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| The Day Mission Library at Yale Divinity is considered one of the most beautiful libraries in America. The RSV was plotted next door in the main library of YDS. |
Andover-Newton, a merged liberal seminary founded in 1807, will merge with Yale Divinity School, which amalgamated with the Episcopal seminary in New Haven. Originally, Andover was formed as a Calvinist school, splitting with Harvard, which was becoming loosey-goosey.
Andover-Newton has endowments and property equity but very few students - 219 on Wiki, but probably an exaggeration. The school is affiliated with the almost-Unitarian United Church of Christ and the equally apostate American (aka Northern aka Social Gospel) Baptists.
The American Baptists are easily distinguished from the Southern Baaabtists by the way they pronounce their affiliation. Baaabtists do not consider this funny.
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| Sterling Library at Yale is breath-taking. |
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| The interior of Sterling is equally impressive. |
Light and Verity -
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. The schools announced in May that they are exploring a plan in which Andover Newton would come to Yale as an affiliated institution. In the first phase, beginning this fall, four Andover Newton professors will join YDS as visiting faculty. If it all works out, a more permanent arrangement would begin in the fall of 2017, with “Andover Newton at Yale” becoming a part of YDS. Six Andover Newton faculty, staff, and administrators would move to Yale, offering courses and support for students who want to be ministers in one of several Protestant denominations.
The product of a 1965 merger of the Andover Theological Seminary (the school Timothy Dwight helped found) and the Newton Theological Institution, Andover Newton trains ministers for service in denominations with congregational polity—that is, their local churches are largely autonomous. It has formal relationships with the United Church of Christ and the American Baptist Church and also trains ministers in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. It has 12 faculty and 175 students on its 20-acre campus in Newton, Massachusetts. If the plan goes forward, most current Andover Newton students would finish their education in Massachusetts over the next two years.
Like most mainline Protestant seminaries, Andover Newton is facing an existential crisis in an age of religious disaffiliation. Some of its peers have closed or merged with larger institutions, and Andover Newton sees an affiliation with Yale as a way to continue its primary mission. “We have a beautiful campus here, but so much of our financial resources go into maintaining it,” says Drummond. “Selling it was already an inevitability.”Administrators say the relationship of the seminary to YDS would be similar to that of the Berkeley Divinity School, a formerly freestanding Episcopal seminary that became part of Yale in 1971. In that arrangement, YDS students interested in Episcopal priesthood affiliate with Berkeley, take specialized courses, and earn a diploma from Berkeley in addition to their Yale degree. YDS maintains faculty slots for professors with expertise in Episcopal theology and polity.
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| A silversmith funded Marquand Chapel. |
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| Newton began next door to Andover, and Andover proves the old adage - "Young Calvinist, Old Unitarian." |
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| Stan Hauerwas wrote that everyone in Texas is a Babtist - even the Methodists are Babtists. |
