Kudos to Claremont School of Theology, a Christian institution with long ties to the Methodist Church, for it’s willingness to lead us into the future by becoming the first American multi-faith seminary. Claremont will begin offering clerical training to imams, rabbis, and pastors this fall.
“We want our future religious leaders to understand the landscape in which they will be leading,” Campbell said in remarks prepared for Wednesday’s announcement. “We want them to be able to see ‘the other’ as neighbor, friend and co-worker. We want to be able to facilitate love among our different traditions in order that we can begin to solve the big problems.”
In making the announcement, Campbell identified the Muslim and Jewish organizations that will partner with Claremont to create the programs: The Islamic Center of Southern California, a well-established mosque in Koreatown, will help oversee the Muslim curriculum, and the Academy for Jewish Religion-California, a 10-year-old, nondenominational rabbinical school in Westwood, will be the Jewish partner.
The Muslim curriculum is expected to become one of the first programs in the United States to train imams, the clerics who lead Islamic prayer. Zaytuna, an Islamic college in Berkeley that is scheduled to open this fall, also plans to begin clerical training.
Source: Los Angeles Times
Claremont School of Theology has it right; this is the future landscape of religion. I’m glad to see it beginning now. This will be a very important event in the continuing history of American religion. I pray more of our religious institutions follow suit.
Note: I’m not totally convinced that Claremont School of Theology is the first seminary to ever have a multi-faith presence. It may be the most notable, but I’m sure it is not THE first in America to ever do so. Perhaps it is the first to make it official policy, and adjust curriculum accordingly, but unofficially, I know there have been multi-faith expressions at other seminaries too, spoken or otherwise. My own seminary – Lancaster Theological Seminary – was/is one of them. Maybe yours was one of them too? Perhaps the biggest difference between Claremont and other seminaries is the curriculum expansion, intentional degree program focus, and nurtured/nurturing professional relationships with the student’s representative religion. Those are important differences and as far as those things are concerned Claremont is a big first.