Chicago Theological Seminary

The Chicago Theological Seminary at its new location in Hyde Park, Chicago Unintimidated by controversy, Chicago Theological Seminary has a record of setting trends in American faith life and leadership for more than a century. In the 1850s and 1860s, CTS founder Stephen Peet was a leader in a new generation of 19th-century American abolitionists no longer content to wait for the end of slavery nor to tolerate those who defended it. [ 8 ] Under his leadership, the seminary was active in the Underground Railroad and was a leading voice in the Christian Abolitionism movement. The first CTS curriculum in 1855 was provided for students among congregations and missions across the Midwest. Students were encouraged to learn by direct experience the facts of community life and church needs in an experimental culture. Although such a practice was unknown at that time, this curriculum was the beginning of the first field education component introduced into seminary education. Field education is now a part of every accredited professional theological degree program. Twentieth century c. 1905 Because of a conviction that training for ministry needed to combine the study of Christian faith and the world of secular knowledge and action, during President Ozora Davis' tenure in 1900s, CTS moved to the vicinity of the University of Chicago . Under Ozora Davis' leadership the buildings of the seminary were financed and constructed, and the relationship with the University of Chicago established. After recognizing Florence Fensham with the first American seminary degree awarded to a woman, Chicago Theological Seminary founded the Congregational Training School for Women in 1909 to provide Congregational women with advanced educational training. The school continued its mission until it was subsumed into the Chicago Theological Seminary in 1926. Florence Fensham was the school's first dean, succeeded by Agnes M. Taylor and Margaret M.

Taylor after Dean Fensham died unexpectedly in 1912. The Chicago Theological Seminary allow full acceptance of women to its programs in 1926, thereby eliminating the need for a separate institution for women. In 1892, CTS invited Graham Taylor , a professor of theology at Hartford Theological Seminary in Connecticut who had shown success in working with the poor, to establish the United States' first Department of Christian Sociology at CTS. Taylor worked closely with leading Chicago activist Jane Addams , founder of Hull House , an American settlement house . Taylor established the Chicago Commons settlement house in Chicago's Fulton Market neighborhood, where with the help of CTS students he brought recreational clubs, classes, a day nursery, and a kindergarten to the working poor. The house had 25 residents and was open to all ethnic groups and religious denominations. Pressed for space, the Chicago Commons moved a few blocks north to the building formerly occupied by the Chicago Congregational Tabernacle, where Taylor expanded the courses offered into the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, which later became the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration . [ 9 ] In the 1920s, Anton Boisen , a pioneer in the hospital chaplaincy movement and founder of the Council for the Clinical Training of Theological Students, began lecturing every fall quarter in the social ethics department of CTS. In 1932, he became chaplain of Elgin State Hospital (now Elgin Mental Health Center ) and founded a Chicago arm of the Council for the Clinical Training of Theological Students. His work to help theological students better understand and minister to physically, mentally , and emotionally ill people ultimately led to the founding of the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education . Boisen's ashes are interred in the CTS cloisters. In 1957, as the American civil rights movement escalated, CTS became the first seminary in the United States to award Rev. Dr.

Martin Luther King an Honorary Doctor of Divinity degree in recognition of his activism. Two years later CTS alumnus Howard Schomer , who had received his doctorate of divinity from CTS in 1954, became president of the seminary. Schomer was a conscientious objector and former aide to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights who had assisted in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. A close associate of King, Schomer in March 1965 led a contingent of CTS students that included scholarship recipient Jesse Jackson, Sr. to Selma, Alabama , to march with local residents against segregation . [ 10 ] Jackson dropped out of the Master of Divinity program just three courses short of degree completion in order to work on the civil rights movement full time. He went on to found Operation PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity), a Chicago counterpart to the southern civil rights movement that focused on the economic empowerment of African-Americans and poor people of all races, and the Rainbow Coalition , which worked to unite disenfranchised American groups, from racial minorities to small farmers, in order to exercise political power. CTS ultimately awarded Jackson the Master of Divinity in 2000 in recognition of his life's work. [ citation needed ] During the 1960s, John W. de Gruchy , a white South African theologian who later became known for his work resisting Apartheid, attended CTS. [ 11 ] In 1965, CTS began a Doctorate of Religion program, one of the first professional doctorates in ministry. As standards for the professional doctorate were established by the Association of Theological Schools , the seminary became one of the initial group of six schools to have fully accredited programs of study for the Doctor of Ministry degree. In the 1980s, CTS engaged in the anti-apartheid movement advocating for the divestment of resources from South Africa .

In 1986, the seminary awarded Archbishop Desmond Tutu an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree for his activism to liberate black South Africans. [ 12 ]