The Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York (often shortened to UTS or Union) is a private, ecumenical, liberal Christian seminary in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, New York City. It has been affiliated with Columbia University since 1928.
Presently, Columbia University lists UTS among its affiliate schools, along with the Columbia-degree conferring Barnard College and Teachers College. Beginning in 1928 and continuing until an indeterminate juncture, UTS "[had] the status of a [Columbia] University faculty in the educational system of the University through representation" on the now-defunct University Council. In 1964, UTS also established an affiliation with the neighboring Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Despite its affiliation with Columbia University, UTS has remained an independent institution with its own administration, degrees and Board of Trustees. UTS confers the following degrees: Master of Divinity (MDiv), Master of Divinity & Social Work dual degree (MDSW), Master of Arts in religion (MAR), Master of Arts in Social Justice (MASJ), Master of Sacred Theology (STM), Doctor of Ministry (DMin), and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD).
UTS is the oldest independent seminary in the United States and has long been known as a bastion of progressive Christian scholarship, with a number of prominent thinkers among its faculty or alumni. It was founded in 1836 by members of a predecessor to the Presbyterian Church in the USA, but was open to students of all denominations. In 1893, UTS rescinded the right of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church to veto faculty appointments, thus becoming fully independent. In the 20th century, Union became a center of liberal Christianity. It served as the birthplace of the Black theology, womanist theology, and other theological movements. It houses the Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, one of the largest theological libraries in the Western Hemisphere.
Contents
History
Early history
Union Theological Seminary was founded in 1836. During the late 19th century it became one of the leading centers of liberal Christianity in the United States. In 1891, Charles A. Briggs, who was being installed as the chair of biblical studies, delivered an inaugural address in which he questioned the verbal inspiration of Scripture. When the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. vetoed Briggs' appointment and eventually deposed Briggs for heresy two years later, Union removed itself from denominational oversight. In 1939, Auburn Theological Seminary moved to the campus. After 75 years Auburn departed in 2014.
Among its graduates were the historian of Christianity Arthur McGiffert; biblical scholar James Moffatt; Harry Emerson Fosdick, the pastor of Riverside Church who served as professor during his tenure there; and the Socialist leader Norman Thomas.
In 1895, members of the Union Theological Seminary Alumni Club founded Union Settlement Association, one of the oldest settlement houses in New York City. After visiting Toynbee Hall in London and inspired by the example of Hull House in Chicago, the alumni decided to create a settlement house in the area of Manhattan enclosed on the north and south by East 96th and 110th Streets and on the east and west by the East River and Central Park.
The neighborhood, known as East Harlem, was filled with new tenements but devoid of any civic services. The ethos of the settlement house movement called for its workers to "settle" in such neighborhoods in order to learn first-hand the problems of the residents. "It seemed to us that, as early settlers, we had a chance to grow up with the community and affect its development," wrote William Adams Brown, Theology Professor, Union Theological Society (1892–1930) and President, Union Settlement Association (1915–1919).
Union Settlement still exists, providing community-based services and programs to support the immigrant and low-income residents of East Harlem. One of East Harlem's largest social service agencies, Union Settlement reaches more than 13,000 people annually at 17 locations throughout East Harlem through a range of programs, including early childhood education, youth development, senior services, job training, the arts, adult education, nutrition, counseling, a farmers' market, community development, and neighborhood cultural events.
20th century to present
Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich made UTS the center of both liberal and neo-orthodox Protestantism in the inter-war period. Niebuhr joined UTS in 1929 and Tillich in 1933. Prominent public intellectual Cornel West commenced a promising academic career at UTS in 1977. As liberalism lost ground to conservatism after the 1960s (while neo-orthodoxy dissipated) and thus declined in prestige, UTS ran into financial difficulties and shrank significantly because of a reduced student base.
Eventually, the school agreed to lease some of its buildings to Columbia University and to transfer ownership of and responsibility for the Burke Library to Columbia. These agreements helped stabilize the school's finances, which had been hobbled by increasing library costs and the need for substantial campus repairs.
On July 1, 2008, feminist theologian Serene Jones became UTS's first female president in its 172-year history, succeeding Joseph C. Hough Jr.
On June 10, 2014, Jones announced that UTS would be joining the movement to divest from the fossil fuels industry in protest at the damage the industry is causing to the environment. UTS's $108 million endowment will no longer include any fossil fuel investments. On May 9, 2024, UTS's Board of Trustees voted to endorse divestment from "companies profiting from the war in Palestine" and announced that they will be joining the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility.
Classroom and faculty space was added to UTS in the early 2020s as part of the construction of Claremont Hall, a 41-story residential condominium at 100 Claremont Avenue. UTS owns 27 of the apartments in Claremont Hall.
Although administratively independent from Columbia, UTS is affiliated through representation by one voting faculty member and one non-voting student observer in the Columbia University Senate.
On July 1, 2026, Lisa L. Thompson became Union's 17th president.
Campus
UTS's campus is located in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, bordered by Claremont Avenue, Broadway, and West 120th and 122nd Streets. The brick and limestone English Gothic revival architecture, by architects Allen & Collens, completed in 1910, includes the tower, which adapts features of the crossing tower of Durham Cathedral. Adjacent to Teachers College, Barnard College, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and the Manhattan School of Music, Union has cross-registration and library access agreements with all of these schools.
The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 23, 1980, and parts were made a New York City designated landmark in 1965. Some sections of the campus are now on long-term lease to Columbia University.
Library
The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, one of the largest theological libraries in North America, contains over 700,000 items. Burke's holdings include extensive special collections, including Greek census records from 20 C.E., a rare 12th-century manuscript of the Life of St. Boniface, and one of the first African-American hymnals, published in Philadelphia in 1818.
The Burke Library also maintains a number of world-renowned archival collections, including the Archives of Women in Theological Scholarship and the Missionary Research Library Archives.
In 2004, the Burke Library became fully integrated into the Columbia University Libraries system, which holds over 14 million volumes. The library is named in honor of Walter Burke, a generous benefactor to the library who served as chairman of the Board of Directors of the Seminary from 1976 to 1982.
Faculty
Both Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich taught at the seminary. Niebuhr joined the faculty in 1929 and retired in 1952. Tillich was recruited by Niebuhr to UTS following his dismissal from the University of Frankfurt. Nazi officials terminated Tillich from the University of Frankfurt and placed him on their list of "undesirables". Tillich subsequently narrowly escaped arrest by the Gestapo in October 1933 and made his way out of Germany joining UTS in December 1933.
In 1930, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Postgraduate Teaching Fellow at the seminary. He later returned in 1939 to be a member of the faculty and to escape Nazi harassment in Germany. Writing of his experience there in his book Barcelona, Berlin, New York, Bonhoeffer was dismayed by the liberalism of the seminary and its students, noting, "The students are completely clueless with respect to what dogmatics is really about. They are not familiar with even the most basic questions. They become intoxicated with liberal and humanistic phrases, are amused at the fundamentalists, and yet basically are not even up to their level...." Referring to Union Seminary, Bonhoeffer noted: "A seminary in which numerous students openly laugh during a public lecture because they find it amusing when a passage on sin and forgiveness ...is cited has obviously, despite its many advantages, forgotten what Christian theology in its very essence stands for" (pp. 309–10). He soon regretted his decision and decided that he had to return to Germany to resist the Nazis. He took the last ship from New York to Germany in late August 1939. Due to his secret involvement with the 20 July plot on Hitler's life, he was executed at the Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 8, 1945, only 15 days before the United States Army liberated the camp.
American theologian, James Hal Cone, one of the founders of liberation theology and influential in the development of Black theology, began teaching at Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1970, holding the distinguished Charles A. Briggs Chair in systematic theology from 1977 until his death in 2018.
Serene Jones, the seminary's first female president, was inaugurated in November 2008. Civil rights activist Cornel West joined the faculty in July 2012, and rejoined in 2021.
Notable current faculty
Mary C. Boys – Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology
David M. Carr – Professor of Old Testament; contributed to Genesis in the New Oxford Annotated Bible (New Revised Standard Version)
Euan Cameron – Henry Luce, III Professor of Reformation Church History
Alan Cooper – Appointed Professor of Bible in 1998, becoming the first person to hold a joint professorship at both Union and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. His dual appointment has been described as a major step in strengthening ties between the two seminaries.
Pamela Cooper-White – Christiane Brooks Johnson Professor of Psychology and Religion
Kelly Brown Douglas – Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary as well as the Canon Theologian at the Washington National Cathedral.
Gary Dorrien – American social ethicist and theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics
Roger Haight – Visiting professor of Theology
Chung Hyun Kyung – Associate Professor of Ecumenical Theology
Cornel West – Professor of Religious Philosophy and Christian Practice
Notable former faculty
Michelle Alexander – writer, civil rights advocate, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, opinion columnist for The New York Times. Visiting professor from 2016 to 2021.
Charles Augustus Briggs – Professor of Hebrew and Cognate Languages (1874–1891) and of Biblical Theology (1891–1904); an important early leader of the Modernist movement
Raymond E. Brown (1928–1998) – Professor of New Testament (1971–1990), member of the Pontifical Bible Commission, and the first Catholic to gain tenure
Charles Butler (1802–1897) – founder
Henry Sloane Coffin – President of Union and a leading theological liberal. Coffin also obtained his Bachelor of Divinity from the Union Theological Seminary in 1900. He declined an offer to become president of Union Theological Seminary in 1916. In 1926, offered the presidency (a second time), he accepted and retained the post until 1945.
James Cone (1936–2018) – a founder of Black theology, he was Charles Augustus Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology until his death
W. D. Davies, (1911–2001) – Welsh-born Edward Robinson Professor of Biblical Theology, noted New Testament scholar and Congregationalist Minister.
Harrison S. Elliot (1882–1951) – author and leader in the Y.M.C.A., Religious Education Association, and Union Theological Seminary.
James A. Forbes, Joe R. Engle Professor of Preaching before becoming senior pastor of Riverside Church, after which he continued to serve as an adjunct professor.
Harry Emerson Fosdick – First minister of Riverside Church and professor of homiletics
Notable alumni
Rubem Alves – Brazilian theologian and writer
William Scott Ament (Bachelor of Divinity, 1877) – controversial American missionary to China (1877–1909)
John Batchelor – radio news show writer and host
Frederic Mayer Bird – Class of 1860: clergyman, educator, and hymnologist.
J. Seelye Bixler – 16th president of Colby College
Dietrich Bonhoeffer – German Lutheran theologian and Nazi resister, attended UTS in 1930 for postgraduate studies and a teaching fellowship under Reinhold Niebuhr
Anton Boisen – founder of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) movement
Marcus Borg – Biblical scholar and author; former Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University
Malcolm Boyd – Episcopal priest and author. He was one of the most prominent of the gay clergy to come out of the closet when he did so in 1977. For two years in 1956 and 1957, Boyd engaged in post-graduate studies at Union Theological Seminary where he wrote his first book, Crisis in Communication. He participated in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements in the 1960s.
Walter Brueggemann – William Marcellus McPheeters professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary
Frederick Buechner – writer, novelist, poet, essayist, theologian, and ordained Presbyterian minister. Buechner described his time at Union at length in his 1982 autobiographical work, The Sacred Journey. In 2008 Union honored Buechner with the Unitas Distinguished Alumni/ae Awards, bestowed upon alumni/ae who exemplify the Seminary's academic breadth, diversity, and inclusiveness.