 New Union Seminary: Is ‘new kid on the block’ a chip off the old block? By John H. Adams The Layman Volume 35, Number 1 Posted February 8, 2002 CHARLOTTE – Union Theological Seminary in Richmond describes its satellite campus at Queens College in Charlotte as the “new kid on the block.” It is a big, crowded block – actually several blocks – with three other seminaries. Time will tell whether Union-Charlotte, which was to open Feb. 2 with winter-term classes for 25 students, will become a chip off the old block as well. The old block According to its critics – including retired Professor John Leith – Union-Richmond has uprooted itself from its world-class past, when it reigned as one of the heavyweights in preparing pastors in the Reformed tradition of the Christian faith. “No one in the UTS [Richmond] theology department now represents the mainstream of Reformed theology that nurtured the Presbyterian church in this area of the United States and that built Union Theological Seminary,” Leith lamented in a 1998 letter to The Layman. Just as has been the case in the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Richmond campus has provided many signs of that departure from the Reformed mainstream:
Charlotte is a city of 3,000 churches. It may be apocryphal to call it a center of the Bible Belt, but it is Billy Graham territory. The Billy Graham Parkway links interstates 77 and 85 and is the main corridor serving Charlotte-Douglas International Airport. Graham has announced that he will move the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association headquarters – and hundreds of employees – to Charlotte. The Graham connection is important in seminary training as well. In 1969, Graham was one of the principals in organizing Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, which operates a satellite campus in Charlotte. Today, he is chairman emeritus of the Gordon Conwell board. Gordon Conwell’s second campus is one of three unabashedly evangelical seminaries in the city. The others are Reformed and Southern theological seminaries. The three seminaries have a combined enrollment of nearly 1,000 students. That’s tough competition for Union-Charlotte’s fledgling 25-student enterprise but the Presbyterian institution does have one advantage. The Presbytery of Charlotte has a policy against ordaining graduates of evangelical seminaries unless they have had at least one year of education in a “PCUSA seminary.” That bias against evangelical training has spawned complaints from congregations that want their ministers grounded in Scripture and focused on Christ. Actually, there are no PCUSA seminaries. The institutions that label themselves as such are independent with self-perpetuating boards of trustees and not accountable to the PCUSA in their theological training. Several employ non-Presbyterian faculty members. A new beginning Union-Charlotte is well-heeled. Presbyteries, congregations and individuals have given or pledged $10 million to make the school a prime-time competitor. The question is, what direction will Union take? Left or right? For evangelicals, there is hope that the offspring may turn out different from the parent campus. They cite the appointment of the Charlotte seminary’s dean, Dr. Thomas Currie III, son and grandson of noted Presbyterian pastors and educators in Texas and father of a Princeton seminarian. Currie’s writings and 25 years as a pastor in Texas – the last 13 as pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Kerrville – reflect a theology that is Christ-centered and Biblically grounded. The session of the 900-member Kerrville church has adopted a resolution that parallels the tenets of the Confessing Church Movement within the PCUSA, although it does not identify itself as a part of that movement. Currie has left a paper trail, including a recent book titled Searching for Truth: Confessing Christ in an Uncertain World. He frequently cites works by Lesslie Newbegin, a missionary to India for nearly four decades and a major contributor to evangelical thought in the 20th century, and the Torrance family in Scotland, renowned Trinitarian theologians. The Presbyterian Outlook published his commentary titled “Homosexuality and the Church’s Confession of Faith” in 1993. In that commentary, Currie criticizes a culture of “self-realization” and calls for theological reflection to “exercise our true freedom in Christ to say ‘no’ to those who would seek to establish their own humanity apart from that humanity which has been given to us in Jesus Christ.” In 1989, in a Presbyterian Outlook column titled “A Dying Church?,” Currie argued that the declining membership of the denomination was a “crisis of faith, and our church will continue to lose whatever saltiness we possess unless we begin to see that what is at stake in this crisis is what we believe, what we are willing to risk for …” He told The Layman that his commitment to renewal in the Presbyterian Church (USA) is the reason he left the pulpit to become the leader of the Charlotte seminary. Currie is no Johnny-come-lately to teaching seminarians, having taught numerous courses at Austin Theological Seminary in Texas. For the winter term at Union-Charlotte, Currie will be 100 percent administrator and 50 percent of the faculty. His class on the Christian Life and an introduction to Hebrew class by a Presbyterian minister will be the only two courses in the winter term. A graduate of Haverford College and Austin Seminary, Currie received his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, focusing on the theology of Karl Barth in his dissertation. |
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