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Belief,
Bricks, and Beyond
After
nearly a decade of turmoil, Yale's Divinity School is undergoing
fundamental changes, from the $42-million reinvention of its campus
to the installation of its first female dean.
November
2001
by Matthew Holden Lewis
Matthew
Holden Lewis, a freelance writer in New Haven, is a 1987 graduate
of Yale College.
Although
sequestered in a complex of its own roughly a mile from the central
campus, Yale's Divinity School is nevertheless closer to the University's
heart and history than any of the other professional schools.
Indeed, Yale's founders declared 300 years ago that its role was
to prepare students for service in clerical no less than civil positions.
Its early alumni included Jonathan Edwards and a host of other influential
divines. And when divinity was given a separate department in 1822,
it eventually came to be seen as a training ground for what was
then the nation's elite -- a "West Point of mainline Protestantism,"
as one writer put it.
But
in recent years, the School has struggled with financial woes, weakening enrollment, a deteriorating physical plant, and uneven leadership.
And through the late 1990s, controversies over the School's location
and renovation plagued the campus.
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"Chopp's
ability to embrace both the mundane and the spiritual will
undoubtedly prove useful."
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Things
are finally looking up. Not only has the Marquand Chapel spire that
dominates Sterling Divinity Quadrangle been restored (it was about
to disintegrate), but admissions are up, the funding is flowing,
and the School's leadership has been put in the hands of someone
whose credentials seem designed precisely to address the issues
now facing the School.
Rebecca
Chopp, the School's 13th head, is an ordained Methodist minister,
as well as a leading feminist scholar, author of three books, and
a seasoned administrator. Among her colleagues, Chopp is known as
an energetic, disciplined thinker and manager. "With Rebecca there's
very little wasted motion," says president William M. Chace of Emory
University, where Chopp spent 15 years before leaving for New Haven
in July. "She has a very lucid manner of thinking and a crisp, alert
sensibility. She knows what she thinks, and she reflects what she's
been thinking." She is also Emory's former provost. "I understand
a wee bit about budgets and administration," she reassured the congregation
at the news conference announcing her Yale appointment.
Chopp's
ability to embrace both the mundane and the spiritual will undoubtedly
prove useful in handling the multitude of issues that have been
afflicting the Divinity School in recent years. Not the least of
them was a lingering question in some quarters of the University
about the role of a Christian divinity school at a secular institution.
Seminaries devoted to particular denominations offered ordination
at virtually no cost (YDS charges upwards of $26,000 a year), while
the growth of religious studies as an academic field at universities
-- including Yale -- provided options for the traditional YDS candidates
who were more interested in the books than the cloth. Beyond that,
the student body had changed dramatically. Until the middle of the
20th century, YDS students were overwhelmingly Protestant, male,
single, white, and young. They now include members of some 40 denominations,
women, married people, people embarking on second careers, and even
a few non-Christians, from Jews to Buddhists to Muslims.
Tensions
created by these changes increased as the neo-Georgian campus of
the school fell victim to "deferred maintenance," and internal dissension
among the faculty spread to the point that a student report described
the atmosphere as "venomous."
The
institutional unhappiness was reflected in the admission rate, which
by 1994 had risen above 85 percent. (Sixty percent is an appropriate
rate for competitive divinity schools, according to YDS associate
dean of admissions Guy Martin.) Enrollment, which had peaked at
400 in 1992, had slumped below 300.
In
response to the situation, Provost Alison Richard in 1994 created the Divinity School Review Committee
with a mandate to examine everything about the School, including
its purpose, and even its location. The committee's report, issued
in 1995, reaffirmed YDS's historic educational mission and offered
what Richard described as a "road map" for the future, recommending
that the school become smaller and more selective, shore up its
faculty, fine-tune its curriculum, and increase its income. (See
"The Future of Divinity," Mar. 1996.) A second committee concluded
in 1996 that moving the School to the central campus was feasible
and even desirable. But further study and analysis by the New York
architectural firm of R.M. Kliment & Frances Halsband (see page
42) resulted in the decision that YDS remain in its existing location,
but that its buildings be adapted to its new needs.
Virtually
all of the recommendations are now in the process of being fulfilled.
YDS is substantially more competitive (a 68 percent acceptance rate
in 2001), attracting more applicants (up 51 percent since 1995),
and includes for the first time in its curriculum a required course
in non-Christian religions. The original renovation plan, which
sparked a loud and public debate, was altered, and the first of
the new spaces -- at an overall cost of roughly $42 million -- are
already welcoming students. The entire project is scheduled for
completion in 2003.
For
all the troubles, YDS has remained dedicated to its original principles.
Of the dozen or so university-based divinity schools in the country,
Yale is one of only five (including the University of Chicago, Harvard,
Howard, and Vanderbilt) that are interdenominational. According
to YDS professor Robert R. Wilson, the School's mission -- "to foster
the knowledge and love of God through critical engagement with the
traditions of the Christian churches" -- reflects a commitment dating
from Colonial times to prepare people for "learned ministry -- not
just ministry, but ministry with a very deep scholarly base."
For
at least the last 50 years, continues Wilson, YDS's mission has
included three parts: the preparation of students for Christian
ministry; preparation for the academic study of religion; and the
provision of religious studies to students with other vocational
interests. Daniel O. Aleshire, executive director of the Association
of Theological Schools in Pittsburgh, adds that while Yale's peers
may also offer both training for the ministry and the education
of scholars, YDS has the longest such tradition.
Like
many current Divinity School alumni, John Branson '74MDiv came to
Yale not only because of its longstanding reputation, but also because,
as an interdenominational, university-based school, it offered a
broader range of experience than he could get at a seminary. Now
a parish priest in Westport, Connecticut, Branson, who is also a
member of the YDS alumni advisory board, recalls the School as "a
very fertile place in ideas, backgrounds, and perspectives."
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"A
key part of the education is real-world experience in churches
and social service agencies."
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YDS
grants three degrees: Master of Divinity (MDiv), Master of Arts
in Religion (MAR), and Master of Sacred Theology (STM). Students
take courses on topics ranging from Old Testament interpretation
and the theology of John Duns Scotus, to the iconography of Christian
art, and medical ethics. A key part of the education is real-world
ministerial experience in churches and social service agencies.
YDS
used to grant PhDs, but these degrees moved to the Graduate School's
department of religious studies (DRS) when it was created in 1963.
As a result, says Wilson, who has served as chairman of DRS and
currently holds joint appointments in both schools, YDS and the
DRS haven't always had a smooth relationship. In the 1960s, for example, some YDS professors resented the fact that they were not
invited to participate in the new department, and that some of their
PhD programs, such as one in Christian education, were abandoned.
But, Wilson concludes, "we have tried very hard to smooth out those
difficulties."
Wilson
thinks of the difference between YDS and the DRS as "functional."
While the department serves undergraduates and PhD candidates, the
Divinity School serves those seeking master's degrees. "There's
a booming business at places like Yale, Harvard, and Chicago in
these two-year degrees," he says. "Many undergraduate programs around
the country don't prepare people very well to go into PhD programs."
Harry
Adams, a former University Chaplain who filled in as interim dean
following the departure of Chopp's predecessor Richard Wood last
year to become head of the New York- based United Fund for Christian
Higher Education in Asia, stresses that faith remains a distinguishing
characteristic of YDS. "We're a Christian school; we're not a graduate
school in religion," he insists. Adams adds that Yale is unusual
among university divinity schools in its practice of community worship
-- in a variety of traditions -- five days a week. "One of the strengths
of the School is that people who come here don't just read about
how Episcopalians worship or how a gospel choir sounds, but experience
it," Adams says. "At the heart of our life together is our common
worship of God."
Cristina
Sloan '02 MAR, a student of church history, wanted to attend a divinity
school rather than a religious studies department largely for that
reason. "At a religious studies department you tend to study Christianity
as if it were historical, as if it no longer existed," she says,
"whereas at a divinity school you're surrounded by people for whom
it's a living thing."
That
certainly includes Rebecca Chopp. Raised in Kansas, Chopp
became interested in religion in her teens, and by the time she
got to college knew that she wanted to become a minister in the
United Methodist Church, at least partly because it supported the
ordination of women.
After earning a BA in 1974 at Kansas Wesleyan University, Chopp went on
to the Saint Paul School of Theology and then to the University
of Chicago Divinity School, where she earned her PhD in 1983 and
served as assistant professor of theology. She moved to Emory University
in 1986, and held several appointments at the Candler School of
Theology and Graduate Division of Religion, the Institute for Liberal
Arts, and the Institute for Women's Studies before becoming provost.
In a 1998 interview with Emory Magazine, she argued that
"a good provost is someone who comes to the job right out of the
classroom, first, because the teacher-student interaction is the
heart of our community. But I also think it's similar to teaching
because you're helping people to achieve their own goals." She described
the process as "leadership by facilitation."
In
her scholarly work, Chopp, who will also serve YDS as the Titus
Street Professor of Theology and Culture (her husband, Fred Thibodeau,
will be working in the central development office), has concentrated
on feminist, liberation, and political theologies and theories of
rhetoric, pragmatism, and poststructuralism. She is the author of The Praxis of Suffering: An Interpretation of Liberation and
Political Theologies (1986); The Power to Speak: Feminism,
Language, God (1989); and Saving Work: Feminist Practices
of Theological Education (1995).
Chopp
feels that one of her greatest accomplishments at Emory was fostering
"interdisciplinary and cross-school conversation." Such dialogue
is not only beneficial to society, she believes, but also good for
scholarship, because it leads to new ways of looking at timeless
questions. Among the initiatives Chopp helped launch at Emory were
the Interfaith Health Program, which investigates the role of faith
in health, the Religion in Law Program, which studies human rights,
and the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Religion.
Chopp established Emory's first major office for community partnerships,
which brings Emory's scholars together with Atlanta's community
groups. (Recently, when an Atlanta non-profit organization for mothers
and girls suspected that local foundations favored nonprofits for
boys, it engaged a political scientist at Emory to conduct a gender
relations study. Data from the project helped shift the funding
balance.)
Chopp
also helped expand Emory's Office of International Affairs, which
through the Claus M. Halle Institute sponsors seminars on internationalism
and takes groups of faculty members on two- to six-week seminar
trips to parts of the world they've never visited. She formed the
Council of Deans so that administrators could be more involved as
what she calls "university citizens" with administrative budgets.
So
why would Rebecca Chopp move from Atlanta to New Haven? One
reason, she says, is that she considers Yale to be "poised to enter
a new stage of theological education for the 21st century. This
is a unique opportunity in the history of theological education."
Chopp
thinks theological education today must respond to and be shaped
by an increasingly pluralistic society, in which one's neighbors
may include Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims. "In
traditional American culture, the dominant voice was Protestant,"
says Chopp. "Now that has irrevocably changed. Christianity has
to rethink some of its basic messages in terms of its relationships
to many other religions in this country."
Among
the questions to which Chopp's students may be seeking answers are,
according to the dean: "How does watching people live faithfully
in a different faith affect traditional claims about Christ as the
only way to salvation? What is the role of evangelism and proselytizing
in a multi-religious world? Can a Buddhist speak from the pulpit
of a Christian church?"
Chopp
also believes that Christians must embrace the fact that Christianity
has evolved into a world religion, and that most Christians today
live not in Europe or North America but in Africa, Asia, and Latin
America. "It's important to help Christians in the first world see
themselves as part of a worldwide religion, not simply a western
one," she says. Furthermore, she feels, in a global society, divinity educators must probe what it means to train Christian ministers
who are engaged internationally, who understand their religion as
one among many.
In
Chopp's view, religious leaders today must address public issues
in a cross-disciplinary fashion "because current questions are complex
and cannot be answered solely by religion or school or politics.
Genetic testing and engineering, for example, prompt deep, value-laden, ethical questions about what it means to be human, and require input
from many thinkers. I don't think scientists want to be the only
ones to answer them. Many scientists are desperately hungry for
theologians and ethicists to be involved in responding to those
questions."
While
Chopp acknowledges that America has always been a religious society,
she thinks it has entered, within the past ten or so years, a period
of particular religious curiosity. "Enlightenment thought predicted
that we would all wake up one day and religion would be gone," she
notes. "And that's not happened. The academy, after many years of
thinking that religion was what you learned in Sunday school, has
awakened to the incredible role of religion in people's lives and
around the world."
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"It's very
confusing to many Americans to know how to belong."
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This
spike of interest comes at a time when, the dean argues, "the moral
texture of society -- the fabric, in a sense, of how we organized
our lives and how we associated -- is undergoing immense turmoil
and change. Society is grasping, struggling to figure out how to
create its moral networks and fibers and how to live in communities.
It's very confusing to many Americans to know how to belong. We
are a very transient culture. We don't have firm, narrow, religious
traditions."
At
Yale, Chopp says, one of her top priorities will be to support teaching
and research with "a real eye toward building bridges" between the
Divinity School faculty and the faculties of Yale's other graduate
and professional schools. "I think YDS's physical distance from
some of the other professional schools, from the arts and sciences,
means that the faculty and students have to work extra hard to reach
out," she says. She is also open to the possibility of adding non-Christian
scholars to what is now an all-Christian faculty.
Some
members of the Yale community, despite durable evidence to the contrary,
still consider the Divinity School to be an artifact of another
age, with no central role in today's University. In their view,
a school tied to one religion seems narrow and out of place in the
multi-faith, multicultural
world of today.
Not
surprisingly, Chopp disagrees. In her view, if YDS were to abandon
its religious roots, the University would lose not only a vital
partner in a historical and spiritual dialogue, but also a crucial
perspective on its own traditions.
Chopp
points out that many theologians -- including Paul Tillich and former
YDS faculty member H. Richard Niebuhr -- have believed that truth
does not reside only in the past, and that Christian witness is
not simply a matter of following a prescribed set of practices,
texts, and traditions. "Tillich and Niebuhr represent what I like
about Yale," says the dean: "the belief that religion is a vital
part of human existence, and that it must incarnate itself in every
age."  |
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