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April 3, 1997
Episcopal News Service
Jim Solheim, Director
212-922-5385
ens@ecunet.org

97-1729
Episcopal seminaries attend to their students' spirits

by Anne McConney
      (ENS) Episcopal seminaries, forced to reconsider their purposes
in the face of dwindling resources and a shrinking pool of potential
students, confront increasingly the need to serve both head and soul.
      Is a seminary simply a place to turn out leaders primed with the
latest knowledge in theological studies and biblical interpretation? Is it a
training ground for conducting elegant Anglican liturgies or for preaching
memorable sermons?
      Or is it all these, and more--a place for nurturing the spiritual
lives of those from whom others will soon seek guidance?
      While the 11 Episcopal seminaries vary in their approaches, each
is seeking to balance the rich traditions of Christian thought and spiritual
experience as a way to enrich the spiritual lives of its students.

Forming Christian community
      Interviews with seminary deans point to a common concern with
the formation of Christian community. 
      "There's a burden on the seminaries to do this," said Dean
William Rankin of Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. "We have to work in community. If we are only looking
for our own consummation, then it's bogus. Being fully human is learned
in community. We have to be oriented to each other as well as to the
divine."
      Several deans compared seminary life to that of a "small but very
intense" parish.  
      "We experience the full range of life here," said Dean Gary Kriss
of Nashotah House in Wisconsin. "Nashotah is like a parish in that it
involves the whole community--students, faculty, staff and all their
families. We have all the stresses and all the good events. It's like a little
village."
      The Rev. Arthur Holder, academic dean and professor of
Christian spirituality at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP)
in Berkeley, California, agrees--and went on to point out that "the nature
of seminary students is changing." The time is over when a seminary was
filled with 20-year-old males, he said. "Now we're no longer
homogeneous and no longer residential--over half of our students live off
campus. Our approach to community has to recognize that."
      One result, he said, has been a "realization that a seminary is
more like a parish than a monastic community." CDSP has revamped its
worship schedule accordingly, placing its major Eucharist in the middle
of the day. "Like a parish, we come together from many places and
many interests to worship as a community."

Community out of diversity
      Several seminaries, including Bexley Hall, Berkeley Divinity
School at Yale and CDSP, are affiliated with multi-denominational
institutions, and for them the concept of community includes not only the
Anglican tradition but many others.
      At Bexley Hall in Rochester, New York, for example, a weekly
prayer group is open to both Episcopalians and non-Episcopalians. "And
it's really popular," said acting Dean John Kevern. "It's extremely well
attended and growing."
      All agreed that spirituality and community life must be built on
the firm ground of private prayer and corporate worship. For Bishop
Craig Anderson, dean and president of General Seminary in New York,
there are four "pillars" of the spiritual life. "The first is dedication to a
life of meditation and prayer in which the student is surrounded by--
immersed in--the spiritual life of the community. The second is education
in tradition while living that tradition."
      A third "is more subtle," he said. "Many students come to
seminary with preconceived ideas. We try to help them be open to
change, open to the leading of God, open to new ideas. And, of course,
the last is transformation. We like to think they take that with them."
      At Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge,
Pennsylvania, students and faculty are both asked to commit themselves
to a covenant that, according to Dean Peter Moore, includes "private
daily devotions, chapel attendance, New Testament sexual standards and
the completion of scholarly assignments."
      Some seminaries require attendance at daily services, while
others, where students may not be on campus every day, do not. At most
seminaries students are also expected to worship at a church of their
choice each Sunday.
      "Contrary to popular belief," said Kriss, "Nashotah House
students are not monochromatic. We expect them to find a parish that fits
their style."

Variety in worship
      "At Seabury-Western, we do all forms of worship in the course of
a year--Rite 1, Rite 2 and alternative services in all their variations," said
the Rev. Meredith Potter, director of academic affairs at the seminary in
Evanston, Illinois. "The idea is that, wherever our students may go,
they'll be able to say, `I worshiped in this mode before' and be
comfortable with it."
      Since part of a Seabury-Western seminarian's experience must
include learning to lead worship, each student there is assigned to a
"worship team" to plan services and serve in every capacity except
celebrant. Potter recalls her first celebration at the seminary and how
carefully it was planned. 
      "The worship team leader called on me to discuss the service and
later we met with the full team. Before the service there was a walk-
through and the leader explained the intentionality of the service and the
mood we were trying to set. And afterward we had a feedback session
with a group--faculty, students, spouses--who had attended the service."
      Such careful planning, such elegant balancing of all phases of the
spiritual life, is not easy, yet the church's seminaries consider it to be
their mandate. "In the society we live in today," said Bexley Hall's
Kevern, "we're bedeviled by a disjunction between academic theology
and prayer."
      Such disjunction, he believes, can hamper both study and
spirituality. "The two have to be integrated. Prayer gives rise to theology
and theology gives rise to prayer. When you have both, each one gets
progressively deepened," he said. "After all, that's what theology is--the
prayer of the Christian community over 2,000 years as it reflects on
itself."

Focus on spiritual formation
      Noting that it is possible to learn a great deal of academic theory
about spirituality and still have little personal understanding of it,
Anderson stressed that General Seminary emphasizes "formation and not
education." At General, "we conform life to a pattern," he said. "We
live a life of prayer; the whole day is framed by prayer."
      Amid the fragmentation and brittle spiritual searching of modern
life, it is not surprising that the seminaries see themselves as safe harbors
of spirituality. But it was not always so.
      Only in the past decade has theological education, in all
denominations, begun to move from standardized courses in theological
history and biblical interpretation to an examination of the spiritual
realities behind them.
      "When I was in seminary," recalled Dean Philip Turner of
Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, "some of us were interested in learning
about prayer, and we were told, `Go to chapel.' Later I met missionaries
from the Church of England, where they do much more spiritual
formation, and I began to think."
      His thoughts began to bear fruit with the formation of the Annand
Center for Spiritual Growth at Berkeley, named to honor Dean James
Annand, Turner's predecessor, who had also dreamed of a program that
would provide spiritual direction, study and mentoring, as well as
workshops, forums and other special events, to the Berkeley-Yale
community.

Finding spiritual directors
      Though the Annand Program is in many ways breaking new
ground, it is far from alone in the blossoming renewal of interest in
spirituality. Nearly all seminaries encourage their students to have
spiritual directors. ("It's not required, but it's the norm," said General's
Anderson.)
      Some, such as Nashotah House, Virginia Theological Seminary in
Alexandria and the School of Theology at the University of the South in
Sewanee, Tennessee, bring in experienced spiritual advisers at their own
expense. At some seminaries, such as Trinity, faculty members volunteer
their time as spiritual directors, while others, believing such an
arrangement may inhibit necessary openness, maintain rosters of qualified
directors.
      All will help students find a director "if they ask," said Kevern.
"We don't push them. We've found the students are very pro-active
about finding a director for themselves."
      Spirituality is also finding its way into the formal academic
curriculum. "Academics and prayer go together," said Dean Durstan
McDonald of the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas.
      "I'm increasingly convinced we need a curricular base," said
Turner. Berkeley students planning on ordination, he said, are required
to complete three classes in spirituality--one on the basic ethos of the
church, another focused on discernment of calling and a third in study of
the spiritual classics of the Western tradition. Other seminaries have
similar requirements.
      At Virginia, Bishop Mark Dyer serves as both director of spiritual
formation and as professor of systematic theology. "I felt it was
important to do both," he said. "Spirituality has to be considered on the
same high level as any other academic discipline. Spiritual formation is
essential to doing theology at the highest level."

Spirituality as grounding
      Despite the growing emphasis on spirituality, seminaries and
students do not inhabit some rarified theological stratosphere; all are
much aware of the dissensions and pressures with which they must deal.
      "Spirituality is the thing that will sustain us," said Dean Guy
Lytle at Sewanee. "It's important that everyone keep a strong spiritual
life while we have what are often very divisive discussions," he said.
"What I want to see for Sewanee is to have everybody--liberals,
conservatives, evangelicals, Anglo-Catholics--have honest, passionate
debates and then all go into Eucharist together."
      It is this realization that spirituality is intense and prophetic and
quarried from the rough stone of ordinary life that may be the greatest
strength of the seminaries in our time.
      "We're so individualistic today we tend to think only of private
prayer," said McDonald. "But spirituality is your whole life. Part of
spiritual formation is juggling family and schedules and wrestling with
time. The way you do academic work is spiritual."
      "We're working toward an awareness that all we do is spiritual,"
said Dyer. "Spirituality isn't an adjunct at Virginia--it's everything we
do."

--The Rev. Anne McConney of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, is a columnist
for Episcopal Life and former editor of the Rio Grande Episcopalian.