When a denomination establishes and funds a seminary, it is not unreasonable to expect that institution to uphold, or at least not directly undermine, the beliefs of its sponsoring denomination. Earlier this year, we reported that one official seminary of the United Methodist Church, Iliff School of Theology, has embraced and promoted both neo-pagan and Unitarian Universalist religiosity.
A wider review reveals that a strong majority of the other thirteen official United Methodist seminaries in the United States, generously subsidized by apportionments taken from congregations, also have given themselves over to similar trends in various ways and to different extents, openly teaching and/or promoting Unitarian Universalism.
The Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) is essentially a post-Christian religion, with historical roots in denying the divinity of Jesus Christ and believing in the universal salvation of all people, and which today is best known for its relativistic attitude of viewing all religions as equally valid. And yet, numerous UMC-funded seminaries have intentionally developed programming and coursework whose sole purpose is to prepare ministers to maintain, lead, and promote the alternative religion of Unitarian Universalism.
This is evident from the website of the Boston University School of Theology (BU-STH), which features a page promoting its own Unitarian Universalist Community of Learning (UUCL). Developed in direct coordination with the UUA, the UUCL’s explicit “mission is to form a community of students, faculty, and staff dedicated to nurturing and preparing Unitarian Universalist students for future leadership and service in and through the church.”
This UMC seminary’s website even declares, “STH is committed to hiring faculty and offering courses that will help students meet all course requirements for ordination in the UU tradition,” touting “UU History, UU Polity, and other courses as identified and/or developed in collaboration with UU leaders.”
BU-STH’s program provides students interested in the UUCL with guidance from a UU mentor, the Rev. Dr. Wendy von Courter. Furthermore, the website adds, “other area UU ministers will provide mentoring support,” thus strengthening the UU network at the seminary.
Courter, however, is hardly the only non-Christian mentor at STH. Indeed, students could be paired with the likes of Steph Braman, a member of the “STH Alumni Mentoring Network” whose bio mentions “her partner” and whose studies at the seminary focused on building “deep, meaningful community from a humanist perspective,” and “often centered on non-Christian theologies, multiculturalism, interfaith dialogue, and sociological perspectives.”
Marsh Chapel, the worship center on campus, is supposed to be “rooted in the United Methodist tradition,” but featured UUA President Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray in an official preaching capacity in 2019.
Unfortunately, Boston University’s School of Theology is not unique. The Methodist Theological School in Ohio (MTSO) is similarly committed to working with the UUA to equip up-and-coming UU ministers.
This UMC seminary even has an entire Unitarian Universalist House of Studies, which “serves degree-seeking MTSO students and provides hybrid and intensive classes for UU students who are preparing at other seminaries.” The website describes MTSO as being “a perfect seminary setting for preparation to serve within the Unitarian Universalist Association,” due to its “progressive approach to issues of social justice, race, gender, sexuality and ecotheology.”
The UMC school is apparently so devoted to the advancement of Unitarian Universalism that “UU students pursuing a Master of Divinity degree can meet all of their requirements for ministerial preparation at MTSO. The school’s wealth of course offerings allows the UU House of Studies to focus on developing courses and experiences that provide the UU supplement to an already sound and broad educational experience.”
MTSO also has a faculty member dedicated to the success of this program, Dr. Susan Ritchie, a minister at North Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Lewis Center, Ohio. Notably, Ritchie’s own faculty page notes that she earned her M.Div. at MTSO in 1995, suggesting the UMC seminary’s friendliness to Unitarian Universalism has been an ongoing reality for longer than suspected. She was also invited to preach in the student chapel last year.
Furthermore, MTSO offers a Unitarian Universalist Studies Specialization, intended “for either Unitarian Universalist religious leadership or advanced academic studies in a Unitarian Universalist-related field to document their thorough and deep engagement with the essentials of Unitarian Universalist identity.”
Like BU-STH and MTSO, the UMC’s Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. is also committed to preparing Unitarian Universalist ordinands. To this end, it has repeatedly offered courses in UU history, polity, and theology for many years.
As its latest course catalogue states (on page 102): “Wesley has frequently provided specific courses required of other mainline denominations besides The United Methodist Church. History, polity, and theology courses for other denominations are usually offered on a regular cycle. Polity courses and other independent directed studies are available for students from the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), United Church of Christ, Presbyterian Church (USA), Baptist Church, and the Unitarian Universalist Association. Theology courses in the Reformed tradition and Religious Education courses in the Unitarian Universalist tradition are also offered.”
Again, such courses are more than mere intellectual exercises for the curious. In offering UU-focused history, polity, theology, and religious education courses, and in conflating the UUA with mainline Protestantism, Wesley is clearly attempting to position itself as a seminary where UU students are not only welcome as people, but fully affirmed and supported in their non-Christian religion.
Wesley crosses the line in other ways as well. It advertises the Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley Scholarship Program on its own website, a scholarship explicitly for “candidates to the Unitarian Universalist ministry,” and it lists a UU congregation among possible churches for students to attend in its campus guide (see page 12).
The UMC-funded Claremont School of Theology (CST) is another seminary which has long held relativistic attitudes with regards to non-Christian religions, as evidenced by its previous attempts to train Muslim clergy and advocate for process theology. Further evidence is a letter from CST’s president Rev. Dr. Kah-Jin Jeffrey Kuan which wished “A blessed Yule to my pagan friends!” alongside well-wishes similarly honoring the religious holidays of Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and others.
As part of Claremont’s relativism, it has also aligned itself with Unitarian Universalism. In a document describing the history of the school, Claremont emphasizes the variety of denominations other than United Methodism which “have had deep ties with our school,” including “the Unitarian Universalist Association.” For aspiring social-justice warriors, CST also provides an entire “Protest Chaplain’s Handbook,” which is explicitly “[g]rounded in Unitarian Universalism.”
CST continues to have an active UU student body. One of these students, Abigail Claughs, has a dedicated page on CST’s website, where she describes herself as “preparing to be an interreligious chaplain, ordained in the Unitarian Universalist tradition, a calling” she “discerned while learning at Claremont School of Theology.”
Claughs, who attended another official UMC university for her undergraduate degree, is further featured alongside sixteen other students on CST’s giving page, implying her exemplary status on the school’s campus. Another former student, Jonipher Kūpono Kwong, is also listed, denoting himself as a “Congregational Life Staff in the Unitarian Universalist Association.”
There are other UMC seminaries that appear to have not gone quite as far Iliff, BU-STH, MTSO, Wesley, or CST in their unabashed support of Unitarian Universalism, but which, sadly, have hardly been free of association.
For example, last year, Drew University Theological School announced that the Rev. Dr. Sofia Betancourt, who is “ordained in the Unitarian Universalist Association,” would be joining as the “Associate Dean for Academic Affairs” for two years. The letter went on to note that Betancourt’s “scholarship and teaching in womanist, Latina feminist and mujerista, and environmental theoethics resonates deeply with Drew’s mission and shared values.”
Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, meanwhile, advertises UU churches among its “approved sites” at which students can serve as a part of meeting requirements for “Contextual Education.” Thus, Candler is actively helping UU congregations fill staff positions to promote their alternative religion.
Several seminaries in addition to Wesley Theological Seminary also prominently highlight access to outside scholarships for Unitarian Universalist students, including CST, Saint Paul School of Theology and Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology, the latter of which advertises the “Unsung UU Award,” to be awarded to those “UUs whose actions inspire, support, and express UUism.”
This all indicates a willingness by these UMC seminaries to seek and take Unitarian Universalist money without much apparent concern for how this may spiritually compromise the culture of their campuses.
While no other school has evidently immersed itself in unorthodox teaching to the same degree as Iliff, it is still noteworthy that at least nine of the thirteen official United Methodist seminaries have incurred significant infractions against their commitment to Christian teaching.
Defenders of these schools might note that these schools also train United Methodist and other Christian seminarians, and that there are some restrictions on how they use funds from UMC apportionments. But these subsidies taken from United Methodist congregations nevertheless empower the seminaries as a whole, and with them, their commitment to supporting Unitarian Universalism.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with desiring harmonious relations between religious groups on and off campus. But this is very different from institutions of higher learning that remain officially sponsored by the United Methodist Church going far beyond Christian ecumenism to intentionally promote non-Christian religions.
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