On
the verge of losing accreditation in 2006 during its third straight
year of bleeding red ink, the Claremont School of Theology faced an
uncertain future. Some faculty members left the United
Methodist-related seminary nestled near scenic mountains in southern
California, and a new president was hired whose expertise was primarily
in directing seminary and university libraries.
"We had spent
too much, and we didn't really have a clear pathway out," said CST
president Jerry D. Campbell, recalling in an interview the crisis he
inherited three years ago. Once a school goes on probation or, worse,
loses accreditation, "you can bet your bottom dollar that the student
population will decline," Campbell added.
Had the Claremont
school not reversed the trend, it surely would have been victimized by
the current recession, which has forced drastic budget cuts at many
Protestant seminaries. Instead, the school is fresh off probation,
enjoying a balanced budget and touting an ambitious plan to build
around the seminary a multifaith, multicultural graduate university "to
create active rapport among religions" for dealing with world problems.
The seminary would be one of five schools in the university project.
Campbell,
whose last position was overseeing the libraries and computer systems
at the University of Southern California, began his Claremont task in
mid-2006 by downsizing the staff and finding revenue to support plans
for major changes.
"Jerry Campbell has done a stunning job,"
said Joseph Hough, who was dean at Claremont from 1975 to 1989. "He has
the potential to attract significant funding for the school's new
direction."
Hough himself was widely applauded last year for
rescuing struggling Union Theological Seminary by raising $30 million
in capital funds during his nine-year presidency at the venerable New
York City school. Hough then started a long-delayed retirement in
California, but was recruited this winter to serve as interim president
of Claremont Graduate University.
One key to the bounce-back at
the Claremont School of Theology is a $5 million pledge by an unnamed
donor to support the multireligious university project, Campbell told
the Century.
"We are not proposing to quit educating United
Methodist ministers," he said. "But we are pretty convinced that
steeping people in their own juices doesn't create a broad-minded
leader who can go out and create coalitions and work with other
groups," he said.
CST trustees gave the new project the go-ahead in March. Other developments in recent months:
•
Seminary officials learned in March that the Western Association of
Schools and Colleges accrediting agency had lifted CST's probation.
Also, a review team from the Association of Theological Schools that
visited the campus in October and February has told Campbell that the
seminary is in compliance with its standards as well.
• The
school, with an enrollment of about 250 students, took two steps in
February to ease seminarians' financial burdens. The board kept tuition
at the same level for all degree programs in the 2009-2010 academic
year. And the faculty voted to reduce the number of units required for
the three-year Master of Divinity degree from 90 to 81, thereby
decreasing the chance that students will have to spend a fourth year—a
common experience.
"We looked at the phenomenal debt load that
seminarians are beginning to acquire from student loans," said Camp
bell in faulting the "irresponsibility of the entire system" of
training pastors. "It's almost unconscionable to graduate students into
a low-paying environment with large amounts of debt."
• With the
help of a Ford Foundation grant, the seminary organized a succession of
separate meetings on campus this year for theologians, mainline
denominational leaders and seminary officials to explore partnership in
"transformative thought for progressive action." A mixture of noted
theologians, progressive evangelicals and emergent-church thinkers met
in March, and denominational officials will meet at the end of May.
While
Claremont School of Theology has been known as a relatively liberal
seminary as well as a center for process theology, it is rarely
associated with interreligious studies. One exception: professor
emeritus John Cobb's past roles in Buddhist-Christian dialogues. But
CST's latest brochure states flatly that it is "transforming into a
university of religion, where scholars and practitioners of all
perspectives can . . . work toward the repair of the world."
"I've
been asked, 'What does this do for Methodism?'" said Campbell, 63, an
ordained Methodist minister who was a library administrator at three
UMC seminaries—Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Perkins School of
Theology at Southern Methodist University and Duke Divinity School. For
nearly a decade, he worked at USC in Los Angeles, a private university
that housed CST's predecessor Methodist seminary for the first half of
the 20th century.
Campbell says he suggests to church
traditionalists that "it is in the Methodist DNA" to foster
interreligious understanding and peace in the world. Founder John
Wesley pieced together an ecumenical theology that was "part Moravian,
part Lutheran, part Anglican, part Catholic, part Calvinist," he said.
"So I don't find the proposed university project out of keeping with
the spirit of John Wesley."
The existing school of theology
and ministry would be complemented by four other schools whose names
and descriptions are still in flux. One is tentatively called the
"school of ethics, politics and society."
Another, the
esoteric-sounding "world spiritualities and healing arts" school, will
cover pastoral care, religious education and spiritual formation,
according to Jon Hooten, CST director of communications.
"We
fully expect that process studies will have a strong presence in the
schools," Hooten added, referring to the philosophical-theological
thought pioneered by Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne and
Cobb.
While noting with a smile that he's aware of the saying,
"Often wrong, but never in doubt," Campbell said he believes "the money
is out there" for the project—on the basis of his experiences at SMU,
Duke and USC whenever large expansions were envisioned.
"In all
their backroom discussions, there would be people who said, 'You're
crazy. We'll never raise this kind of money,'" he said. "There was
always someone—typically the president or someone on the board—who
would say, 'If this institution wants to play in the big leagues, then
this is what it needs to do.'"
Some perspective on the Claremont
seminary's history was provided by Hough, who taught and held
administrative posts from 1965 through 1989 not only at CST but often
simultaneously at Claremont Graduate University.
Hough credited
Campbell for "a dramatic initial solution to the fiscal crisis" that
has bedeviled the seminary off and on since its founding. Former member
of Congress and Methodist pastor Bob Edgar "successfully led the first
moves toward financial stability" as CST president before he left in
1999 to lead the National Council of Churches out of its financial
perils.
Neither Hough nor Campbell mentioned Philip Amerson,
Edgar's successor as CST president, not wanting to fault him for the
seminary's budget relapse. Amerson in 2006 was offered the presidency
of Garrett-Evangelical Theo logical Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, and
he still leads that Methodist-related school.
One of
Campbell's initiatives at the Claremont seminary ruffled feathers at
Claremont Graduate University, however. The seminary has received
approval from the western regional accrediting agency to award Ph.D.s
in New Testament, Hebrew Bible and religion and ethics. Seminary
faculty often taught such classes in the past but CGU granted the
degrees.
Hough, in his temporary post as president of Claremont
Graduate University, said in a prepared statement that he was
"disappointed" at the "significant disruption" caused by CST's taking
over the three doctorate programs. But the statement also expressed
hoped for some new level of cooperation as both schools move ahead
"with their own programs featuring interreligious and comparative
religious studies."
