Theological Education Report Made to Council
Episcopal News Service. February 25, 1982 [82053]
GREENWICH, Conn. (DPS, Feb. 25) -- What do Episcopalians think about their seminaries?
In the course of an intensive three-year effort, a committee of the Board of Theological Education discovered that Episcopalians seem to hold very firm opinions here (as in many areas) but that these firmly-held opinions may be a real barrier to effective seminary funding and, therefore, to theological education.
The committee -- co-chaired by the Rev. Wallace Frey of Syracuse and Dr. Marion Kelleran of Virginia -- has spent the last two years trying to find out what those attitudes are, what the real situation of the seminaries is, and how the Church can answer a General Convention call in 1979 to meet seminary and theological education needs.
This year, they are testing their conclusions and revising their report while trying to spark the widest possible dialogue on the issue before the General Convention meets again this September to make some decisions.
In that role, Frey, Karl Mathiasen of Washington, D.C., and Dr. Fredrica Thompsett, director of the Board, spoke to the Feb. 17-19 meeting of the Executive Council to solicit their views on the latest draft of their proposal to Convention.
That draft -- and Frey emphasized that it had gone through many revisions and was still open to their consideration -- contains seven points designed to create a structure to assure the 10 accredited seminaries of a fixed and reliable income from the congregations each year, and, in turn, to give the congregations a clear picture of the seminary financial status, goals and sense of mission.
The purpose of all this is not just to raise money for the seminaries, Frey said, noting that "none is in solid financial shape," but to institute a "refreshment of the dialogue" between the seminaries and the Church.
Major tools in that dialogue will be the proposed structures for diocesan procedure and seminary reports (as well as the incentive of wanting to know how a sizeable chunk of parish resources is being used) and an extensive survey of the seminaries compiled by the accounting firm of Peat, Marwich, Mitchell.
As presented to Council, the report seemed to be well received, with much of the conversation focusing on ways to strengthen the resolutions and assure adequate consideration of overseas dioceses. Such unanimity has not marked all the conversations to date and it is not expected to mark the Convention debate. But at the end, it is felt by the committee that the Church will have had a chance to examine the assumptions it has lived with about its training grounds for so long.