A United Methodist school in California is
reportedly the first seminary in the United States to become
multi-faith. Featured in a recent Los Angeles Times
article, Claremont School of Theology outside Los Angeles
will begin clergy training for Muslims and Jews this fall, and
hopes for future Buddhist and Hindu programs.
Concerned about the new direction, United Methodism’s
oversight agency for its 13 official seminaries cut off funding
to Claremont early this year and will reevaluate the cut-off
later this month. Claremont was getting about $800,000 annually
from the denomination. But the school says it has been offered
$10 million from private supporters for the interfaith
initiative. About 70 of Claremont’s 275 or so students are United
Methodists.
“Eventually, I suspect we will have a cluster of
seminaries,” Claremont President Jerry Campbell told a church
publication early this year. “Each with its own specialty, but in
an environment that emphasizes mutual understanding and makes
religion the parent of peace rather than the parent of
conflict.”
At a press conference on June 9, Campbell officially
unveiled the multi-faith plans, joined by Jewish and Muslim
partners. “This is a very American approach. It’s an expression
of American religion and American religious attitude,” enthused
Jihad Turk, religion director for the Islamic Center of Southern
California, which is partnering with Claremont. An imam who has
studied in Iran and Saudi Arabia, Turk promised: “We promote a
theology that is inclusive, that is cooperative, and that is
pluralistic in tone and tenor.” Citing “fanatics” who “promote
theology of death,” he asserted that Claremont’s interfaith
project is the “strongest counter argument” to “fear, hate and
violence.”
Claremont’s first Muslim professor is a woman who declared
at the press conference: “We are redefining what it means to be
righteous in the 21st century.” Najeeba Syeed-Miller insisted
Claremont’s goal was not to “dilute our faith but to be better
Muslims, Jews, Catholics, Hindus, Protestants or whatever faith
you bring.” She urged a “theology of courage” focused on
“collaborative action” on issues like homelessness and
hunger.
Having struggled with financial solvency and even its
accreditation in recent years, Claremont seems to see the
multi-faith project as its redemption. Founded in
1885 as a Methodist seminary, in the 20th century it followed
most other Mainline Protestant seminaries into theological
liberalism, which morphed into radicalism in the 1960s. Claremont
became especially renowned for Professor John Cobb, one of the
architects of Process Theology, which asserts that God is
constantly evolving and mutating rather than immutably sovereign.
In the early 1970s, Cobb founded the Center for Process Studies
at Claremont, partnering with Professor David Ray Griffin, who is
now a leading 9/11 conspiracy theorist. Griffin, who now heads
the center and remains at Claremont as professor emeritus,
believes the Bush Administration exploded the World Trade Center
to justify its imperialist wars. Process theology, with its
notion that God is incomplete, is especially susceptible to vast
and dark conspiracy theories, since it rejects orthodox
Christianity’s confidence that a sovereign God ultimately defeats
all evil.
Besides Process Theology, Claremont has been host to
countless other theological fads and isms over the last half
century or more, with its main stumbling block being primarily
orthodox Christianity. California continues to host numerous
robustly evangelical congregations, such as Rick Warren’s
Southern Baptist Saddleback Church, which regularly draws about
20,000 worshippers. But thanks partly to Claremont’s revisionist
theological influence, which de-emphasizes evangelism and
Christianity’s uniqueness, United Methodism has lost about half
its membership in California and elsewhere on the West Coast over
the last 40 years. Less than 4 percent of all United Methodists
are now on the West Coast or in Rocky Mountain states. The few
remaining evangelical United Methodist clergy in that region
typically attend a non United Methodist seminary, including
evangelical Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, which has about 4,500
students.
At less than 10 percent of Fuller’s size, and having
struggled financially for years, despite a United Methodist
subsidy equal to about $10,000 per each United Methodist student,
Claremont envisioned institutional salvation outside
Christianity. But Claremont still hopes to reclaim its United
Methodist funding by placing its non-Christian programs under a
legal umbrella called The University Project. Claremont insists
it will continue to cherish its Methodist “presence” on campus
and will remain under the governance of the United Methodist
Church. The school’s board includes the United Methodist bishops
of Phoenix and Pasadena, both of whom presumably supported or did
not resist the new interfaith direction when the board approved
it in 2008. Unsurprisingly, both bishops preside over dwindling
flocks and are renowned advocates for homosexual causes and
liberalized immigration advocacy, while failing to attract many
homosexuals or immigrants to their United Methodist
churches.
Producing ministers who actually win converts and sustain
congregations may recede in importance if Claremont can gain
liberal donor dollars for its multi-religious path. As one
Claremont board member has explained: “The confessional seminary
is a dead duck.” The $10 million interfaith gift is coming from a
liberal Methodist couple in Phoenix and compares to Claremont’s
less than $8 million total budget in 2006-2007, when Campbell was
first becoming president and struggling to save the
school.
Another issue is whether Claremont’s multi-faith initiative
will reproduce new adherents of religious pluralism or provide an
opening for orthodox Muslims who, unlike the liberal Methodists
who run Claremont, believe in proselytism and the objective truth
of their own religion. And if the latter, how will dedicated
pluralists who largely reject Christianity’s unique truth claims
accommodate Islam’s own potent truth claims?
Bedazzled by a $10 million gift and a dramatic financial
reversal after a near implosion, Claremont’s momentarily
celebrating president, faculty and board may not have thoroughly
pondered the ultimate repercussions of a multi-faith seminary
whose only core dogma is seemingly self-preservation.
