Revival and Reform: Boston University School of Theology and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

BOSTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY (BUSTh)
BU: http://www.bu.edu/sth/

Crossing the BU (Boston University) Bridge, we see the School of Fine Arts (SFA) building where theater, dance, drama, and the visual arts are taught. The SFA is also one of the teaching sites for the Master of Sacred Music program, coordinated jointly by faculty member Dr. Linda Clark of the Boston University School of Theology.

Boston University School of Theology (BUSTh) was originally founded as a Methodist School, but it was not until the early-to-mid-1800s that Methodist churches arose in Boston. George Whitefield came here, and was allowed to preach in the Brattle Square Church, but his ideas were debated by many, and instead of serving to found societies which took up the issues of Methodism, his preaching served more to create rifts among the Congregationalists, dividing them into Old Lights (who held that ordained ministers by their very ordination were qualified to lead worship and to preach) and New Lights, who with Whitefield and the Wesleys believed that an inner conversion was necessary to fit a man (sic) for the ministry.

Boston University’s School of Theology, founded as The Seminary at Newbury, Vermont, and Concord, New Hampshire (1839), is the oldest Methodist Seminary in the United States, moving to Boston in 1867 as the Boston Theological Seminary. This school is one of three BTI schools that grants the Ph.D. degree. Together with Harvard University and its Divinity School and Boston College, Boston University School of Theology has been a leading institution in higher education. The School of Theology understands itself to play an important role in the education of world Christian and other religious leadership, and it does. Some of the programs for which the School of Theology is known include the following:
- A strong commitment to the study of the sciences in relation to Christian theology
- A deep and lasting commitment to the relationship between the psychological sciences and theology as seen in the Danielsen Center
- An historic theological grounding in Boston Personalism
- An important contribution to voluntary agencies through the history of the school related to its Wesleyan heritage

The Martin Luther King, Jr. statue

In the middle of the open courtyard in front of Marsh Chapel, is the Martin Luther King, Jr. statue, sculpted in 19 by to commemorate one of BU’s more famous graduates. Here you can also see the Marsh Chapel windows (taken from the old BU chapel which we passed on Beacon Hill) in place; the current chapel sees several large and small worship services and student gatherings weekly, and offers a wide array of programming for students and faculty alike. Current organist, choral director and composer Julian Wachner was honored by having an arrangement of his conducted by John Rutter when he was here this past fall, at Trinity Church, Boston.

Other Boston Shrines: Fenway Park

We will pass another religious shrine on our way to Holy Cross: the Fenway baseball park, home of the Boston Red Sox and the focus of many prayers and much propitiatory sacrifice in any given season. Current negotiations may leave the stadium as it is, tear it down and build a new one in its place, or send the team to Rhode Island, Chicago, or Taiwan....depending on whether you talk to the mayor, the team owners, or the local residents and neighbors. Built in (*dt) it is known especially for its “Green Monster,” a wall which occasions at least as much wailing and possibly more prayer than the one in Jerusalem at times...

Museums, Schools and Life on the Fenway

As we drive past the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum, with its many medieval and Renaissance artworks, look left to see the dome of the ...Orthodox Church in the Fenway.

A block down is the Boston Museum of Fine Art, whose holdings in American decorative arts, Oriental arts, and French Impressionists, are among the strongest in the world.

And, if you look to the right, you will see the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Cross, built in.... and the church home of several illustrious Greeks including former MA Governor and presidential candidate Michael Dukakis.

This Church reminds us that many additional peoples came to the Boston area in the late 1800s-early 1900s included many Greeks and others of Orthodox faith. The BTI is thus fortunate to include schools of many denominational and backgrounds, including three schools affiliated with Roman Catholicism and one, Holy Cross, of Greek confessional belief.

From here we swing down Huntington Ave to CUME/ HCGOST and thence to BC/SJS:. Go down Huntington Ave to the elbow bend where it becomes South Huntington Ave, and stay on that until you come to Perkins Street. The Center for Urban Ministerial Education, is on the right, just before the intersection of South Huntington Ave and Perkins Street, at 363 South Huntington.

Returning to Sonesta Hotel via Boston’s Back Bay

As we go back on Beacon Street to Downtown Boston, there are many points to be made and things to see. I will be pointing out the Richardsonian Public Works buildings to the right of the Reservoir, the Korean Christian (Methodist, I think) Church (originally Brookline Congregational Church) patterned after the first building constructed for the remnant of the Scrooby community which remained in Leuven in Holland, when the Separatists left.

BROOKLINE'S MIXED RELIGIOUS AND ETHNIC DIVERSITY

The First Church Replica of the Leyden, Holland Separatist Church: Now the church home of a longstanding a Korean Christian Community in Brookline, this building was constructed to scale to replicate the originale structure made by the remnant of the Scrooby Separatist congregation which lived in Holland before coming to the American colonies in 1620.

All Saints Parish Church: Also in the next block, is the 1892 Ralph Adams Cram building for All Saints Parish, Brookline, Chorales and choirs....here, Choir director and choir are ½ or more members of a very fine private choral group as well.

Brookline Jewish Community and Culture :The many synagogues, funerary establishments, and Kosher restaurants show the importance of the Jewish community in Brookline. The Brookline area has one of the highest Jewish populations in the US, and you will see temples and small havurats (house communities) throughout the area as well as kosher stores and delis, well-known shops like the Israeli Bookstore, and lovely retirement homes and senior/Community Centers.

The Longwood Mall: Turn left at Beacon and ....to see the Longwood Mall, planted in by to create a lovely garden area in the midst of the city. for showing how HC became too big for the building which GC had to leave for the same reason; schools grow in Boston!! (see my notes on p. 16/old draft 3)

Further down, on the way into Kenmore Square is what is now the Ruggles Baptist (née the Second Church of Boston, heir to the “real” Old North Church in North Square) And once on Boylston Street, we will be going past New Old South, Trinity, Boston, and the Boston Public Library.

A pattern of demographic movement can be traced from the Shawmut Peninsula in the colonial period, to the upper South end in the federalist Era, to the Back Bay in the Victorian period. Several churches, while they have followed the this pattern of movement to their present homes, maintain either by their names or their ....a sense of connection with the earlier locations. Trinity’s first site is commemorated by a plaque on Hawley Alley around the corner from Filenes (where the Au Bon Pain is) with a bas-relief showing its second building on that site, the French Romanesque structure completed in by ... New Old South (187 *) is the most clear about keeping both its name and its confession straight; it is the only surviving colonial Congregational church to remain Trinitarian (1st and 2nd is U/U, the other 11 have all died out) and it makes clear the successional nature of its current building without losing the nomenclature which connects it to the building still standing on its original site.

The BPL’s (1915...ck dt*) French Classical Revival façade (and once, the front of the original Boston Museum of Fine Arts, originally sited where the Copley Plaza is now) looks across Copley Square at Trinity Church, Episcopal, H.H.Richardson’s 1873 Byzantine-Romanesque structure, a further comment on the dictum one church historian offered me, that with the filling of one row of city blocks about every ten years, beginning in 1852, the surviving monumental buildings constructed on each block (most of which today are churches, although original domestic brownstones persist in some of the more backwoods parts of the Back Bay) show the progression of architectural designs and changes over the 60 years admirably.

True enough, as this list will show: Do this as link to website I will be doing on church history in Boston (for MCC)

If there is time, we will continue in on Boylston Street and take the following route: Pick up Commonwealth Ave to Mass Ave, and turn right on Mass Ave to Boylston, following it down to Charles Street and making the left on Charles. Make the left on Boylston and follow it to Charles; make a right on Beacon, left on Bowdoin, left on Cambridge and back across the Museum of Science Bridge to Commercial Street, making a left to return to the Sonesta.

If there is no extra time, we will follow this return route: Make the left on Mass Ave instead, going over the Longfellow Bridge into Cambridge and making the right on Vassar Street just past the main MIT buildings on Mass Ave. Follow Vassar Street back to Main Street, and take Main into Kendall Square. Take Third to either Binney, Rogers, or Bent Streets, (whichever lets you make a right, I think they’re alternate one-ways) going through to Commercial Street where the Sonesta Hotel is.