Broken

Why doesn't the Board want to meet with us? Why has this Board acted so defensively in refusing to give an audience to its own faculty? Why did they ignore our central issue and most pressing concerns? We asked the Board for five things that would directly address our untenable situation. Never did we suggest that we wished to take legal action against the Dean or the school; never did we offer or threaten to resign if our requests were not entertained. Please note by saying, “we could no longer work with or for Kurt Dunkle” and “if Dean Dunkle continued in his position we could no longer continue in ours” we were not offering our resignations. We were invoking a common labor practice at the advice of our attorney communicating that we could not work under the present conditions. We were simply communicating to the Board Trustees that our working environment had deteriorated so much that the Seminary were going to lose their faculty. It is impossible to teach Christian theology and serve the formation of priests and lay leaders in such an atmosphere. Primarily, we asked that they agree to meet with us to discuss our circumstances and to envision steps for moving the institution forward. Not once yet has the Board addressed the central problem we identified. Instead, we have been met at every juncture with suspicion ...

The Board’s behavior clearly shows that it no longer has any interest in supporting the school, its faculty, its students, or its staff. If it was not aware of these problems before September 17, the Board simply was not doing its job.

And another one gone, and another one gone
Another one bites the dust
Hey, I'm gonna get you, too
Another one bites the dust

*****

GTS, however, is not the only seminary to face questions about its future in a rapidly shifting landscape of seminary life.

The Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., has also seen a battle erupt between its dean and faculty. Of the Episcopal Church’s 10 seminaries, several are facing financial challenges. Bexley Hall Seminary in Ohio affiliated with Seabury-Western Seminary in Illinois to form Bexley Seabury in 2013.

The flames are all long gone
But the pain lingers on
Goodbye blue sky
Goodbye blue sky
Goodbye
Goodbye

*****

N. B. Nothing here should be construed as a taking of sides in these disputes: two wrongs can never make a right. Best just to save this comment before it is axed:

Art Deco October 1, 2014 at 12:41 pm

Intramural bickering over the carrion.

Anglican seminaries now train people to act as executive secretaries to social clubs which gather weekly for singalongs, bad lectures, and bad coffee. Their seminarians are there in pursuit of opportunities to be salaried den mothers (which may or may not materialize as their [sic] fussing over declining revenue, repairs they cannot finance, and the hedges).

Anglican parishes no longer have any serious collective mission. They are pure legacy institutions. Regrettably, the supreme pontiff of the Catholic Church is a man who seem bound and determined to replicate the social and cultural process which made Anglicanism in the western world what it is today. It’s a march of folly.