The class of seminary students graduating in May will be the last for Bexley Hall Seminary’s Rochester, N.Y., campus which will be closed. Bexley Hall remains committed to a three-year residential seminary program at its Columbus, Ohio campus, according to the Very Rev. John R. Kevern, dean of Bexley Hall.
The decision to close the Rochester campus was based in part on changing demographics, Dean Kevern told The Living Church. Another factor was the more stringent standards the Rochester campus would have to meet when its accreditation from the Association of Theological Schools came up for renewal in 2012.
“We are too thin on the ground there to meet the labyrinthine requirements of the state and the accrediting agency,” Dean Kevern said. “So with reluctance and no great pleasure, the board acquiesced to the analysis of both entities and decided to terminate the satellite M. Div. program as of this May.”
That’s two historic Episcopal seminaries shutting down their M.Div. programs within two days, leaving their present Junior and Middler students scrambling for places elsewhere. One hopes that there was some attention paid to seeing whether other seminaries acceptable to the bishops and dioceses concerned would be willing to graduate these students with only one or two years in residence.
Hmmm. First, Seabury Western in Evanston, and now Bexley Hall in Rochester are closing down. This certainly is no accident. It illustrates the increasing strains and difficulties that ALL traditional residential seminary programs face. Trinity and Nashotah are not exempt from those pressures, though fortunately they are doing much better than most TEC seminaries.
Bexley has certainly had its ups and downs, and has relocated more than once. But although the current Dean attempts to put a positive spin on it, the fact remains that the main campus in Ohio still only has 20 students. Hardly critical mass. Hardly enough.
Put this together with the well-known fact that the average age of TEC priests is over 50 (I don’t remember the exact figure), and it becomes clear that TEC faces real problems in terms of ensuring an adequate supply of future clergy. Unless TEC totally implodes, of course.
One of the realities of life confronting all forms of Anglicanism in North America is that more and more potential clergy feel unable to pull up stakes and move somewhere else in order to attend seminary. As a result, more and more theological students choose the school they attend based on geographical considerations. More and more aspirants opt to attend some seminary of another denomination that happens to be close by (Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist or whatever), and then spend just a year or less being socialized into the Anglican ethos in some Anglican venue. But with every TEC seminary that closes, there are fewer options to choose from. I expect this problem to only get worse in the future.
David Handy+
I was a student at Bexley Hall for a quarter, around the time that the whole Robinson crisis began. I found that even though Bexley Hall claimed to be an orthodox seminary (claims of course mean little), there were only a handful of us opposed to Robinson’s consecration (my brother, myself, and a gentleman being ordained in the Charismatic Episcopal Church..strangely, probably the youngest at the seminary). The people there were very nice and encouraging, and generally orthodox theologically, but not morally. Certain students joked with certain faculty members about whether it was good technique to wear a collar out to gay bars.
I am not surprised Bexley is having these problems. There was talk of closing the Rochester campus when I was there. I would bet the majority of the students now are from the diocese of Southern Ohio (at least when I was there this was the case).
#2: You raise a good point about postulants being unwilling to travel great distances for seminary. As one “test” of my calling to the Episcopal priesthood was financial: if I had to travel far for a seminary and go into a lot of debt, I knew I was not called to the priesthood. I had already racked up a bunch of debt for my Master’s in Theology, and I wasn’t going to rack up more. That is why I ended up at Bexley.
[i] (my brother, myself, and a gentleman being ordained in the Charismatic Episcopal Church..strangely, probably the youngest at the seminary). [/i]
Not TOO strange, David. Studies pretty consistently show that the younger generations are, in many ways, more conservative than their parents and grandparents. That was certainly true in my diocese: the four youngest priests were also the four most conservative. Now that I’m a Catholic, the older priests have a name for us: the old fogeys.