The Constitution and Associate Statutes of the Theological Seminary in Andover

40 pages. Footnotes. Some page discoloration/foxing. Cover has some wear, tears, chips, and soiling. Part of the top of pages 39/40 cut away (autograph?) with no loss of text. Andover Theological Seminary (1807-1965) was a Congregationalist seminary founded in 1807 and originally located in Andover, Massachusetts on the campus of Phillips Academy. In its original and merged forms, it was the first and thus the oldest theological seminary founded in the United States. The seminary continues as Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School launched in 2017. Andover Theological Seminary traces its roots to the late 18th century and the desire for a well-educated clergy among Congregationalists in the United States. That desire was expressed in the founding of Phillips Academy in 1778 for "the promotion of true Piety and Virtue". In 1806, a growing split within the Congregational churches, known as the Unitarian Controversy soon divided many of the oldest churches in Massachusetts and began to impact church polity and the hiring of ministers. A new school, Andover Theological Seminary on the campus of Phillips Academy (est. 1778) was established in 1807. This act, covered widely in the national press, was one of the significant events that contributed to the split in the denomination and to the eventual founding of the American Unitarian Association in 1825. Andover was founded by the joint efforts of traditionalist, "Old Calvinists" and the adherents of the New Divinity (also known as New England theology) which was more revivalistic. For a hundred years of its history, Phillips Academy shared its campus with the Andover Theological Seminary, which was founded on Phillips Hill in 1807 by orthodox Calvinists who had fled Harvard College after it appointed a liberal Unitarian theologian to a professorship of divinity. The Andover Theological Seminary was independent of Phillips Academy but shared the same board of directors. Among the topics addressed in the Constitution are: Natural Theology, Divinity, Protestants, Ecclesiastical History, Pulpit Eloquence, and Sermons. A seminary, school of theology, theological seminary, or divinity school is an educational institution for educating students (sometimes called seminarians) in scripture, theology, generally to prepare them for ordination to serve as clergy, in academics, or mostly in Christian ministry. The English word is taken from the Latin seminarium, translated as seed-bed, an image taken from the Council of Trent document Cum adolescentium aetas which called for the first modern seminaries. In the United States, the term is currently used for graduate-level theological institutions, but historically it was used for high schools.…