Dear GTU Community,

Looking back over the past few decades in theological education, I’m struck by how our intellectual frameworks and methodologies have changed, even as we continue to educate students for teaching, research, ministry, and service.

When I did my doctoral work in ethics at the GTU in the early ’80s, and in my teaching years after that, we leaned on the perspectives of thinkers who had gone before. Certainly ethicists have always asked the normative questions about what is right and good. That hasn’t changed. But our scholarly analysis in the Christian tradition then was primarily drawn from the canonical works of Tillich, the Niebuhrs, Durkheim, Rahner, Weber, Barth, and others. They provided a kind of grand unified theory, attempting to connect ideas into integrated systems. We focused on identifying laws, norms, and principles that guide behavior.

Today, scholarly discussion is being shaped by the here and now?the times we live in. We find ourselves in a more particularized, diverse, post-modern intellectual world, where we can’t assume that one size idea fits all. To engage the complex issues that emerge from that world, contemporary scholars now draw from a broader spectrum of religious traditions and cultures.

This has changed the debate and the participants, making theological scholarship and discussion vastly more interreligious and intercultural. It also distinguishes practice from theory to a greater degree. While the GTU has historically been both theory and praxis-based, we are now more conscious of justice and public policy issues and how our methodology has concrete relevance today.

One of the current scholars shaping the discussion is Kwame Anthony Appiah, author of The Ethics of Identity. Appiah examines moral issues through the lens of individual and group identities rooted in and informed by politics, culture, and society.

That shift reflects an evolution natural to our globalized, post-colonial, post-9/11 world. The real experiences of our times bore deeply into our thinking. And scholarly practice will no doubt continue to reflect that, changing with the world.

To be a force for leadership in this evolution, we will do what we have always done at the GTU: devote ourselves to critical and creative scholarship. In doing so we are ever indebted to those who have led us here?and to those whose intellectual and social vitality continues to take us forward.

As an alumnus, I can speak first hand about the quality of preparation I had here. Like many other graduates, the GTU equipped me to grapple with the most urgent needs of our time.

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