Union Theological Seminary (New York City)

Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York (UTS) is a non-denominational Christian seminary[3] in New York City. It is affiliated with neighboring Columbia University. Since 1928, the seminary has served as Columbia's constituent faculty of theology. In 1964, UTS also established an affiliation with the neighboring Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York
Seal of Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York
Latin: Seminarium Theologicum Unioniense Novi Eboraci
MottoUnitas, Veritas, Caritas (Latin)
Motto in English
Unity, Truth, Love
TypePrivate
Established1836 (1836)
EndowmentUS$108 million
PresidentSerene Jones
Academic staff
38
Students210
Location
New York City
,
New York
,
United States
AffiliationsColumbia University
Websiteutsnyc.edu
Union Theological Seminary
NYC Landmark No. 0595[1]
LocationW. 120th St. and Broadway, New York, NY 10027
Coordinates40°48′41″N 73°57′51″W
Area2.3 acres (0.93 ha)
Built1908
ArchitectAllen & Collens
Architectural styleLate Gothic Revival, Collegiate Gothic, Other
NRHP reference No.80002725[2]
NYCL No.0595[1]
Significant dates
Added to NRHPApril 23, 1980
Designated NYCLNovember 15, 1967 (Brown Memorial Tower, James Tower, James Memorial Chapel)

UTS is the oldest independent seminary in the United States and has long been known as a bastion of progressive Christian scholarship, with a number of prominent thinkers among its faculty or alumni. It was founded in 1836 by members of the Presbyterian Church in the USA,[4] but was open to students of all denominations. In 1893, UTS rescinded the right of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church to veto faculty appointments, thus becoming fully independent. In the 20th century, Union became a center of liberal Christianity. It served as the birthplace of the Black theology, womanist theology, and other theological movements. It houses the Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, one of the largest theological libraries in the Western Hemisphere.[5]

History

Early history
1883 campus, Park Avenue and 70th Street[6]

Union Theological Seminary (UTS) was founded in 1836. During the late 19th century it became one of the leading centers of liberal Christianity in the United States. In 1891, Charles A. Briggs, who was being installed as the chair of biblical studies, delivered an inaugural address in which he questioned the verbal inspiration of Scripture.[7] When the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. vetoed Briggs' appointment and eventually deposed Briggs for heresy two years later, Union removed itself from denominational oversight.[8] In 1939 the Auburn Theological Seminary moved to its campus and departed in 2014.[9]

Among its graduates were the historian of Christianity Arthur McGiffert; biblical scholar James Moffatt; Harry Emerson Fosdick, the pastor of Riverside Church who served as professor during his tenure there; and the Socialist leader Norman Thomas.

Union Settlement
Side view at Claremont Avenue between W. 120th and W. 119th streets (1910).

In 1895, members of the Union Theological Seminary Alumni Club founded Union Settlement Association, 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.

The neighborhood, known as East Harlem, was 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).[10]

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.

20th century to present

Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich made UTS the center of both liberal and neo-orthodox Protestantism in the post-War period. Prominent public intellectual 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.

On July 1, 2008, feminist theologian Serene Jones became Union's first female president in its 172-year history, succeeding Joseph C. Hough, Jr.[11]

On June 10, 2014, Jones announced that the Seminary would be joining the movement to divest from the fossil fuels industry in protest at the damage the industry is causing to the environment.[12] The Seminary's $108 million endowment will no longer include any fossil fuel investments.

Although administratively independent from Columbia, Union is represented by one voting faculty member, and one non-voting student observer member, of the Columbia University Senate.[13]

Campus
Brown Memorial Tower
Union Theological Seminary entrance on Broadway

Union's campus is located in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, bordered by Claremont Avenue, Broadway, and West 120th and 122nd Streets. The brick and limestone English Gothic revival architecture, by architects Allen & Collens, completed in 1910, includes the tower, which adapts features of the crossing tower of Durham Cathedral. Adjacent to Teachers College, Barnard College, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and the Manhattan School of Music, Union has cross-registration and library access agreements with all of these schools.

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 23, 1980, and parts were made a New York City designated landmark in 1965.[1] Some sections of the campus are now on long-term lease to Columbia University.

Library

The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, one of the largest theological libraries in North America, contains holdings of over 700,000 items. The Burke's holdings include extensive special collections, including Greek census records from 20 CE, a rare 12th Century manuscript of the Life of St. Boniface, and one of the first African-American hymnals, published in Philadelphia in 1818.

The Burke Library also maintains a number of world-renowned archival collections, including the Archives of Women in Theological Scholarship and the Missionary Research Library Archives.

In 2004 Union's Burke Library became fully integrated into the Columbia University Libraries 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.

Faculty

In 1930, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Postgraduate Teaching Fellow at the seminary. He later returned in 1939 to be a member of the faculty and to escape Nazi harassment in Germany. Writing of his experience there in his book Barcelona, Berlin, New York, Bonhoeffer was dismayed by the liberalism of the seminary and its students, noting that, "The students are completely clueless with respect to what dogmatics is really about. They are not familiar with even the most basic questions. They become intoxicated with liberal and humanistic phrases, are amused at the fundamentalists, and yet basically are not even up to their level...." Referring to Union Seminary, Bonhoeffer noted: "A seminary in which numerous students openly laugh during a public lecture because they find it amusing when a passage on sin and forgiveness ...is cited has obviously, despite its many advantages, forgotten what Christian theology in its very essence stands for" (pp. 309–10). He soon regretted his decision and decided that he had to return to Germany to resist the Nazis. He took the last ship from New York to Germany in late August 1939. Due to his secret involvement with the 20 July plot on Hitler's life, he was executed at the Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 8, 1945, only 15 days before the United States Army liberated the camp.

Both Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich taught at the seminary during the post-World War II period.

Dr. Serene Jones, the seminary's first female president, was inaugurated in November 2008. Dr. Joseph Hough, UTS' immediate past president, is a Christian Democratic Socialist. Henry Sloane Coffin was a past president. Civil Rights Activist Cornel West joined the faculty in July 2012. Dr. James Hal Cone is one of the founders of liberation theology and is active in the development of African-American theology.

Union has also been home to Womanist theologians such as Delores S. Williams. Dr. Gary Dorrien is a 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.

Notable current faculty

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

Notable former faculty
  • John Anthony McGuckin  – Nielsen Professor of Early and Byzantine Church History, President of the Sophia Institute, Archpriest of the Orthodox Church
  • Charles Butler (1802–97) – founder
  • Philip Schaff (1819–1893) – Theologian and ecclesiastical historian who served as chair of theological encyclopedia and Christian symbolism, then as chair of Hebrew and the cognate languages, followed by chair of sacred literature, and finally chair of church history until his death in 1893.
  • 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
  • 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)
  • James Cone (1936-2018) – a founder of Black theology, he was Charles Augustus Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology until his death
  • Beverly Wildung Harrison - a Christian feminist ethicist, she taught for 34 years at Union, and was the Caroline Williams Beaird Professor of Ethics. She was the first woman president of the North American Society of Christian Ethics.
  • Robert Pollack – professor of Science and Religion
  • Raymond E. Brown (1928–1998) – Professor of New Testament (1971-1990), member of the Pontifical Bible Commission, and the first Catholic to gain tenure[14]
  • Edward Robinson – Biblical scholar and discoverer of Robinson's Arch and Hezekiah's Tunnel in Jerusalem
  • Henry Sloane Coffin – President of Union and a leading theological liberal. Coffin also obtained his Bachelor of Divinity from the Union Theological Seminary in 1900. He declined an offer to become president of Union Theological Seminary in 1916. In 1926, offered the presidency (a second time), he accepted and retained the post until 1945.
  • 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
  • Walter Wink – Biblical scholar and activist
  • Roger Haight – theologian banned from teaching by the Holy Office[15]
  • Harrison S. Elliot (1882–1951) – author and leader in the Y.M.C.A., Religious Education Association, and Union Theological Seminary.
  • J. Brooke Mosley, president
  • W. D. Davies, (1911–2001), Welsh-born Edward Robinson Professor of Biblical Theology, noted New Testament scholar and Congregationalist Minister.
  • Ann Belford Ulanov – Christiane Brooks Johnson Memorial Professor of Psychiatry and Religion
  • Cornel West – Professor of Religious Philosophy and Christian Practice
  • Christopher Morse – Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor of Theology & Ethics
  • Paul F. Knitter – Paul Tillich Professor of Theology
  • Peter C. Phan – the inaugural holder of the Ellacuria Chair of Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown University[16]

Notable alumni

See also

References
  1. "Union Theological Seminary" (PDF). New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. November 15, 1967. Retrieved December 23, 2019.
  2. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
  3. "Mission & Vision". Union Theological Seminary. Retrieved March 15, 2019.
  4. Union Theological Seminary – Timeline, 1836 to 1869
  5. http://library.columbia.edu/locations/burke.html
  6. A History of Real Estate, Building and Architecture in New York City During the Last Quarter of a Century. New York City: Record and Guide. 1898. pp. 371.
  7. Hart, D. G.; Muether, John (2007). Seeking a Better Country: 300 Years of American Presbyterianism. Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing. p. 183. ISBN 9780875525747. OCLC 122974080.
  8. Hart & Muether, pg. 183
  9. "About Us". Auburn Theological Seminary web site. Archived from the original on February 21, 2010. Retrieved January 21, 2010.
  10. A Teacher and His Times, William Adams Brown, Scribner, 1940.
  11. Union Theological Seminary – Serene Jones, President of the Faculty
  12. "WeAreClimateChange". Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved December 18, 2016.
  13. A Guide to the University Senate, University Senate Office, Columbia University (February 2019).
  14. Niebuhr, Gustav (August 11, 1998). "Raymond E. Brown, 70, Dies; A Leading Biblical Scholar". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved March 5, 2017.
  15. "The Vatican levies further penalties on Roger Haight, SJ - Commonweal Magazine". Retrieved December 18, 2016.
  16. "Peter Phan". berkleycenter.georgetown.edu. Retrieved November 20, 2017.
  17. Metaxas, Eric| Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy 2010, Thomas Nelson Publishers, p. 101
  18. "Unitas Awards: Union Theological Seminary". Union Theological Seminary New York.
  19. Beverly Roberts Gaventa, When in Romans: An Invitation to Linger with the Gospel According to Paul, Grand Rapids: Baker Press. Description. Forthcoming, November 15, 2016.
  20. "Home". Retrieved December 18, 2016.
  21. "Who Is Raphael Warnock?: Everything To Know About Ebenezer Baptist Pastor Running For Georgia Senate". News One. Retrieved February 1, 2020.
  22. Martin, Douglas. "George W. Webber, Social Activist Minister, Dies at 90", The New York Times, July 12, 2010. Accessed July 13, 2010.

Bibliography
  • Handy, Robert T. A History of Union Theological Seminary in New York. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987.
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