its vocation in the 21st century.
This symposium was followed by a concert entitled “Let Justice Roll” arranged by Mark A. Miller, the remarkable Instructor of Music and Composer in Residence at Drew University, and a man who has previously served at Yale University and at both Marble Collegiate Church and Riverside Church in New York City. This concert featured a prelude by the Korean Women’s Ensemble, a Zimbabwe Hallelujah and songs with words by Charles Wesley, Langston Hughes, and Martin Luther King, Jr. for which Mark Miller had composed musical settings. It was built around what was said to be the new Dean’s favorite text in the Hebrew Scriptures from the prophet Micah (6:8): “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love mercy (or kindness) and to walk humbly with your God.”
>From this incredible concert, the day moved to the installation service itself. Academics love parades and this one was spectacular with the multi-colored academic hoods of many universities on display. Methodist Bishops of Asian background were quite visible, one being the current Bishop of New Jersey. President Robert Weisbuch, Drew’s magnificent Jewish president, welcomed the new dean and pledged his support for the work of the seminary. Jeffrey Kuan spoke of his dreams for Drew – academic excellence, a passion for justice and the seminary as the source of a transformation of the churches through the pastors being educated for that work. New Jersey’s religious establishment and the wider region that this theological school serves will be significantly impacted, I am certain, by this native Malaysian, whose first degree was from the University of Singapore, whose Master’s degree in Theological Studies was from Southern Methodist University in Dallas and whose PhD was from Emory University in Atlanta.
Dean Kuan is prepared, according to the statement printed in the installation booklet “to be a pioneer in the re-imagining and transforming of theological education and in the preparation of religious leaders and scholars for ethnically diverse and global societies.”
Drew Theological School under the leadership of Dean Kuan and Drew University under the leadership of President Weisbuch seem to be prepared for a new role and a new vocation. It will not be business as usual. Their goal is to engage the world as it is, not to resist the inevitability of tomorrow, but to meet it, transform it and to introduce it to religious dimensions that are timeless once they have been freed from the cultural captivity of the past.
This is, I believe, also the inevitable vocation of every Christian Church if we want to live beyond this century. Drew is now prepared to help us all do exactly that.
~John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here.





Question & Answer
Robert Daley, via the Internet, wrote:
Question:
Just recently I have become perplexed over an alleged saying of Jesus.  Supposedly he admonishes us to Take up our personal cross and follow him.  It seems odd that he could have said that before he, himself, had done so.  Was that just a pious thought plugged in by his successors?  What does the Jesus Seminar say about it?
Answer:
Dear Robert, 

That saying found in Mark, Matthew and Luke, which means that it appeared first in Mark and was then copied by Matthew and Luke, is one of many given a black rating by the Jesus Seminar, which means that they regarded that saying as impossible for Jesus to have said and for the same reasons that you mentioned.  Before the crucifixion of Jesus, the cross had no transformative meaning.  It was nothing other than a piece of equipment used in the Roman method of execution.  Yes, there were many crucifixions prior to Jesus, but it had no other purpose and was not something which anyone would have been invited to emulate. 

I do not think anyone should read any verse of any gospel as if it were a literal quotation from a tape-recorded Jesus of Nazareth.  The sayings of Jesus contained in the gospels were first of all translations into Greek from the Aramaic originals and, secondly, they had been carried by an oral tradition for 40-70 years before being recorded.  The members of the Jesus Seminar after a study that took more than a decade color coded every saying of Jesus in the New Testament using four colors.  Red meant this saying is close to the words and ideas of Jesus himself.  It passes the authenticity test.  Pink meant the idea expressed in this saying may have originated with Jesus, but the form and context that we possess in this text have been corrupted.  Gray meant this saying is far more likely to have been the voice of the post-Jesus church read back into the life of the historical Jesus than it is an authentic word of Jesus.  Black meant that in this saying there is no echo of the voice of Jesus that can be heard speaking.  The text you mentioned is in the black category... In the Fourth Gospel all of the  sayings of Jesus, except for one (John 4:1), are coded black, which of course means that all of the “I am” sayings, which only John records, are deemed not to be the authentic words of the Jesus of history. 

To say, however, that these are not the literal words of Jesus does not mean that they have no meaning.  While Jesus surely did not say, “I am the bread of life,” the fact that people found in him that which satisfied their deepest hunger helps us to understand why these words were attributed to him. 

~John Shelby Spong





Announcements
Bishop Spong to be honored!
Breaking through confined and narrow theological structures has been John Shelby Spong’s life work.  He has brought thousands of grateful people on the journey with him; people of faith, people who doubt, but all people with serious religious and intellectual inclinations.
Since his retirement as Bishop of the Diocese of Newark in 2000, Jack Spong has continued articulating his point of view all over the world.  In his writing, his lectures, his preaching, he asks his listeners to open their minds to scientific reality, their hearts to compassion for one another and their souls to the love of a God not bound by narrow interpretation.  Bishop Spong’s themes have not been without controversy.  The slings and arrows of religious dogmatism have been plentiful.  With the unfailing support of his wife, Christine, however, as a pair they have been unafraid to keep educating.
To honor their efforts and to perpetuate progressive religious scholarship and experience, family, friends and admirers of Jack and Christine want to establish a lecture series, to be named the John Shelby Spong Lectureship, to be housed at St. Peter’s Church in Morristown, NJ, the home parish for the Spongs.
For more information, contact:  Marie-Charlotte Patterson, Parish Administrator at St. Peter’s Church, Morristown. 973 538 0555 Ext. 10

A NOTE FROM BISHOP SPONG: 
DEAR READERS,
ONE OF THE MOST CREATIVE THEOLOGIANS IN OUR GENERATION IS MATTHEW FOX, THE AUTHOR OF MANY BOOKS, THE BEST KNOWN OF WHICH IS ORIGINAL BLESSINGS, a book in which he challenged for the first time the Christian Church's doctrine of "original sin." Matthew is also a good friend of mine, who has had a tumultuous relationship with the Roman Catholic Church in which he served as a priest for years. He has just published a chronicle of that relationship under the title "The Pope's War: Why Ratzinger's Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How it Can Be Saved." I include here a press release from his publisher:
"Theologian Matthew Fox, a former Catholic priest silenced by Pope Benedict XVI when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, recounts the "war for the soul of the Catholic Church" waged by Benedict and his predecessor, John Paul II. His new book, The Pope's War: Why Ratzinger's Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved is a searing indictment that portrays a church hierarchy obsessed with rooting out theological dissent and crushing creativity, while covering up the pedophile crisis. The Pope's War begins by recounting Ratzinger's life story, including his "conversion" from an up-and-coming progressive theologian at Vatican II to "ecclesial climber and chief inquisitor" who proceeded, along with Pope John Paul II, to dismantle the work of Vatican II, including the promises of collegiality, lay leadership, and theological pluralism. Fox concludes that the last two papacies have created a schism in the church by ignoring Vatican II but ends with a hopeful vision for the future. He believes that the Holy Spirit is at work in "ending the Catholic Church as we know it" and making it possible to "push the restart button on Christianity."
The book is hard hitting and revealing. It poses for us the crisis that is in our sister church and points to a way out of that crisis. I doubt if it will be welcomed in the Vatican, but it should be. It is the kind of criticism that only one who loves the Catholic Church as an insider could write. This book will cause enormous discussion. I want you to be aware of it.
~John Shelby Spong

ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM THE PUBLISHERS
Read what Bishop Spong has to say about A Joyful Path Progressive Christian Spiritual Curriculum for Young Hearts and Minds: "The great need in the Christian church is for a Sunday school curriculum for children that does not equate faith with having a pre-modern mind. The Center for Progressive Christianity has produced just that. Teachers can now teach children in Sunday school without crossing their fingers. I endorse it wholeheartedly."
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