COMMENTARY: Being Methodist and multifaith Jerry D. Campbell, Oct 15, 2009
Jerry D. Campbell
By Jerry D. Campbell Special Contributor
As
a youngster in the Texas Panhandle during the 1950s, my religious
awareness in my small town was limited to the Methodists, Baptists and
Churches of Christ.
Not until I was a teenager did I begin
to suspect that religious diversity extended well beyond these three
denominations, a hunch that was confirmed when in the 1960s I took a
class on world religions at Methodist-related McMurry College (now
University) in Abilene.
Only now do I understand the risk that Dr. Robert Monk, chair of the religion department, took in offering such a course.
These
days, it is clear that the U.S. is growing more religiously diverse.
Last year at a gathering sponsored by the Pew Forum on Religion and
Public Life, political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell
discussed their forthcoming book American Grace: The Changing Role of Religion in American Civic Life
and reported yet another indicator of this trend: Over 50 percent of
Americans are married to someone from another religious
affiliation.
Many children are growing up in religiously
pluralistic households, their spiritual identities being formed by more
than one religious perspective. This generation is already arriving in
our colleges and universities, as well as our theological schools.
How should United Methodists respond in this changing world?
At
the 2007 Oxford Institute of Methodist Theological Studies, the Revs.
Patricia Ferris and Susan Henry-Crowe presented an important paper on
how Methodists can and should respond to religious diversity.
Informed
by John Wesley’s writings, they urge each of us to reconsider what it
means to be a Methodist: “one deeply rooted and grounded in the
Christian faith, who is generous, inquisitive, respectful and
compassionate towards our ‘neighbor,’ and who actively seeks the
welfare of the ‘other.’”
This raises obvious challenges to
our Methodist institutions of higher education, especially our
seminaries. How do theological schools educate ministers, scholars and
social servants to lead effectively in a multi-religious society? Do we
cloister our future ministers and educate them among only Methodists
(and like-minded Protestants)? Or do we open the doors a little wider
and explore different alternatives?
In the 1950s, my
Methodist family was unsure about the salvation of the Baptists next
door. But today, ecumenism is no longer a dirty word, and we embrace
fellow Christians from across the theological spectrum as sisters and
brothers (whether we agree with them or not). Our recently consecrated
Joint Communion with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is the
most recent evidence of the ecumenical movement’s continued
success.
We find ourselves in a quickly changing society
with more and more people of different religious convictions living
among us. In the mid-20th century, we debated the differences among
Christians. Today, the differences are between whole communities with
vastly divergent worldviews, religions and cultural heritages.
In
many ways, Methodist colleges and universities are already leading the
way, showing all of us how our church might be “generous, inquisitive,
respectful and compassionate” toward our religious neighbors. Indeed, I
am unaware of any Methodist undergraduate institution that does not
welcome students from beyond the Christian tradition. If our colleges
and universities are leading the way, how then should Methodist
seminaries respond?
Of course, our theological schools
should continue to educate effective ministers and servant-leaders for
United Methodism and the host of other denominations we serve. But we
must do so in recognition of the religious diversity that already
exists throughout America. Though most of our theological schools
already teach (and sometimes require) classes in the beliefs and
practices of other religions, this approach is not enough.
Methodist
students learning about the religious “other” is one thing. But
Methodists learning alongside those of other religious persuasions is
something else altogether.
For this reason, my own
institution has chosen a new path. The trustees and faculty are
expanding Claremont School of Theology into a Methodist-related,
multi-religious graduate university designed to provide the context and
programs in which students of different religious traditions
can—alongside one another—acquire the knowledge, skills and compassion
they will need to not only lead their own communities but to also guide
them across religious boundaries so that future generations can make
the world a better place. (You can learn more about this ambitious plan
at http://www.cst.edu/UniversityProject.)
We
believe—as the ecumenists did in the 1950s—that sitting in class with
those who espouse different beliefs is a good educational strategy. We
are working hard to ensure that this bold plan will educate United
Methodist ministers who can effectively lead the church in pursuing
social justice and world peace in a multi-religious society.
But
we also hope to help shape a new generation of leaders from across the
religious spectrum who can work together, shoulder-to-shoulder, toward
the repair of our world.
Dr. Campbell is the sixth president
of Claremont School of Theology, an ecumenical and inter-religious
theological school of the United Methodist Church, located in Southern
California. He can be contacted through his blog at http://presidents-pen.blogspot.com.
Jerry D. Campbell
Informed
by John Wesley’s writings, they urge each of us to reconsider what it
means to be a Methodist: “one deeply rooted and grounded in the
Christian faith, who is generous, inquisitive, respectful and
compassionate towards our ‘neighbor,’ and who actively seeks the
welfare of the ‘other.’” 
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