A SYMPOSIUM ON KEITH WATKINS: "CHRISTIANTHEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, INDIANAPOLIS: A HISTORY OF EDUCATION FOR MINISTRY"

Encounter, Autumn 2002

In 2001, Keith Watkins, Herald B. Monroe Professor of Practical Parish Ministry, Professor of Worship, and Director of Sweeney Chapel, Emeritus, at Christian Theological Seminary, published a book that tells the story of the origin and development of the same seminary.1 Since Encounter is sponsored by Christian Theological Seminary, this journal commissioned three scholars who are familiar with the seminary to reflect on Watkins's interpretation of CTS and its place in broader ecclesial and theological currents in North America. Their reflections come together here as a kind of informal symposium.

Each reviewer knows CTS from a slightly different perspective. D. Newell Williams, William G Irwin Professor of Church History, is a current member of the CTS faculty and served as Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty (1991-1997). William G. Irwin, whose life and legacy are honored in the Chair in which Williams sits, is a significant figure in Watkins's book. Williams gives particular attention to the history of the seminary in relationship to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). He has been on the CTS faculty since 1984.

Paul M. Blowers has been Professor of Church History at Emmanuel School of Religion since 1989. As Blowers points out, the storylines of CTS and Emmanuel share many elements while following trajectories with different nuances. Blowers brings a direct awareness to his task as he grew up in Indianapolis where his father, Russell Blowers, graduated from the old Butler School of Religion (predecessor to Christian Theological Seminary) in 1959, and was pastor of the East 91st Street Christian Church (earlier known as East 49th Street Christian Church) from 1951-1996. Blowers considers the history of CTS in relationship to the North American Christian Convention.

Edwin L. Becker, Professor of Sociology of Religion, Emeritus, at Christian Theological Seminary, served for a time as Vice-President. After serving on the faculty at the Divinity School of Drake University, Becker was called to the CTS faculty in 1965 and served until retirement in 1981. Professor Becker observed many of the events recollected in this book, first from a distance at Drake and then as a participant during his Indianapolis years. Professor Becker takes a personal approach. This review is one of Professor Becker's last published works as he entered into the larger life of God just a few months before these essays came to print. Encounter gives thanks to God for his life and ministry.

D. Newell Williams

This study might have been more descriptively subtitled, "A History of Disciples of Christ Education for Ministry." As Watkins shows, CTS was born out of the emerging Cooperative/Independent division of the Disciples of Christ and lived the first twenty-five years of its life in the growing tension of that conflict. The history of CTS cannot be understood apart from the seminary's relation to this twentieth-century Disciples of Christ controversy and the far-reaching consequences of its resolution.

The story can be summarized as follows. At the heart of the issues that troubled Disciples for more than a quarter of a century and eventually resulted in the separation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ was disagreement over the practice of "open membership." Nineteenth-century Disciples founder, Alexander Campbell, taught that baptism is believers' immersion. Therefore, church membership was to be limited to persons who had been immersed as believers. Advocates of "open membership" argued that Christians who believed that they had been baptized, though they had not been immersed as believers, should be recognized as members of the church. Both sides saw their view as furthering the cause of Christian unity to which the "movement" was committed. Another Disciples founder, Barton Stone, advocated open membership, a fact not noted by Watkins and, arguably, beyond the scope of this study. By the end of the nineteenth century, Stone's support of open membership was not well known and advocates of open membership were often proponents of the newer historical approach to the interpretation of the Bible known as the Higher Criticism. Thus, the twentieth-century Disciples controversy over open membership, though a distinctive concern of Disciples rooted in their identity as a Christian unity movement, was also related to the larger American Protestant conflict over the character of biblical interpretation.

In 1925, Disciples who opposed open membership and the newer approaches to the interpretation of scripture founded the College of Religion (later called the School of Religion) at Butler University, which would become Christian Theological Seminary. Efforts of Indiana Disciples to provide for the education of ministers began in 1855 with the opening of North Western Christian University, later named Butler in recognition of the leadership of Indianapolis lawyer and Disciples layman, Ovid Butler. In the 1890s, there was a controversy over the teaching of Bible professor Hugh Carson Garvin. Though no advocate of the Higher Criticism, Garvin appeared to favor open membership. The leading figure in the opposition to Garvin was Columbus, Indiana minister Z. T. Sweeney. Sweeney's brother-in-law, William G. Irwin, was the driving force in the establishment of the College of Religion, and it was Sweeney himself who preached the opening convocation of the new school.