Selling the Andover Newton Divinity Campus and Merging. A Warning to Lutherans?

The Day Mission Library at Yale Divinity School.

https://yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/4323-a-marriage-at-the-divinity-school?page=1#comments

In 1807, while president of Yale, Timothy Dwight helped found the nation’s first graduate theological seminary—in Andover, Massachusetts. “He was so focused on making us a seminary that he didn’t live to see one at Yale,” says Sarah Birmingham Drummond ’93, dean of faculty and vice president for academic affairs at the Andover Newton Theological School. It was not until 1822 that Yale founded its own divinity school.

More than 200 years later, Andover Newton and Yale Divinity School (YDS) are looking to join forces. ..

Rev. Richard Myers, 3:31pm July 17 2016 |  Flag as inappropriate

I graduated from Andover Newton in 1969. I attended because it has an historic American Baptist Churches connection, Newton, and because of its strength in clinical pastoral education. The Baptist connection is lost here. I do not know of the CPE work that was pioneered at Andover Newton and has become a requirement across the country. I am unhappy with the decision as it seemed to have been made hastily without much consultation with the alums. The vital connection the school had with many churches in Boston and places north will be lost. Central Baptist Theological Seminary found other ways of continuing ministry while selling its campus, and Colgate Rochester Divinity School is maintaining its ministry in Rochester, NY., though planning to sell its campus.

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All three classes of Bethany Lutheran Seminary - in one pose.
They would fit in my Lincoln Town Car,
which cost a lot less than their Schoolhouse Built on a Bluff.

GJ - Mequon, Mankato, St. Louis, Ft. Wayne... What do these WELS-ELS-LCMS seminaries have in common?

Answer - all four wasted an enormous amount of money on their buildings, letting the cost of seminary education go through the roof and into the clouds. Meanwhile, seminary education went modular and these grand temples of ego were no longer needed - as if they ever were.

At Yale, which costs as much as a Missouri Synod MDiv, the degree is worth something, good for many professional jobs besides being a pastor. In the synodical school, the degree is not even good for a divine call. If the graduate of a synodical school happens to get a call, the authorities may drive him out for questioning their agenda.

ELCA has jumped on the bandwagon to sell and merge their surplus seminary campuses.

Few want to attend a seminary located in Mordor.