You can never be entirely sure what you will find in an archive. While photographing old hand-crossed documents at the Yale Divinity School, I came across a number of faculty reports written by Leonard Woods, one of the founders of Andover Theological Seminary in 1807.
Each year, faculty submitted their reports to the board of trustees, describing their productivity during the academic year. Woods submitted his report as usual in 1826. However, it was longer than many of his other reports that I have found.
Woods took additional time in the approximately 20-page report to discuss his thoughts on the school program for training young ministers.
“I am clear,” he began, “that very little use can be made of ecclesiastical history, understood in the common sense, and of course that relatively little attention should be given to it in a theological studies courses. And this, I am sure, is the universal opinion of the best and most enlightened ministers and Christians of New England.
I laughed inside. I couldn’t disagree more with the late Reverend Woods. This is hardly surprising since I have spent years studying “ecclesiastical history”. I tend to believe that it should be given more attention, not less.
I also had to laugh because, having been raised as a Virginia Baptist, dissent against “the best and most enlightened ministers and Christians of New England” is in my theological bones.
Woods was primarily concerned with where church history should be placed in the curriculum of ministers-in-training. While 21st century theology programs may have some flexibility in when students take certain courses, in the early 19th century the curriculum was strictly regimented.
According to Woods, the foundation of any course of theological training was “sacred literature” or biblical studies. At Andover Seminary, Woods emphatically emphasized in his article that “true religion (must) be learned – and drawn from the Bible.”
Christian theology would naturally fit into this 19th century program, because it constituted the “continuation of the study of sacred literature”. This course sequence would be completed with “Sacred Rhetoric” or preaching. When “knowledge of the true religion is thus obtained, the next thing to do is to acquire the art of teaching it,” Woods asserted.
This clear progression from learning the biblical text to applying the biblical text to teaching the biblical text seems completely logical and well reasoned. However, Woods’ argument for a theological curriculum that neglected Christian church history had a nefarious underlying logic:
“I am clear that very little use can be made of ecclesiastical history…and of course relatively little attention should be given to it in a course of theological studies. »
By studying the opinions and beliefs of “professed Christians in different eras of the Church,” students might be “distracted from the only sure standard of divine truth.” If they studied the history of the Christian tradition, they “would be extremely likely to be influenced in their research and in their belief.”
Woods believed that when students began their studies of Christian theology, they should be “totally free” from the beliefs of previous centuries. Theology professors were to have “first access to the minds of their students.”
Such a prospect is troubling. Woods’ diatribe on the subject of ecclesiastical history reveals that the early construction of American seminaries and theological schools had little desire to cultivate theological inquiry. The only way Woods could have been more explicit about brainwashing student pastors would have been to use that word.
While many institutions of higher theological education If Americans today are much more interested in nurturing the theological imaginations of their students, some would find points of agreement with Woods. In my view, church history challenges the arrogance of believing that our theological constructs are the product of our own reading of Scripture and not of millennia of political, social, and economic history. This challenges the idea that we are self-taught Christians.
In recent weeks, there have been public calls for a return to the history books. Some have called for recognizing the parallels between the Nazi Party in early 20th century Germany and the contemporary challenge of constructing ethno-nationalism in some ranks of the Republican Party. Some have pointed out the sobering parallels between the conflict on the U.S. southern border and Japanese immigrant detention policies during World War II. Disagreements and political discussions over whether to characterize border facilities as “concentration,” “detention,” or “internment” camps do not obscure but rather accentuate historical parallels with parts of the past the darkest of America.
Christianity provided a powerful motivating factor in both of these historical examples and continues to exert a powerful influence on American politics today.
Realizing that our Christian theological beliefs are not solely constructed between the biblical text and ourselves, or even our contemporary religious communities, will not remedy our moral failings as Christians. However, recognizing that our theological beliefs are not only the product of our personal readings of Scripture, but also the consequences of a history of violent and bloody disagreement could cultivate in us a certain humility. This could destroy the certainty with which we hold our theological beliefs.
This might lead us to think that all of Christian theology has simply been conjured up and reconvened with each surging wave of time. This might remind us that this process of conjuring and reconjuring is what faith is all about.