“I was looking forward to going because I’ve known of General for my whole academic life, but I had never been there. At one time, it represented a commitment to an Anglo-Catholic tradition with which I’m very sympathetic,” said Hauerwas, who attends an Episcopal church in Chapel Hill, N.C. “I think the situation is one of deep pathos; it’s just pathetic. I’m sorry that I’ve gotten caught in it.”
GTS, the flagship seminary that has produced generations of bishops and noted theologians, is the only Episcopal seminary overseen by the national church.
“It’s been the seminary of record for the national church,” Hauerwas said. “Symbolically what’s happening there has reverberations throughout the church. I think that’s the primary reason people are taken aback by the fact that in some ways what has happened is the death toll of General Seminary. What student is going to go there?”
This story is totally indicative of what is going on in “mainstream” religion. It’s about a Christian ethicist who refuses to get involved with what is right or wrong. What else is their to say?
Appanently, I need to clarify my comment. I am not talking about Dr. Hauerwas personally. I am speaking globally about the irony of modern Christian education on which ethics become something with multiple points of view which are all welcome at the table. My apologies if it was understood otherwise.
When one now visits the GTS website, only three full-time faculty are displayed (the ‘8’ are gone). One of them is the ‘Expert Testimony’ for TEC’s litigation team. The PB is apparently an adjunct of some description. So there are some interesting inter-liberal dynamics at work here (not including +Sisk and the Board itself).
The article contains a charge which I had not seen before, that the Dean shared a student’s academic records without authorization. That at least is a more concrete charge than “He said things that make people uncomfortable.”
You cannot run a seminary with an OT professor, a church history professor, and an ascetics professor. NT? Systematic Theology? Ethics? Prayer Book? Pastoral theology? Can these all be taught by adjuncts?