“Buckle your seat belts, Louisville Seminary,” the Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), told the crowd in a packed Caldwell Chapel during the inauguration of the seminary’s 10th president, the Rev. Dr. Alton B. Pollard III. “A new day is coming to this institution, a new day that has been ordained by God. Praise be to God for what God has in store for this work of ministry and faith.”
Seminary professor that he is, the Rev. Dr. Cliff Kirkpatrick slipped about 50 staff at the Presbyterian Center a surprise Wednesday.
He gave them a 22-question pop quiz on ecumenical and interfaith developments that have occurred over the last century.
“Buckle your seat belts, Louisville Seminary,” the Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), told a packed Caldwell Chapel Friday during the inauguration of the seminary’s 10th president, the Rev. Dr. Alton B. Pollard III. “A new day is coming to this institution, a new day that has been ordained by God. Praise be to God for what God has in store for this work of ministry and faith.”
Saying he’s “been yearning to come” visit staff at the Presbyterian Center, the Rev. Dr. Alton B. Pollard III, president of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary since Sept. 1, did just that Thursday, quoting this Valentine’s Day scripture from 1 John: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God …”
In her 15th year of teaching Christian Education at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Va., Karen-Marie Yust had never received an invitation to be part of a conversation like this.
She, along with faculty and staff representing seven of the 10 PC(USA) seminaries, gathered around a table last week to offer input on Christian formation — that is shifting its focus from age and stages ministry to intergenerational faith formation.
White Protestantism has dominated U.S. politics and culture for much of the nation’s history, but demographic change and an exodus from churches by the young are bringing the era to a close.
That prediction comes from Robert P. Jones, founder and chief executive officer of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), who has won the 2019 Grawemeyer Award in Religion for his book, “The End of White Christian America.” Simon & Schuster published the work in 2016.
With a student body that represents 20 different denominations, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary has named a scholar of diverse religions and cultures as its tenth president.
In The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Orbis Books, 2011), renowned theologian James H. Cone passionately conjoins the provocative images of the first-century cross and the twentieth-century lynching tree. The book earned Cone the 2018 Grawemeyer Award in Religion.
