Claremont School of Theology : 2000 Seminar

The Claremont School of Theology is an ecumenical and globally-oriented graduate school of the United Methodist Church. Our mission is to teach and learn within a tradition that stresses the quest for knowledge. In confidence that faith and reason should be inseparable, our goal is educated and faithful leaders equipped to serve God in church, society, and higher education.

This excerpt from our mission statement is true in many respects. The Claremont School of Theology is ecumenical and globally-oriented. Fifty-two percent of our students are Anglo; the rest come from a dizzying array of cultural and ethnic groups. They speak several native tongues; many struggle with English. They represent scores of theological, religious, and denominational traditions, from evangelical to self-identified pagan. In addition to CST, our campus houses three other seminaries: The Episcopal Theological Seminary at Claremont; San Francisco Theological Seminary/Southern California; and a satellite campus of the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary. Notwithstanding our diversity, we are in many respects markedly Methodist. Our graduates are heavily involved in the California-Pacific and Desert Southwest annual conferences of the United Methodist Church.

And we are on a quest for knowledge. In addition to an M.Div. program, in conjunction with the Claremont Graduate University we offer coursework in four other masters programs and two Ph.D. programs. Our faculty is highly published and has a history of leadership in national and international scholarly guilds. We extend our academic work through a series of faculty centers, including the Process Studies Center, the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center, and the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity. We hope that in religious circles, the word "Claremont" brings to mind academic excellence in theological studies.

Notwithstanding our confidence that faith and reason should be inseparable, our religious and social diversity and our academic quests erode a sense of common ground or local orthodoxy. Sometimes we speak with pride about our diversity and complexity, calling it "The Claremont Way." But sometimes the "Way" gives us pause. We watch our students and hear them speak about their experiences at our school, and we wonder how faith and reason really do interact.

Today we tell the tale of a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant whom in tribute to his denominational affiliation and his youth we will call "Wes." When Wes took his first preaching class, he walked into a room filled with the denominational and theological diversity of Claremont. As he listened to his colleagues preach, he heard feminist sermons, evangelical sermons, environmentalist sermons, Unitarian sermons, sermons extolling the ordination of gays, and sermons about how the student preacher just can't find it in his heart to believe anything these days. He heard sermons from the New Testament preached in a challenging, critical way that seemed to reflect the preacher's recent immersion in the heady waters of higher criticism. A few actually expounded upon Methodist theology, if such a thing can be so identified. The students critiqued each other, having been enjoined to Christian ecumenism, interfaith dialogue, and political (and personal) tolerance. In practice this meant focusing on the modes of presentation, since the content and theological underpinnings of the sermons were so diverse and potentially conflict-laden.

Wes watched his classmates' personal strategies in dealing with this classroom situation (the same strategies that obtain in most CST classrooms). The evangelically-minded amongst them endured stoically if not downright heroically; the less-ministerially-committed amongst them began to panic and talk about transferring into an M.A. program and "going on to do a Ph.D." Many, if not most, not only eventually accepted, but actually became exhilarated with the liberal opportunities afforded by "The Claremont Way." All these strategies are stories in themselves.

Now Wes may have stumbled out of his first preaching class feeling somewhat puzzled, but months of hearing perspectives other than his own had a bracing effect on his thought. His colleagues' critiques of the patriarchal, xenophobic, culturally oppressive condition of "business as usual" Christianity were exciting; his own critical work on biblical texts gave Wes a new way of looking at social issues. Encouraged to subject his long-held, pious certainties to a relentless examination, Wes felt he had achieved a certain kind of freedom. It felt good. Hadn't he gone into the ministry to change things? And wasn't it time for the people in his home church to hear what they'd been missing?

Home on Christmas break, Wes was invited to preach to his old congregation, from the pulpit of the church that had raised the money for his scholarship. He worked weeks on the sermon; he barely slept the Saturday night beforehand. Sunday morning, gripping the sides of the lectern, Wes explained the text—a passage in one of the gospels that simply didn't hold up to the criteria required by the Jesus Seminar for authenticity. And this was good, because Wes intended to expose this "dubious" teaching as the basis for beliefs both social and doctrinal that he now found narrow-minded and naive. When he finished, you could have heard a pin drop. At the coffee hour following the service, comments to Wes about his sermon were polite and vague.

Back at school two days later, Wes kept thinking about his Sunday sermon and the reactions he experienced. Unsettled, but not sure why, he went to the office of the associate dean, who works with United Methodist students in what the school calls "ordination support."

"How did it go?" she asked. That one question was enough to open the floodgate of uncertainty Wes had been keeping closed only by the most strenuous effort. "I kept looking at the faces of the people in the congregation, wondering if this was what I ought to be giving them. They come to worship looking for something that will help them in their lives, and I tell them what they should not believe. The trouble is, I have learned lots about what I cannot believe anymore. I'm just not sure what I do believe. Some people say all this questioning is good, it's how growth happens, but I don't know. The list of my uncertainties gets longer the more I think about it—the Bible, all those creeds we say in church, the kind of talk I would have called a "testimony" a few years ago—all that is gone and nothing has yet replaced it. What difference does it make for my life that I'm a Christian? What does it mean to be a United Methodist Christian? I feel less connected to the Methodist Church than I did when I started at Claremont. God-talk makes me uncomfortable. I can't even pray anymore, so how can I possibly talk to people when they ask me about prayer or when they go through crisis? I am terrified of going before the Board of Ordained Ministry next year, but I am even more terrified of being a pastor. How can I lead people in their faith lives if I can't even figure out my own?!"

After Wes had left her office, the associate dean's phone rang. It was the pastor of Wes's home church. "I have just one question for you," he said sharply. "What do you people think you are doing over there at that school?"