What’s Going on in Seminary?
Requiem: A Lament in Three Movements
by Thomas C. Oden
Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995
(176 pages, $16.95, cloth)
Calling Church and Seminary into the 21st Century
by Donald F. Messer
Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995
(144 pages, $16.95, cloth)
Truth and Tradition: A Conversation about the Future of United Methodist
Theological Education
edited by Neal F. Fisher
Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995
(143 pages, $15.95, cloth)
reviewed by John Thompson
“Subvert The Dominant Paradigm” reads the bumper sticker in the seminary parking lot. “Cultural diversity exists here,” the seminary’s in-house newsletter assures us, calling the seminary “a place to explore, to question, to challenge all of the ‘norms’ of the community of God.” And that, says Dr. Thomas Oden of the Theological School at Drew University, is the problem.
In Requiem: A Lament in Three Movements, Oden launches an exposé of the strange subculture of theological education. He writes, mind you, as a tenured professor within the guild; and the ordination of women and even the liturgical use of feminine metaphors for God pose no problem for him. He objects rather to the hijacking of theological education by a version of political correctness–“ultrafeminist,” in part, to use his language–that has vitiated our theological institutions. “My requiem,” he says, “is for a passing culture. . . . the forms of life spawned by liberal ecumenism and liberated theological education. . . . What has come to an end is not the church, and not theology as such, but a once-vital ethos of liberal learning and the institutional establishments of old-line bureaucratic ecumenism.”
He minces no words. He writes passionately and provocatively out of long-building frustration. Requiem is addressed not to religious professionals, but to a “spirited ecumenical lay audience” who might consider themselves to be traditional believers. He has heard the often ignored voices from within his own United Methodist Church who object to the agendas and experimentation that seem to have taken over his denomination’s seminaries.
Adaptation or Recovery of Tradition?
Oden’s book hit a sensitive nerve in United Methodism, where many are still smarting from the denomination’s support for the “Re-Imagining” conference, both before and after the event. In fact, the United Methodist Publishing House, of which Abingdon Press is one part, came under such severe criticism for publishing Requiem that it was obliged to commission a response to Oden from within the Methodist seminary community. Calling Church and Seminary into the 21st Century and Truth and Tradition present an alternative account by the presidents of two United Methodist seminaries. In brief, Messer and Fisher emphasize adaptation of the tradition in the face of a changing North American societal and cultural setting; Oden stresses that recovery of the tradition is necessary for the survival of an expression of genuine Christianity.
In Calling Church and Seminary into the 21st Century, Donald Messer, president of Iliff School of Theology in Denver, accuses Oden of being representative of “a new assault on the seminaries . . . launched . . . by internal political critics, suffering from deep dissatisfaction with the theological temperature of the schools and/or attempting to gain political control in a particular denomination.” Devoting one chapter to Requiem, Messer describes how Oden, “with the fervor of a new convert, . . . tends to justify his new stance by distorting and demeaning that which he has rejected.” There is more than a trace of condescension here towards Oden, as if he were a curmudgeon fond of the status quo who resents anything that disturbs his complacency. (In academic circles, an accusation like this is considered to be a vicious attack on one’s honor.) Messer quotes one passage from Oden which he feels is particularly “untrue and unfair”:
In the last decade the curriculum of seminaries has been liberated for sexually permissive advocacy, political activism, and ultrafeminist hype (as distinguished from believing feminist argument). The study of Bible and church history becomes a deconstruction of patriarchal texts and traditions. The study of ethics becomes the study of political correctness. The study of liturgy becomes an experiment in color, balloons, poetry, and freedom. The study of pastoral care becomes a support group for the sexually alienated.
John Thompson is a librarian and professor at Waynesburg University, Waynesburg, Pennsylvania
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
28.3—May/June 2015
Whittaker Chambers's Lonely War Against Godless Collectivism by Hunter Baker
30.5—Sept/Oct 2017
The Christian Cure for What Ails Modern Politics by David Bradshaw
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
