Episcopal Divinity School
[1][2][3][4] EDS and its predecessors established a reputation for progressive teaching and action on issues of civil rights and social justice.
Its faculty and students were directly involved in many of the social controversies surrounding the Episcopal Church in the latter half of the 20th century and at the start of the 21st.
[9] It was "the first Episcopal theological seminary to welcome modern biblical scholarship,"[10] and in 1924 its faculty asked its alumni priests to accommodate congregants who did not believe in the virgin birth.
[10] According to one alumnus, the school's reputation for theological progressivism was so strong that "candidates for the Episcopal ministry who did not have independent financial means avoided the Cambridge seminary lest they become so infected with its social heresies that they could not hold suburban pulpits.
ETS provided an Anglican alternative to Harvard's divinity school and Memorial Church,[10] both of which were predominantly Unitarian at the time.
Merging the two institutions and consolidating operations on ETS's Cambridge campus allowed the schools to save money while combining their financial endowments.
It was a member of the Boston Theological Institute, a consortium of seminaries and divinity schools that share library and academic resources and allow cross-registration for courses.
[35] As part of the move from Cambridge, EDS terminated its employment contracts with all faculty and staff, and provided them with severance packages.
[36][37][38] On March 31, 2023, Union and EDS announced that they were discontinuing their formal affiliation after 5 years, less than halfway into the initial term of the agreement.
"[44] It states that it "seeks collaborative opportunities to prepare and equip clergy and lay people for transformative and diverse leadership roles.
"[45] In August 2024, Lydia Kelsey Bucklin was appointed as EDS' new president and dean,[46] with a directive to "develop and implement a strategic and operational plan" for the school.
[44] Although EDS currently does not educate any students, its financial endowment stood at $77.3 million as of April 30, 2024, which includes the sale price of the Cambridge campus.
[48] Social values, particularly with the rise of racial slavery in North America, meant that there were considerable obstacles to such practices, and debates over whether it was right to baptize African-American slaves were controversial.
In 1929 women were first admitted at PDS in small numbers to theological education programs designed for those preparing to teach religion in colleges.
EDS retained a reputation for controversy stemming from this incident even after the Episcopal Church as a whole voted to ordain women to the priesthood in 1976.
In 1956, Bishop Henry Knox Sherrill, who graduated from ETS in 1914, spoke out at a press conference on September 18, 1956, in favor of racial integration for the whole church.
Jonathan Myrick Daniels, one of those students, was shot and killed outside a store in Hayneville, Alabama, while trying to protect a young African-American woman, Ruby Sales, from a gunman.
However, in 2015, she indicated she would not seek an extension to her term as Dean – which expired at the end of June – after disputes with faculty regarding changes to the residential seminary model.
