Looking Forward with Hope: Reflections on the Present State and Future of Theological Education

Theological schools are currently facing a perfect storm of jeopardies that threatens their future prospects and even survivability. The squall is all the more menacing for free-standing seminaries that are not connected to a university, and especially for free-standing mainline Protestant or mainline denominational seminaries. This book brings together a stellar and diverse cast of administrators and professors working within different theological schools to reflect on the present crisis of theological education, and on the question of the possible future of mainline Protestant and mainline denominational theological schools in the United States.

Benjamín Valentín is currently Associate Professor of Latinx Christianity at Yale University Divinity School. From 2000 to 2016 he taught at Andover Newton Theological School, where he was Professor of Theology and Culture and Director of the Orlando E. Costas Lectureship in Latino/a Religion and Theology. Valentín is the author of the award-winning Mapping Public Theology: Beyond Culture, Identity, and Difference (2002) and Theological Cartographies: Mapping the Encounter with God, Humanity, and Christ (2015), and editor of four other published volumes.