These are tough times for small, progressive theological schools. Economic conditions forced the United Church of Christ's Bangor Theological Seminary to sell their main campus: they are now nested in facilities owned by Husson University. In 2008 the Episcopal Church's Seabury-Western Theological School ceased admission of on-campus, degree-seeking students and as of January 2009, they were still re-organizing. They are trying to figure out how to do theological education with fewer resources and a small student body.
One progressive Christian group that has been rather successful at re-organizing its theological education is the General Convention of the Swedenborgian Church. Unfortunately, their example has largely gone ignored in the wider circles of America's progressive churches. This is understandable: this denomination, which sprang forth from the theological writings of the eighteenth-century scientist Emmanuel Swedenborg, has only 39 churches in North America. Many of these churches are clustered in New England, Kansas and California. They have about 1,400 members in the United States and Canada and so the smallest member communion of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Simply put, their small size makes them easy to overlook.
The earliest Swedenborgian churches in North America were organized in the very early years of the 1800s. Many of their early pastors were previously ordained converts from Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Congregationalism and Universalism; a few early preachers were raised up within Swedenborgian church ranks and these were educated at Harvard. But with decidedly unconventional theologies about salvation and the nature of scripture, and a strong bent towards esoteric mysticism, the Swedenborgians eventually felt it necessary to educate their clergy within their own house.
By the mid-1800s they opened the Theological College of the New Church. At the end of the twentieth century, the school was in Newton, Massachusetts and had been re-named the Swedenborg School of Religion. The school had declined along with its partner denomination, which had shrunk from a late 1800s membership peak of about 8,000 people. By the dawn of the twenty-first century the Swedenborg School of Religion had only three faculty members, often an equal number of students, a declining financial foundation, and serious problems with accreditation. By 2000 they only held affiliate status with the Association of Theological Schools (ATS), an accrediting body. Some graduates were facing challenges with admission to Doctor of Ministry programs and with chaplaincy credentialing programs that required an accredited degree. The school was no longer sustainable and was not serving its students as well as it should.
What could they do? They had a small facility -- and they could only afford a very small faculty -- both of which were not adequate for accreditation. The status quo could not stand. The denomination could dissolve the school and have their students study elsewhere without access to a Swedenborgian theological education. They could try to raise massive amounts of money to expand the school for a student base that would continue to be very small: a Herculean task for a denomination with about 1,400 members. Or they could do something different.
They chose to do something different: to do more theological education, with a smaller kind of institution. They decided to give up having their own separate seminary and decided not to abandon offering a Swedenborgian theological education.
The Swedenborg School of Religion closed down its independent, degree-granting operations. They sold the Newton campus and in 2002 they moved to Berkeley, California where they re-opened as the Swedenborgian House of Studies, at the Pacific School of Religion (PSR). In partnership with PSR they were required to maintain a staff that includes an administrative dean who can also teach, a professor of Swedenborgian theology, and a library devoted to Swedenborgian literature. They offer classes in Swedenborgian theology, history, and polity that can be integrated into PSR's larger Master of Divinity program. Beyond these basics, their more economically efficient institution has also been able to offer distance education for lay people, and a venue for an exciting rotation of adjunct instructors and visiting scholars. Student enrollment has often been higher than they were at Newton (although this year all the students have been in distance education programs) and some PSR students who started in other denominations have switched their ordination track to the Swedenborgian Church.
What PSR was able to do for the Swedenborgians was to free them from the burden of maintaining a stand-alone registrar and bursar, and having to pay for faculty to teach basic ministry skills, like pastoral care, counseling, administration, and preaching. Through PSR's affiliation with the Graduate Theological Union, opportunities have opened up for doctoral study in Swedenborgian theology. For example, there is currently one doctoral student exploring the Swedenborgian mystical perspective that the seven days of creation in Genesis represent seven stages of spiritual development.
Through a House of Studies, working in partnership with a large and progressive theological school, the Swedenborgian Church has done more theological education with a smaller kind of institution. And the denomination has been benefiting from a growing body of ministers working in churches, chaplaincy settings, and academic settings.
North America's Unitarian Universalist community could learn much from this. News in recent years from Starr King School for the Ministry has not been promising. Available funding has been declining. Costs of operation continue to increase. Their core faculty has been reduced to five non-adjunct members: one of which is presently a visiting professor, another who is on sabbatical and slated for retirement and a third who also serves as seminary president. None of these faculty members have special expertise in Unitarian Universalist history or theology. This is particularly strange because student access to scholars of denominational history and theology is frequently cited as the most important reason for maintaining a distinctly Unitarian Universalist degree-granting institution. It could be speculated upon that continued erosion of financial health and faculty size could result in future challenges to Starr King's accreditation. Starr King has a history of accreditation challenges and was not fully accredited by the ATS until 1978.
What can be done? Should this school continue down the path of the status quo? Could they one day be forced into closure? Should they engage in Herculean efforts to prop up an institution that may not be working as well as it could?
I would like to suggest that it is time to do more with less. And I would like to propose that the example presented by the Swedenborgian House of Studies could allow Starr King to continue with greater strength. As the Starr King House of Studies at PSR they would have an opportunity to become a more focused institution of Unitarian Universalist theological education.
The Rev. Derek Lee Parker is a graduate of the University of Chicago and the Earlham School of Religion. Ordained at Epiphany Community Church (UUA) of Fenton, Michigan, he presently serves as Minister for Youth and Children at the Irvington Friends Meeting (Quaker) in Indianapolis, Indiana.