A Brief History of Christian Theological Seminary

Scott D. Seay, M.Div., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of the History of Global Christianity

Christian Theological Seminary traces its beginnings to 1855 with the founding of North Western Christian University in downtown Indianapolis.  Disciples leaders in Indiana were inspired in part by a concern that Alexander Campbell expressed throughout his writings: the growing nation sorely needed colleges to train Disciples to be effective leaders for the church and society.  Like so many other colleges founded in the early national period, the new school taught arts and sciences as part of a curriculum designed mainly to train ministers.  One commitment, however, distinguished the new university from all other Disciples schools at the time: abolitionism.   In fact, the founders of North Western Christian University envisioned their school to be an alternative to Campbell’s own Bethany College, located in (West) Virginia, where the they believed that the “habits and manners” of slaveholding society inappropriately influenced the school.  By 1877, the new school had been moved to Irvington, and re-named Butler University in honor of its most celebrated leader and most generous financial supporter, Indianapolis lawyer and abolitionist Ovid Butler.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, Disciples were tinkering with new models of ministerial preparation, even as Butler began offering a more diverse undergraduate curriculum. From 1889 to 1897, the university maintained a separate “Department of Biblical Philology,” in which ministerial students took coursework in biblical studies and homiletics beyond the requirements of the undergraduate degree in liberal arts.   Between 1898 and 1910, students preparing for ministry took their studies at the Bible College of the Christian Church in Indiana, a school technically separate from but related to Butler University.  When the Christian Women’s Board of Mission for the Disciples established the School of Missions, the Bible College joined forces with this new school to provide a theological education with a dual focus: a liberal arts education emphasizing Biblical interpretation, and training for world mission in the emerging ecumenical movement.    In the 1910s and early 1920s, the Butler School of Religion, as it was then called, offered a Bachelor of Divinity degree for those planning to enter Christian ministry. Because these new models of ministry were often controversial among Disciples, none of these efforts were likely to be long-lasting.

With the generous financial support of Disciples businessmen William G. Irwin and Hugh Th. Miller, and Disciples minister Z. T. Sweeney, a graduate School of Religion was established at Butler University in 1924, even as the growing university moved to its current location on Indianapolis’s near northside.  As the founding dean, Frederick Doyle Kershner shaped the ethos of the new school.  A committed Disciples educator, Kershner nonetheless opened the Butler School of Religion to persons of all denominations.  His inclusive vision is confirmed further by the fact that women, persons of color, and even those of religious traditions other than Christianity were included on the faculty and in the student body from the beginning.  Consistent with his own irenic spirit, Kershner fashioned the School of Religion into a place where the widening gap between “liberal” and “conservative” Disciples could be bridged in the interests of Christian unity.

Despite Kershner’s irenic and inclusive founding vision, the Butler School of Religion weathered a period of theological tension in the 1940s and 1950s.   Disciples were dividing over a variety of theological issues, but especially over the cooperative structures that eventually would consolidate as the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in 1968.  Through a period of painful development, by the late 1950s it was clear that the Butler School of Religion would serve the theologically progressive group among Disciples, a commitment embodied best in Dean Orman Shelton.

Institutionally, too, the School of Religion weathered tensions during the 1940s and 1950s.  Specifically, its faculty and administration resisted increasing efforts by the Butler University Board of Trustees to exercise greater control over the school.  Because it was flourishing numerically and financially, leaders of the School of Religion entertained the possibility of severing its institutional ties to Butler University and becoming a free-standing seminary.  This plan was realized in 1958, when the school was re-organized and incorporated as Christian Theological Seminary.  Almost immediately, the administration and faculty recast its vision of theological education: though committed to ecumenism, the school would maintain formal ties to the emerging Christian Church (Disciples of Christ); it would offer graduate degrees only, and would focus intentionally on programs to prepare women and men for congregational leadership; and its curriculum would demand the highest standards of scholarship from students and focus intently on developing their lives of faith.  Under the leadership of President Beauford Norris, Christian Theological Seminary settled into its own new building on Shooter’s Hill, just south of the Butler University campus in 1966.

Since its establishment as a free-standing institution, Christian Theological Seminary has adapted to meet the changing needs of both church and society.  In the 1970s, the seminary’s curriculum began to emphasize social scientific approaches to the study of religious faith and to promote active engagement with pressing social concerns of the day.  An innovative field education program was introduced and expanded the seminary’s understanding of “ministry” to include work in social service agencies, government, and other non-congregational settings.  In the early 1990s, the seminary launched several degree programs in psychotherapy, and began operating a counseling center that serves both as a training center for students in those programs and as a much-needed resource for the Indianapolis community.

Under the leadership of Presidents Richard Dickinson and Edward Wheeler, the 1980s and 1990s witnessed the intentional diversification of the seminary community.  Though it maintains formal ties to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the school now understands itself primarily as an ecumenical seminary.   Presently, almost forty denominations and religious traditions are represented among the administration, faculty, staff, and student body, creating a vigorous community of faith and learning.  Moreover, the school actively recruits and welcomes persons into the community of all racial/ethnic, gender, sexual, and national identities.  For a school of its size, Christian Theological Seminary now can boast of one of the most diverse communities of any seminary in the nation.

Whether it is 1855, 1925, or today, all of the educational programs at Christian Theological Seminary have focused on a single aim, most recently articulated in the school’s mission statement: “The mission of Christian Theological Seminary is to form disciples of Jesus Christ for church and community leadership to serve God’s transforming of the world.”

View a historical timeline of CTS.