Archive: Meeting of the Minds

By Michael Sigler

Evangelical scholars training to teach at UM seminaries gather at historic Shakertown

He went off to seminary and lost his faith.” Does it really happen the way this statement suggests? In most cases, probably not. But how about this statement: “When he went off to seminary he believed in Biblical Christianity … but not anymore!”

To many United Methodists, the second statement has a painfully familiar ring of truth about it. For in spite of signs of evangelical renewal in other sectors of our denomination, UM seminaries have for the most part remained bastions of theological liberalism. In spite of our church’s avowed commitment to theological pluralism, scholars with orthodox-evangelical beliefs have been largely frozen out of the teaching posts of our seminaries.

That may be changing though, thanks in part to a program that is helping train a supply of evangelical scholars to teach in UM seminaries and colleges. Since beginning in 1976, A Foundation for Theological Education (AFTE) has helped 12 evangelical UM students get their doctoral degrees. And 15 more candidates are now in the Ph.D. pipeline.

The financial support of such students represents the main way that AFTE is pursuing its goal: “to encourage United Methodist seminaries to be open and responsive to evangelical Christianity.”

AFTE funds 15 Ph.D. students at a time, at an annual cost of over $100,000. These “John Wesley Fellows” study in such prestigious schools as Yale, Cambridge, Oxford, Duke, Boston, and Princeton.

The results are beginning to be felt by United Methodism. AFTE scholars and students met last December at Shakertown, Kentucky for their annual “Christmas Conference,” a time of mutual encouragement and theological reflection. On hand were the presidents or deans of four United Methodist seminaries: Candler, St. Paul, Wesley, and Claremont. Said one dean at the conclusion of the conference: “This is one of the greatest things taking place in theological education in the United Methodist Church today.”

One of the other seminary chiefs told the John Wesley Fellows: “Something that excites me is the depth of your religious faith. I hope you will hold on to that.”

AFTE is an unusual approach to church renewal, but it makes sense, strategically. After all, its supporters point out, almost all the significant changes in Church history have been led by scholars and theologians—John Knox, Martin Luther, and John Wesley, to name a few.

The AFTE board, by the way, includes members of United Methodist “officialdom” such as Bishops Finis Crutchfield and Earl Hunt; the eminent Wesley scholar, Albert Outler; as well as long-time evangelical spokesman, Ed Robb. Outler has called AFTE “a grace-full sign of hope” for the church.

In addition to supporting the training of evangelical scholars, the foundation is working for renewal on several other fronts. AFTE teamed up with the Texas Annual Conference to endow a Chair of Wesley Studies at Perkins School of Theology. And AFTE has sponsored two public events at Notre Dame which brought together some of the outstanding minds of the Church to pool their thinking on critical issues facing Christianity today.

These two events have drawn together such leaders as church historians Martin Marty and Richard Lovelace, and theologians Carl F. H. Henry and Thomas Langford. AFTE is planning a third gathering of the minds, tentatively scheduled for 1987 on the subject, “What Constitutes the Essential United Methodist Doctrines?”

Still, grooming young evangelical scholars for tomorrow’s United Methodist Church remains at the top of AFTE’s agenda. Of the 12 John Wesley Fellows who have received doctorates, 9 now have teaching positions. So far, only two are teaching in official UM institutions, including one AFTE scholar at Duke Divinity School and another at the denomination’s Westmar College. Others are teaching at non-UM seminaries such as Yale, Ashland, and Asbury, and at colleges that include Houghton and New College, Berkeley.

Placing AFTE scholars in the UM schools has been slow going. But insiders see signs of accelerated progress ahead.

They note that at least two other UM seminaries are currently considering AFTE graduates for teaching posts. And the soon-to-come retirement of a generation of UM seminary professors, as well as a reinvigorated emphasis on Wesley studies in the seminaries, both bode well for future AFTE appointments.

Meanwhile, United Methodists across the church long for the day when they can send their ministerial candidates to UM seminaries and know they will receive something other than a one-sidedly liberal theological education.