Academic literature on the topic 'Bangor Theological Seminary (Me.)'

Slavery was an assault on black humanity, including the black body. Theological education paired with and shaped by slavery embodied the same type of violence through its mission and curriculum, that is, the sanctified erasure of black personhood, Christianity, and scholarship. In light of the relationship of Princeton Theological Seminary and slavery, this article focuses on the implications of this history for the mission and curriculum of theological schools, especially as it pertains to wounded black bodies. The key exploratory question will be, “What would theological education look like if it was reimagined through the lens of these black human wounds?”

In this essay, I reflect on Dr. James H. Cone’s legacy as a teacher and mentor who generously invested in multiple generations of students – including white students like me. This is one of several short essays presented by recent students at a public forum at Union Theological Seminary after his death in 2018.

It is a joy for me to contribute to a volume of essays dedicated to Krister Stendahl. I owe him a particular debt of gratitude. From the time that I—an immigrant from Holland—started to teach at Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1955 until today, Krister has been a model for me of what it means to be not only a conscientious scholar but also a Christian theologian. Through the turbulent years of the sixties and early seventies he always found time to counsel and guide me—however much we were geographically separated from each other.

Charles Van Engen summarizes his pilgrimage in mission: “I have lived a life invested in forming people as leaders, paying forward what others did for me.” Born of missionary parents, Chuck was raised in southern Mexico. From 1973 to 1985 Chuck and his wife, Jean, served in Chiapas, Mexico, in leadership formation. In 1981 Chuck received a Ph.D. in missiology under Johannes Verkuyl at the Free University of Amsterdam, followed by teaching mission theology in Michigan and, for twenty-seven years, at Fuller Theological Seminary. The Van Engens lead a ministry that provides PhD-level theological education to Latin American leaders.

I came to know Rosemary Radford Ruether in our later teaching and writing careers. She taught theology for some years at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, while I was teaching biblical studies at San Francisco Theological Seminary, and later we shared 10 retirement years at Pilgrim Place in Claremont. Rather than speaking in general about her impact on me and on feminist theology in our generation, I want to share three stories of my experiences of her to show you something of her character, priorities, and accomplishments.

The issue of racial reconciliation has been a major concern for me since the days of my youth in Youngstown, Ohio. I was blessed to see the growth and development of African American people during the civil rights era. There were, however, racial tensions of a major magnitude during my days in junior high and high school. It was the first time we (students from Thorn Hill) had ever experienced racism because our elementary school was 99.8 percent black. I had to live in a whole new world when six primary grade schools were condensed into one junior high school. In high school, it became increasingly evident to me that there was a white world and a black world. Attending Howard University definitely heightened my anger and resentment towards white people. Howard was the Mecca of black power and intellectual thinking. By God's grace, after eight years in corporate America, I accepted my call to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and realized that hatred had no place in the heart and mind of a servant of the Son of God. The seminary experience at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was equally frustrating at times even though I had the blessings of the seminary's leadership, thus becoming the first Martin Luther King, Jr. Fellow. Through twenty-five years of pastoring and thirty years of spreading the Gospel, I have gained additional insights into how we must eradicate racism in our society. Through my position in the Progressive National Baptist Convention as National Chairperson for “Social Action on Public Policy,” I realize how difficult is the task at hand. Research and writings on “Racial Reconciliation” are my own convictions and struggles to support the Church of God in becoming all that Jesus Christ had intended for it to be.

At the 2003 Annual Convention of the College Theology Society in Milwaukee, Sandra Yocum Mize presented some of her research for a history of the Society. I greatly appreciated her investigation of our Society's origins and its progress. She reminded me of things I had forgotten and told me much that I have never known. Let me add a few reminiscences that may be helpful to those who are new in the profession or relatively so.The Korean War consumed the last two years of Harry Truman's second term as president, when Dwight Eisenhower was elected to succeed him. After the unsuccessful effort to contain Communism on the entire Korean peninsula at the cost of many lives on both sides, the eight Eisenhower years, 1952–1960 were largely a matter of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Eisenhower was basically a retired general, on the basis of which he had been named president of Columbia University in a kind of travesty of academic life. His brother Milton who might have made a better chief executive rose in academia to become president of the Pennsylvania State University, well before Joe Paterno brought the Nittany Lions to another kind of eminence. The Eisenhower years were a lull of sorts in U.S. life bringing prosperity to the few, Republican style, and a scandal over his chief of staff who had accepted a gift of an alpaca coat. Days of innocence! Catholic college enrollments were still very much on the increase in the mid-1950s as a result of the G.I. Bill granting full tuition and books, not only for undergraduate and graduate study but even for any theological seminary of a veteran's choice. Many a convent motherhouse's instructional situation was being transformed into a bachelor's degree-granting institution in those years, at first for the religious students only but then shortly for adult lay women in the surrounding areas. The teachers of religion in Catholic colleges and in the few universities of the mid-1950s were priests with a seminary education—no religious brothers, sisters or lay persons as yet.

AbstractThe theses offered here for discussion constitute a response to theses published by my Princeton Theological Seminary colleague, George Hunsinger. The debate carried out between us has to do not only with the question of how Karl Barth's theology is to be understood, but also with how his theology is to be taken up today in order address pressing issues of concern. As the debate has unfolded, it has centred upon three areas of questioning: 1) the genetic-historical question of how Karl Barth's theology developed, whether his mind changed on important issues and in what way; 2) the question of whether Barth's later christology (in volume IV of the Church Dogmatics) would require modifications to be made in his earlier treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity (in CD I/1), his christology (in CD I/2) and of the being and perfections of God (in CD II/1); and 3) the question of the logical relationship between God's eternal act of election (as treated by Barth in CD II/2) and God's triunity. The last question does indeed take me beyond Barth, but it does so in a way that does full justice to the christological commitments found in his doctrine of reconciliation. The position I set forth here is one I have held to with a high degree of consistency since 1994 – which means that it antedates the publication of my book on Barth's theological development in 1995. Since that time, I have been engaged in a process of further elaboration and clarification.

RESPONSIVE BECOMING: Moral Formation in Theological, Evolutionary, and Developmental Perspective by Angela Carpenter. New York: T&T Clark, 2020. 200 pages. Paperback; $39.95. ISBN: 9780567698162. *Carpenter, in this well-written, methodologically astute, and thought-provoking study on moral formation rubs several unusual sticks together: Reformed theologies of sanctification, extended evolutionary synthesis theories, and current offerings in developmental psychology. The result is a wonderful fire that sheds much light on all these areas. This study is sure to be an important conversation partner for those interested in the ongoing dialogue between theology and the social sciences, as well as those interested in the doctrine of sanctification and its relationship to understandings of moral formation. We are in Carpenter's debt for such stimulating interdisciplinary work. *The subtitle lists Carpenter's three main interlocutors. In her first three chapters, she begins with a theological analysis of the views of sanctification of John Calvin (chap. 1), John Owen (chap. 2), and Horace Bushnell (chap. 3), in which she uncovers several "recurring questions and difficulties" in the Reformed tradition (p. 3). These difficulties include, first, the extent to which sanctification should be dependent upon "a particular cognitive-affective state" (p. 36)--namely that the believer trusts in God as a loving parent such that one's good works flow from this state of "faith." This can prove to be an unstable foundation given the "unreliability of subjective awareness" (p. 152). A second question centers on the extent to which God's trinitarian sanctifying action should be understood to work through, or alternatively totally displace, "intra-human sources of formation" (pp. 37, 152). Calvin's theology is filled with tension in these areas, tensions which are resolved in one direction in John Owen's theology as he reacts against "Pelagian" threats in his day and upholds "the integrity of grace" (p. 3) in a certain way. Owen emphasizes the objective work of God in sanctification, such that human cognitive-affective states do not matter much, nor is sanctification seen to be mediated through any human formative influences. Bushnell, responding against revivalist accounts of sanctification in his day, takes the opposite tack, and emphasizes both the human subjective response to God and formative processes such as the nurture of children by Christian parents, so much so that "the activity of the Spirit cannot be considered apart from the natural means through which it operates" (p. 87). I learned much from Carpenter's appreciative yet incisive exposition and analysis, not least of which are the ways that typical Protestant views of sanctification, such as those of Calvin and especially Owen, can pull one in the opposite direction from much of the recent revival of virtue theory and discussions of formative practices in Christian ethics and practical theology. *The key link between these chapters and the following ones is the importance of the parent-child metaphor for the relationship of the Christian to God. "God as a loving parent and the faithful person as the adopted child of God" (p. 5) is a common and important image for Calvin, and indeed for the Christian tradition as a whole, as attested by the first two words of the Lord's Prayer. This raises questions about the extent to which the divine-human parent-child relationship has dynamics that are analogous to human-human parent-child relationships, and the extent to which natural processes of human moral formation are related to the process of sanctification through the gracious activity of God, our heavenly parent. *She pursues these and other questions through a deep dive into the intricacies of current discussions of evolutionary theory (chap. 4) and developmental psychology (chap. 5). In both these chapters, a recurring motif is that relationships of care, affect, and social acceptance bring about important changes in humans. The "niche construction" of systems of affect, attachment, and "concern for the emotions and welfare of others" (p. 111) plays a key part in our evolutionary history, and "early and affective social acceptance" (p. 129) plays a key part in the moral development of children. One can see how important moral changes that these natural processes create in human beings resonate with descriptions of sanctified human behavior that result from the parental love of God. Could these processes, especially when seen in light of trinitarian accounts of the work of Christ and the Spirit, help us better understand God's sanctifying work, without reducing God's gracious action to simply these natural processes? Could such an account help one move through the tensions within doctrines of sanctification in the Reformed tradition? This is the direction of Carpenter's questioning and answering throughout the text and especially in her constructive account of sanctification in chapter 6, "Sanctification Revisited." *I have so much admiration for this excellent study, and there is so much to respond to in this rich text. One key lesson I gained was that love, here understood primarily as an affective relationship of social acceptance and care, is not some added luxury in human life, but rather is a foundational component for human evolution and moral formation. As a theologian this will change the way I think about "justification," which was interestingly not a word highlighted in the text. Carpenter pushes me to anchor my Protestant understanding of justification deeply within the realm of a relationship of acceptance and care between a human and God, rather than seeing it primarily as a juridical status. Carpenter shows there are important "sanctifying" aspects of this relationship; the two theological concepts are linked in important ways. *I also came away with two primary sets of questions, especially regarding her proposals for a revisited doctrine of sanctification. The first has to do with the description of sanctification itself. What does a sanctified or holy life look like? Carpenter emphasizes aspects of sanctification that are direct results of being adopted as a child of God; in this way one becomes a "new being" in Christ (p. 153). This relationship with God satisfies "affect hunger" (p. 158) and provides a social context in which a "new heart" can develop (p. 158). Instead of focusing on an examination of one's own heart (p. 161), or alternatively on following rules or examples outside of oneself, such as the example of Jesus understood "legalistically" (p. 158), Carpenter emphasizes that the Christian life of sanctification is an ongoing repentance from alienation from the creator (p. 162); vivification occurs when one turns again and again to the loving arms of God (p. 163). My wonder here is whether increasing conformity with clear models of God's holy intentions for human life that go beyond the activity of continual repentance and returning to God should also be emphasized. Carpenter certainly talks about conformity to Christ, but the pattern of Christ is usually talked about in terms of "repeated returning" (p. 161) and "perfect fellowship with the Father" (p. 162). I sense perhaps an overemphasis on Spirit, and not enough on Word or the patterns that sanctified life takes: in Calvin's trinitarian theology, "Word" (related to attributes of form, pattern, or way of life) and "Spirit" (related to the energy by which that form is achieved; see Institutes 1.13.18) must go together. While the law and prophets hang on the command to love God and neighbor, such love is fleshed out in a variety of holy ways of life that God intends for humanity. Carpenter's wariness about virtue ethics seems to go hand in hand with this reticence to name behaviors, virtues, or practices other than repentance, acceptance, and positive affectivity. It is unclear to me whether this is simply a matter of scope and focus--"focus on the relationship with God, rather than on one's inner life or outer behaviors" is a clear and salutary message throughout the text--or is a feature of her total understanding of sanctification. *I also wonder whether Carpenter's description of God's activity in sanctification could be improved by considering different ways that God relates to the world. Both Karl Barth and especially David Kelsey (in Eccentric Existence) have taught me to consider that God's activity toward all that is not God takes three primary shapes or "trinitarian taxes" in God's work of creation, reconciliation, and in drawing all that is not God to eschatological consummation. Carpenter's important insights about the foundational nature of affective relationships might find greater sharpness through a distinction between (1) God's creational work (which would be mediated generally through evolutionary processes which include human parent-child relationships), (2) God's reconciling work (which many would claim is mediated primarily and more particularly through the people of God), and (3) God's "kingdom" work (mediated through Spirit-inspired renewed ways of life). This might create greater space for talk of justice and vocation, as well as greater distinctions between God's activity in Christian communities and elsewhere. All three avenues of God's activity and human response to it involve the intertwined, yet unified, sanctifying work of God that is based upon affective acceptance; however, by noting these distinctions, greater space might be created both for greater specifications of holy living and for distinctions between God's more particular and more general work in the world. *None of these wonderings should detract from the seminal nature of Carpenter's work. Her emphasis on the importance of intra-human and divine-human affective relationships in moral formation and sanctification provides an important foundational structure to discussions of sanctification. Carpenter's methodologically careful, insightful, and thought-provoking work will surely be a voice of continuing importance in ongoing discussions of sanctification within theology and in the needed intra-disciplinary dialogue between theology and the social sciences. *Reviewed by David Stubbs, Professor of Ethics and Theology, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, MI 49423.

THRIVING WITH STONE AGE MINDS: Evolutionary Psychology, Christian Faith, and the Quest for Human Flourishing by Justin L. Barrett with Pamela Ebstyne King. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2021. 160 pages, index. Paperback; $20.00. ISBN: 9780830852932. *I was looking forward to reviewing this book for several reasons. Firstly, I have been following the work of Justin Barrett for some time. As a clinical psychologist working in academia in the UK, I taught for several years an undergraduate module in psychology of religion in which I dedicated several hours to his work in cognitive science and developmental psychology of religion. Barrett, formerly director of the Thrive Center for Human Development at Fuller Theological Seminary and, prior to that, director of the Centre for Anthropology and Mind at the University of Oxford, has forged an unlikely career for a person of faith in a subdiscipline of psychology popularly considered the sole preserve of skeptics and nonbelievers. *Secondly, if I carry a bugbear about the empirical psychology of religion, it is that at times it tends to avoid application, a sense of the implications of its findings for human living. In this respect, Barrett's collaboration with Pamela Ebstyne King is a welcome addition to this project. Currently based at Fuller Theological Seminary as executive director of the Thrive Center and Professor of Applied and Developmental Science, King adds applied nuance and some succinct epigrams that bring home the implications of evolutionary psychology in everyday life. *Thirdly, it seems very important to me that people of faith generally, and Christians particularly, continue to explore and write about the field of evolutionary psychology, not least because it is often presented as a competing narrative of even nonliteral readings of the Genesis account, in direct opposition to a benevolent creator and a universe that could be considered in any way purposeful. I have lost count of the number of young adults I have encountered who refuse to consider the possibility of there being a creator, or who have lost faith in God, as a result of reading secular or atheistic accounts of human evolution. *Barrett and King have produced a short and well-informed book designed for any interested intelligent reader. No prior knowledge of evolutionary psychology (EP) is required to follow their train of thought. In the early chapters of the volume, they state clearly the basic principles of EP and how the EP account of what it means to be human is remarkably consistent with the biblical understanding of the hallmarks of human life designed in the image of God. They focus on three overlapping domains of competency that are notably human--sociality, expertise acquisition, and self-control--or, as King pithily summarizes: the human capacities to relate, learn, and regulate (p. 46). The early chapters of the book convincingly argue that there is nothing incompatible with these elements of human nature, properly understood, and the Christian anthropology presented in the Bible. Barrett and King successfully side-step contention or sides of the evolution-creation debate. Their point about the compatibility of evolutionary and theological perspectives is well made, and will be of interest for those who are open to it from any faith or nonfaith perspective. *From there, the authors go on to outline their understanding of flourishing from this evolutionary psychology perspective. They note that human nature, with its social, intellectual, and regulatory capacities, has a dual aspect. On the one hand, these capabilities were forged in response to particular niches in evolutionary history; on the other hand, they offer human beings the possibility of redesigning the very niches which formed us. And therein lies the central dilemma of evolutionary psychology referred to in the title of the book. As a species we find ourselves facing the demands of twenty-first-century industrial life with minds designed to deal with the challenges of living in the stone age. Much of the failure in human thriving can therefore be attributed, the authors argue, to the gap that can open up between the social, intellectual, and regulatory capacities of human nature, and the requirements of the contemporary cultural landscape. *Each of the three capacities of human nature is treated to an entire chapter, examining how they can be inadequate to the demands placed upon them in our current context. Examples include the stretching of our social brain ability to breaking point by large populations, the failure of traditional pedagogies to utilize well-established cognitive biases and heuristics, and the overwhelming of our regulatory ability in the face of relentless advertising. We fail to thrive when the gap between human nature and human niche becomes too great, but human flourishing is promoted when we find ways of closing the gap between how we are designed and how we currently live. Barrett and King offer a raft of practical examples of how Christian faith and practice can contribute to this, such as network closure for socializing young people, age-appropriate education strategies for learning, and religious practices for building self-regulation. With these and many other evidence-based examples, the authors add evolutionary justification and theological depth to a common formulation in various forms of applied psychology, whether in clinical practice or the workplace, namely, that we flourish most when we fit our environment best. *The final two chapters take this proposition to its logical conclusion. Firstly, by querying what all this means for our status as bearers of the divine image, functionally commissioned to love God and one another, and to care for creation as God's representatives on Earth. And secondly, by giving space to a consideration of human purpose and telos. While Barrett and King avoid the suggestion that their book is aimed at those attempting to discern their vocation, the final chapter draws together the threads of their survey of human nature and its implications for flourishing with purpose and calling in life. *The book presents a convincing picture of consilience between evolutionary psychology and Christian theology applied in the real world. However, to my mind, it does leave a crucial question hanging. It is one thing to argue that the outcome of the evolutionary process is compatible with a Christian view of humanity, but what remains unaddressed, in this volume at least, is whether the evolutionary process is compatible with a Christian view of God. After all, this is what bothered Darwin. He was not wary of publication for fear of contradicting a literal reading of Genesis, but because his view of the origins of human life based on industrial-scale bloodshed was difficult to square with the existence of a benevolent creator. Once the conceptual problem of evolutionary creation is settled, the emotional problem of evolutionary creation emerges; the question of evolution morphs into the question of pain and evil. Personally, it would have helped this reviewer to more easily assimilate the message of the book if it had addressed this issue even briefly. But be that as it may, Barrett and King offer a coherent and elegant account of the confluence of evolutionary psychology and Christian faith in the quest for human flourishing, which is well worth reading. *Reviewed by Roger Bretherton, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Lincoln, UK, and Chair of the British Association of Christians in Psychology.

Abstract We met in 1981 at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Professor Wainwright spent almost a whole day as my host, showing me around and talking theology. Grateful and impressed, I immediately bought and read Doxology. In 1984 I spent a three-month sabbatical with him in Durham. He invited me to give a public lecture on the (then Draft) Confession of Belhar of the (then) Dutch Reformed Mission Church of South Africa. Since then he has, through his writings, constantly accompanied, instructed, and inspired me and many of my colleagues, friends, and students. Since I have not had the opportunity to spend more time in his company, discussing theology, this is perhaps an opportunity to continue with the story of Belhar, indicating where he has inspired and assisted us since then, without his knowledge.

Abstract James Cone (b. 1938), a long time professor of theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York, is widely regarded as the most prominent and influential African American theologian of the twentieth century. His groundbreaking writings in black liberation theology in the late 196os and early 1970s, and beyond, have been foundational for all subsequent work and reflection on theology and ethics from African American perspectives. James Cone clearly sees himself as a theologian grounded in the Bible. Reflecting on the social and political contexts that shaped the writing of his first book, Black Theology and Black Power (1969), contexts of the suffering and oppression of African Americans in such cities as Detroit, Watts, and Newark in the middle to late 1960s, Cone writes: Of significance here is that Cone views the Bible as the primary source for theological reflection, and that he characterizes this view as instinctive or natural, a reflection of the prominent role the Bible has played in the African American church tradition in which Cone was reared. Elsewhere, Cone refers to his “assumption that Scripture is the primary source of theological speech.” Indeed, for Cone, “that Christian theology must begin with Scripture appears selfevident Without this basic witness Christianity would be meaningless. This point seems so obvious to me that it is almost impossible to think otherwise.”