Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 58:230 (Apr 1901)
Article: The Presidency Of Theological Seminaries
Author: John Knox Mclean

BSac 58:230 (April 1901) p. 314

The Presidency Of Theological Seminaries

Pres. John Knox Mclean

Should The Theological Seminary Have A Permanent President; And If So, What Should Be The Powers And Duties Of The Office?

[The Conference of Congregational Seminaries (United States and Canada) is an organization in the interest of unifying and bettering, within Congregational lines, the work of ministerial training. The conference includes our seven American institutions—Andover, Bangor, Chicago, Hartford, Oakland, Oberlin, Yale—and the Congregational Divinity College at Montreal. As part of the program for its last meeting, held in St. Louis, October, 1900, the writer, by appointment, presented a paper on the topic named above. So great interest was developed in the discussion which followed and so vital did the subject appear to the minds of those present in its bearing upon Seminary administration and on the general work of ministerial training, that it has been thought wise to give it wider currency. This statement will explain the appearance and form of this article.—J. K. M.]

The question of a permanent presidency for theological seminaries is of recent origin. Whatever has been attempted in that direction among our Congregational churches has been, with little exception, more in name than in reality. Thirteen years ago Dr. Hartranft was made, in the proper sense of the term,—and greatly to the advantage of the institution he has represented,—president of Hartford; six years ago Pacific, at Oakland, assumed a supervising head. The title has been used in case of others of our schools, but only by accommodation. The actual position of the person bearing it has usually been, by selection of his faculty,

BSac 58:230 (April 1901) p. 315

chairman of that body; but with no substantial increase of powers or duties toward the institution as such. The same thing is true in the Presbyterian denomination. Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall was three years since made full and permanent president of Union Seminary, and he had predecessors who more or less fully discharged the proper functions of that office; Dr. George B. Stewart has been in like manner more recently installed with full powers as president of Auburn; the late lamented Dr. Henry M. Booth had been elected to the same standing, but died before the larger adjustments of the office were completed. With these exceptions, only remote approaches to an actual presidency, or deanship, have been made in either of these two denominations. A like condition exists, so far as information can be obtained, in case of the other religious bodies. The undertaking therefore of anything more than a theoretical presentation of the subject is attended by considerable difficulty. What precedents ...