wfn.org | Seminaries must address diversity in new millennium, speaker says

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Oct. 29, 1999   News media contact: Linda Green·(615)742-5470·Nashville,
Tenn. 10-30-71BP{577}

NOTE: Photographs are available with this story.

By United Methodist News Service

Theological education must meet the challenge of embracing diversity in the
next millennium and emphasize the responsibility that each person has for
the next, a prominent African-American scholar said.

"The challenge for theological education is not only for us to be together
in the church and to live in a way that reflects the fact that we are
related to each other, but also to live in a manner that reflects our
responsibility for each other," said the Rev. Linda E. Thomas, a professor
at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Ill.

She spoke to more than 80 participants who gathered in Atlanta for an Oct.
15-17 consultation celebrating the vision, goals, and accomplishments of the
Women of Color Scholarship (WOC) and Mentoring Program.

Thomas, an associate professor of theology and anthropology and director for
the Center of the Church in the Black Experience, set the tone for the
consultation with her keynote address, "Into the New Millennium: The Impact
of the Academy on the Church."  

She also cautioned that addressing the challenge would be difficult because
of local and global differences among people. The world today is filled with
varieties of societies that are constantly changing, she noted.

Thomas said the vast majority of seminaries and theological schools have not
acknowledged that diversity is a component to the rounding of social life
nor have they creatively handled issues of diversity. 

For Thomas, diversity encompasses race, gender, class, sexual orientation,
age - categories that have been used to marginalize particular groups of
people.

"Since the world finds its way into the seminaries, schools of theology,
divinity schools and churches through us, we must deal with this challenge
in the new millennium," she said.

Both the church and theological education have been driven by a history
based on dominance and subordinance, she said. In the new millennium, she
said, theological education must take into account the histories of diverse
groups of people and discover how those differences can be honored.

"The task of theological education and Christian ministry in the next
millennium is to create avenues for justice to recast imbalances," she said.
"Even as histories have been denied, theological education must advance
opportunities for structural power to be responsive to questions and to
exhibit adaptability, rather than positions that are restricted and
self-protective."

Regardless of whether theological education is examined from a global or
North American viewpoint, Thomas said, "we must deal with the vast
assortments of human cultures and the enormous depth that a distinct way of
life has as it is related to communication, local issues, and to the
monetary, political and spiritual aspects of life." 

As Thomas talked about diversity, she reflected on her journey in search of
a seminary committed to preparing men and women to be "unabashedly
Christian," that possessed an environment that inspired both creative and
critical reasoning, that had a passion for "prophetic interaction" and that
was committed to diversity.

This meant that in addition to white men on the faculty, there also would be
scholars of color and white women on the faculty, and the school would have
a racially diverse study body, she said. Diversity was important, she said,
because her undergraduate studies did not include one course with or about a
person of color. 

"Realizing that my education was not fully rounded and that I had not had
any scholarly role models who looked like me, I wanted my next educational
venture to reflect diversity in an integrated manner," she said.

Not finding any United Methodist seminary meeting her criteria in 1978,
Thomas choose to attend Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The
school had five African-American men who were published, at least four white
women who were respected scholars and an Asian man who came from Japan to
teach at the seminary.

The academy impacted the church through her ministry at two different United
Methodist congregations, one inner city and the other predominantly white,
she said. She described how diversity affirms people, leads to
transformation and brings forth God's kingdom, which is the ultimate goal of
the Women of Color Scholarship and Mentoring Program.

The WOC program was initiated by the United Methodist Board of Higher
Education and Ministry in 1989. A group of professional women employed at
church-related seminaries and participants at a 1987 black clergywomen's
consultation had expressed concern about the lack of women of color on
seminary faculties.

The WOC initiative's mission is to place women of color in faculty positions
at all 13 United Methodist-related seminaries. The program provides up to
$10,000 per year in scholarships to such women who are doctoral degree
candidates, and it engages in regular mentoring. 

The program also seeks to heighten denominational awareness of the need for
ethnic women in theological education, and it encourages United Methodist
women of color to consider seminary careers.

Currently, six of the eight WOC graduates are teaching at United Methodist
seminaries. The program is sponsored by the Office of Loans and Scholarships
and the Division of Ordained Ministry of the Board of Higher Education and
Ministry, based in Nashville, Tenn.  

The WOC consultation celebrated the program's 10 years by highlighting the
theological and academic work of its graduates and affirming the changes
brought to theological education in the United Methodist Church and beyond.

Thomas, also one of the program's first graduates, discussed the aspects of
theological education that could be carried from the second millennium into
the third. 

As the new millennium approaches, Thomas said church leaders and
anthropologists will continue to ask the age-old questions, "How do we live
with each other" and "What do we do?"  Christians would ask these questions
"because living together is the central tenet of the gospel and because it
is 'theologically correct' for diverse people to be able to be together in
the church," she said.

A significant theological education in the new millennium will "embrace
diversity" and will "demonstrate in its practices that we are not solely
bound by our own traditions or our own unreflective views of human nature,
and that we can and must learn to appreciate the validity of others' ways of
viewing Christianity in general," she noted.

Theological education in the third millennium must recognize that knowledge
is contextual, local and diverse, and that it is not possible to "speak one
all encompassing truth," Thomas said.

As she discussed the WOC program, she said it was the result of women
imagining a change in their lives, in the life of the academy and in
theological education. When the founders, who are the daughters of many
women who did not have access to higher education, imagined a productive and
successful program that would graduate women of color, they dreamed into
reality a world that celebrates, affirms and is transforming theological
education, she said.

Directly challenging the leaders of the United Methodist seminaries today,
she asked that they dare to believe in the "radical nature" of having women
of color on their faculties and that they create opportunities for those
faculty members to enhance the quality of education.

During the consultation, eight members of the original design team of the
WOC Scholarship and Mentoring program were honored.

The consultation also provided opportunities for leading United Methodist
women of color who are scholars to address the question: How will you as a
woman of color use your discipline to impact the polity or theology of the
United Methodist Church?

Six scholars presented papers. The presenters were: the Rev. Rosetta Ross,
professor at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, New Brighton,
Minn.; the Rev. Nam-Soon Kang, professor of Methodist Theological School in
Seoul, Korea; the Rev. Dianne Stewart, a professor at College of the Holy
Cross, Worchester, Mass.; the Rev. Tumani Mutasa-Nyajeki, a faculty member
at Gammon Theological Seminary; the Rev. Youtha Hardman-Cromwell, a faculty
member at Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington; and the Rev. Ai Ra Kim, a
faculty member at United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio. 

During a panel discussion, participants addressed key questions concerning
the needs that face both the academy and the church, and how women of color
can be part of addressing those issues.

Panelists included the Rev. Grant Hagiya, senior pastor of Centenary United
Methodist
Church, Los Angeles; Bishop William Dew, Phoenix; the Rev. Jacquelyn Grant,
Callaway Professor of Systematic Theology at the Interdenominational
Theological Center, Atlanta; Rita Nakashima Brock, director of the Mary
Ingraham Bunting Institute, Cambridge, Mass.; James Thomas, retired bishop,
Atlanta; the Rev. Roger Ireson, top executive at the Board of Higher
Education and Ministry; and the Rev. Susan Henry-Crowe, dean of the chapel
and religious life at Emory University, Atlanta.

"There has been a certain ambivalence within the church regarding these
scholars as they pursue their academic degrees as well as their call to
ordained ministry," said Angella Current, executive director of the
denomination's Office of Loans and Scholarships and one of the founders of
the WOC program.

"May it not be said that the church is not able to meet the challenges of
our time," said Bishop Leontine T.C. Kelly of San Mateo, Calif., while
lamenting the lack of certainty and effective leadership in the church. "God
has refined your gold and has called you to interpret the living Word
wherever you are." 

# # #

Hendrik Pieterse, editor of the scholarly journal Quarterly Review,
contributed to this story.

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
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