Visiting Chicago Theological Seminary

Yesterday, Marcus, Joy, and I traveled to Chicago to visit Chicago Theological Seminary. We had meetings with the admissions office, financial aide, and were able to attend chapel and a class. We wanted to gain an understanding of what the seminary was all about. I’m looking at an M.Div., and Marcus was exploring the MA program.

There was a point during the chapel service to express joys and prayer requests. A blonde woman, probably in her upper 50’s, spoke up. “It’s been a hard 10 days.” Her sister was having some heart problems. Her heart rate was over 200 beats per minute. The doctors were saying they needed to shock her to stop it and start it again in the hopes that the irregularity would stop. This blonde woman explained to her sister, “They have done this sort of thing to Dick Cheney, and he came out alive. You will too. The only difference is that you have a bigger heart than Cheney.” Everyone in the chapel started to laugh. The undeniable jab at Cheney for his lack of compassion was obvious. As it turns out, this blonde woman happened to be Susan Brown Thistlethwaite, the President of CTS. Later that day we were able to meet and share a little bit of time at lunch with her. She was genuine in her remarks when she explained that CTS was a place not to just talk good rhetoric about justice and mercy, but it is truly a place where justice is manifested for the common good.

This rhetoric is what attracted me to CTS in the first place. Their devotion to justice and mercy and their boast of inter-faith relations intrigued me. After the admissions portion of the visit, I think we were all feeling good about the seminary. It is located in Hyde Park. It had just snowed the night before and continued to snow heavily throughout the day. It truly was beautiful. But as the day progressed, so did our impression of CTS. After spending some time with the students and taking the tour, we were all glad we came to visit. Obviously our time there was limited to get a full idea of what CTS is, how the community interacts, and the relationship between theology and ministry. However, though we are comfortable and even welcome more liberal ideas and people, there was an essence of being liberal for liberal’s sake. One phrase that stuck out to me was said during that first session, “We are not doctrinally bound. We teach you how to think, not what to think.” And yet, when I look at the course listings, the Biblical literature or exegesis classes had a certain agenda (it usually revolved around gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, and nationalism). The classes were built around the issues rather than focusing on the story and its practical interpretation (both for the people to whom it was original told/written and for us now). This is a very limited outlook. Obviously I have not taken these classes. I have only read the course description. However, it seemed like they were overemphasizing social spirituality and justice at the expense of the personal.

I long to study at a place that holds both the personal and the social, the individual and the corporate, and both justice and mercy as equally deserving and not mutually exclusive. I should here back from Duke any day.