Chicago Theological Seminary

History

Unintimidated by controversy, Chicago Theological Seminary has a record of setting trends in American faith life and leadership for more than a century.

In the 1850s and 1860s, CTS founder Stephen Peet was a leader in a new generation of 19th-century American abolitionists no longer content to wait for the end of slavery nor to tolerate those who defended it. Under his leadership, the seminary was active in the Underground Railroad and was a leading voice in the Christian Abolitionism movement.

The first CTS curriculum in 1855 was provided for students among congregations and missions across the Midwest. Students were encouraged to learn by direct experience the facts of community life and church needs in an experimental culture. Although such a practice was unknown at that time, this curriculum was the beginning of the first field education component introduced into seminary education. Field education is now a part of every accredited professional theological degree program.

Twentieth century

Because of a conviction that training for ministry needed to combine the study of Christian faith and the world of secular knowledge and action, during President Ozora Davis' tenure in 1900s, CTS moved to the vicinity of the University of Chicago. Under Ozora Davis' leadership the buildings of the seminary were financed and constructed, and the relationship with the University of Chicago established.

After recognizing Florence Fensham with the first American seminary degree awarded to a woman, Chicago Theological Seminary founded the Congregational Training School for Women in 1909 to provide Congregational women with advanced educational training. The school continued its mission until it was subsumed into the Chicago Theological Seminary in 1926. Florence Fensham was the school's first dean, succeeded by Agnes M. Taylor and Margaret M. Taylor after Dean Fensham died unexpectedly in 1912. The Chicago Theological Seminary allow full acceptance of women to its programs in 1926, thereby eliminating the need for a separate institution for women.

In 1892, CTS invited Graham Taylor, a professor of theology at Hartford Theological Seminary in Connecticut who had shown success in working with the poor, to establish the United States' first Department of Christian Sociology at CTS. Taylor worked closely with leading Chicago activist Jane Addams, founder of Hull House, an American settlement house. Taylor established the Chicago Commons settlement house in Chicago's Fulton Market neighborhood, where with the help of CTS students he brought recreational clubs, classes, a day nursery, and a kindergarten to the working poor. The house had 25 residents and was open to all ethnic groups and religious denominations. Pressed for space, the Chicago Commons moved a few blocks north to the building formerly occupied by the Chicago Congregational Tabernacle, where Taylor expanded the courses offered into the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, which later became the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration.

In the 1920s, Anton Boisen, a pioneer in the hospital chaplaincy movement and founder of the Council for the Clinical Training of Theological Students, began lecturing every fall quarter in the social ethics department of CTS. In 1932, he became chaplain of Elgin State Hospital (now Elgin Mental Health Center) and founded a Chicago arm of the Council for the Clinical Training of Theological Students. His work to help theological students better understand and minister to physically, mentally, and emotionally ill people ultimately led to the founding of the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education. Boisen's ashes are interred in the CTS cloisters.

Twenty-first century

In 2006, CTS launched the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) Religious Studies Center (Queer Center), a grant-funded research program and resource for activists seeking to move toward greater justice and to encourage new conversations. CTS is also home to the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Religious Archives Network, and the seminary's Heyward Boswell Society for LGBTQ people and allies engages students across campus in social activities. CTS also offers an annual Gilberto Castaneda scholarship award for outstanding GLBT students. CTS has graduated some of the nation's first transgender ministers and has many openly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students, staff, and faculty. Several of the seminary's faculty members have published books and articles regarding religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity. The United Church of Christ Coalition for GLBT Concerns lists Chicago Theological Seminary as an officially "Open and Affirming" institution that is especially welcoming to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex concerns.

In 2007, CTS established the Center for the Study of Black Faith and Life (CSBFL), becoming the first denominational seminary to have a center devoted to engaging the larger Black Faith community through inclusivity of a variety of religions. CSBFL sponsors the annual C. Shelby Rooks lecture, which brings outstanding black theologians, ministers, activists, and non-profit leaders to campus.

In 2009, CTS became the first free-standing Protestant seminary to endow a faculty chair in Jewish studies, with the hope of advancing interfaith engagement and multi-faith education. The next year, CTS founded the Center for Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Studies (JCIS), the first American program of its kind based in a free-standing theological seminary. This center offers resources to students who concentrate in theology, ethics, and human sciences that enable scholars to experientially and theoretically integrate Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theology with these topics. In 2017, CTS established the InterReligious Institute (IRI), which stands counter to the idea that Christianity is the "normal" religious position for Americans and seeks to create space in the public square for people of other religions and for people with no religion. IRI does this by providing ongoing events, resources, and training materials for the public.

In 2019, CTS began a partnership with Bayan Claremont to provide both a graduate certificate and an accredited Master of Divinity in Islamic Chaplaincy at the seminary's Hyde Park campus.

Notable firsts

CTS is the oldest institution of higher education in Chicago.

CTS faculty and students participated in the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad prior to the Civil War.

First seminary to introduce field education into a seminary curriculum in the US.

First to create a distinct Department of Christian Sociology in an American theological school.

First seminary to award a degree in divinity to a woman in the US. (Florence Fensham, 1902).

Faculty and students instrumental in founding the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE) in 1930.

First seminary in the US to award Martin Luther King Jr. an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree for his activism in the civil rights movement.

First African American to lead a predominantly white theological school (C. Shelby Rooks, 1974–1984).

First free-standing Protestant seminary to endow a chair in Jewish Studies, advancing interfaith engagement and multi-faith education.

Campus

The original buildings were designed by Herbert Riddle and built between 1923 and 1928. Riddle was the architect for Mather Tower in the Loop, as well as many buildings in New York. The original CTS building complex included stained glass windows, medieval style groin vaulting, furniture, lighting fixtures, ceramic ornament and tile work, and architectural relics—all of the highest quality of the day.

New building

The seminary, which was for decades located at 5757 South University Avenue in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, adjacent to the University of Chicago, during the 2011/2012 academic year moved to 1407 East 60th Street, also in Hyde Park. The building designed by Riddle that had served as a seminary for decades became home to the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago and the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics.

Construction of the new $30 million CTS facility was a partnership between the University of Chicago and the Chicago Theological Seminary. In May 2008, the University of Chicago Board of Trustees Executive Committee authorized the purchase of two CTS buildings and an adjacent parking lot. Additionally, the University of Chicago agreed to construct a new seminary building at 60th Street and Dorchester Avenue. The seminary's new building, designed by Nagle Hartray Architecture, is located at 1407 E. 60th Street and is LEED Gold-certified and fully ADA accessible. By 2013, the building project had acquired numerous private and public funds.

Lapp Learning Commons Library

The Robinson & Janet Lapp Learning Commons, centrally located on the third floor of CTS's new building, is a working theological collection of more than 45,000 volumes. The library also subscribes to more than 700 periodicals and runs multiple research database platforms. Special holdings include the Boisen Collection in psychology and personality science, and the Campbell Morgan Collection named for G. Campbell Morgan, containing his sermons, writings, books, newspaper clips, lecture notes, photographs, and other archival materials. The Commons is also home to a number of rare books, including a 1670 first quarto edition of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan published in London by Johannem Tomsoni. The collection is strong in the theological subject areas of Bible, Church history, and theology. Particular fields of note also include African American religion and spirituality, women's studies, LGBT/queer studies, and Jewish and Christian studies.

Besides the Lapp Learning Commons, CTS students also have access to the University of Chicago Library system, the 11th largest library collection in the United States. CTS students and faculty can use this resource in person.

Academics

Accreditation and ordination

The seminary is accredited by the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada and the Higher Learning Commission.

In addition to being a seminary of the United Church of Christ, it offers students coursework necessary to be ordained by the Metropolitan Community Church.

Degrees

Master of Divinity (M.Div.)

Masters of Arts

Master of Sacred Theology (S.T.M.)

Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.)

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Notable people

Presidents

Franklin Fisk (1888–1901), one of the most widely known theologians and educators of the West, according to The New York Times, Yale University alumnus and valedictorian, and first president of Chicago Theological Seminary.

Joseph H. George (1901–1906)

Graham Taylor, interim (1906–1908)

Ozora Stearns Davis (1909–1929), prominent Congregational minister, hymn writer, long-time president of CTS, and biographer of his friend journalist Victor Freemont Lawson.

Carl S. Patton, interim (1928–1930)

Albert W. Palmer (1930–1946), Social Gospel reformer, peace activist, pastor

Arthur Cushman McGiffert, Jr. (1946–1959), instructor, Fulbright scholar, professor, and church historian

Howard Schomer (1959–1966), conscientious objector, United Nations Commission on Human Rights aide, civil rights activist, scholar, drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and editor-at-large for Christian Century.

Edward Manthei (1967–1971)

Thomas Campbell (1971–1973), member of the National Inter-religious Task Force on Soviet Jewry, The American Jewish Committee

Victor Obenhaus, interim (1973–1974) Union Theological Seminary (Manhattan) alumni, author, professor of Christian ethics, National Council of Churches leader, prison reform advocate.

C. Shelby Rooks (1974–1984), Scholar, lecturer, administrator, and UCC leader

Betty Reneker, interim (1984), Philanthropist, president of Children's Home and Aid Society of Illinois, and president of the National Fellowship of Congregational Christian Women.

Notable former faculty

Clarence Beckwith—Author, minister, and professor at CTS

Anton Boisen—Leading figure in the hospital chaplaincy and clinical pastoral education movements.

Fred Eastman—Theologist, professor, playwright, author, and journalist; chair of dept. of religious drama and literature at CTS (1926–1952)

Clara E. Powell—First female professor at CTS, and English teacher.

Andre LaCocque—Founder of The Center of Jewish-Christian Studies & Professor of Hebrew Scriptures (1969–1999), Theologian, scholar, author and co-author of Thinking Biblically with philosopher Paul Ricoeur

G. Campbell Morgan—British evangelist, preacher and a leading Bible scholar (D.D., 1902)

Graham Taylor—Minister, social reformer, educator and founder of Chicago Commons Settlement House which later became the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration.

Rabbi Herman Schaalman—Activist, rabbi, scholar, son of Dachau concentration camp survivor, rabbi emeritus of Congregation Emanuel, past president of the Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago, honoree of the Herman Schaalman Chair of Jewish Studies at Chicago Theological Seminary.

Yoshio Fukuyama—Theologian and religious pioneer, father of Francis Fukuyama

Wilhelm Pauck—German-American church historian and historical theologian in the field of Reformation studies

Theodore W. Jennings, Jr.—Professor of Biblical and Constructive Theology

Notable current faculty

Ken Stone—Professor of Bible, Culture and Hermeneutics

John H. Thomas—Visiting Professor in Church Ministries

Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite—author, former CTS president, syndicated columnist, ordained minister, activist, theologian, and translator of the Bible

Rachel Mikva—Rabbi Herman E. Schaalman Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, director of the Center for Jewish, Christian and Islamic Studies

Rami Nashashibi—community organizer and American Muslim activist who co-founded and continues to serve as the executive director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN)

Notable alumni

Jesse Jackson Sr.—American civil rights activist, politician, and Baptist minister. (M.Div., 2000)

John W. de Gruchy—Anti-Apartheid leader, Karl Barth Prize award recipient, former Robert Selby Taylor Professor of Christian Studies at University of Cape Town (South Africa), and an Extraordinary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch.

Jeremiah Wright, Jr.—Pastor Emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ, and black liberation theologian. (1982, D.D.)

G. Campbell Morgan—British evangelist, preacher and a leading Bible scholar (D.D., 1902)

Richard A. Jensen—American theologian, author, and Carlson Professor of Homiletics Emeritus at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

Abraham Kahikina Akaka—American clergyman (1955)

Philo Carpenter—Illinois' first pharmacist, managing director of the Chicago Bible Society, abolitionist, school board member, board of health member, organizer of the Relief and Aid Society, and co-organizer of American Anti-Slavery Society.

Otis Moss III—Pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ (D.Min., 2012)

Jared Maurice Arter—Former slave, Virginia school superintendent, author. (B.D.)

Dean Drayton—Geophysicist, Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) minister and president, United Theological College lecturer, author, and aboriginal advocate. (Ph.D.)

Daniel Day Williams—Process theologian, professor, and author. He served on the joint faculty of the University of Chicago and the Chicago Theological Seminary, and later at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. (D.D., 1966)