The Disciples Divinity House is directly affiliated with the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. It is also one of the seven institutions of graduate theological education of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Through these affiliations, Disciples House seeks to prepare women and men for faithful, visionary leadership among the Disciples of Christ and in the public realm, preparing them for pastoral ministries and for the academic ministries of teaching and research.
Disciples Divinity House is a unique institution that is neither a divinity school of a larger university nor a free-standing denominational seminary. In a way, it provides the best of both. It was founded in 1894 by a visionary group of leaders who saw the need for graduate education among Disciples ministers and teachers. They wanted to provide Disciples with the highest quality of graduate education in an ecumenical, university setting, while also giving them a small, collegial community in the Disciples of Christ tradition. This tradition of excellence continues today.
An exceptional residential scholarship program includes substantial financial aid, seminars and other educational programs, and a vital community of learning and support. Scholars of the Disciples Divinity House are also students of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, where they pursue their degrees--the M.Div., the M.A., or the Ph.D.
The Divinity House also offers programs for alumni/ae, laypersons, ministers, and scholars to further ongoing theological conversation about faith and contemporary life.
HISTORY: THE IDEA OF THE HOUSE
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The idea of establishing a Disciples of Christ institution of learning in connection with the University of Chicago originated in 1893 in conversation between Herbert Lockwood Willett, who would be named the first dean of the Disciples Divinity House, and W. D. MacClintock, professor of English at the new University of Chicago. The founding president of the University, William Rainey Harper, encouraged the plan and hoped that other religious bodies would follow the Disciples’ initiative. In June 1894, the Disciples Divinity House of the University of Chicago was chartered. |
By 1898, Dean Willett was able to report that a group of twenty were "in residence and at work in the House." In actuality, there was no building in which these twenty resided and worked, nor would there be one for another thirty years. Before a building was completed, there would be a second dean, W. E. Garrison, and then a third, E. S. Ames, would begin his deanship.
In those days, Dean Ames would explain, "The House is not something you can see, it is not something made with hands. It is an idea, an association. You get into it by becoming a student for the Disciples ministry or other religious work. It does things to the minds and the hearts of students, and its influence is attracting men and women here to study."
A handsome gothic limestone building and chapel were completed by 1930. Scholarship endowments were built. Dean Ames was succeeded by William Barnett Blakemore, Don S. Browning, W. Clark Gilpin, and Kristine A. Culp, the current dean.
Disciples House seeks to uphold and express standards of excellence in leadership –including especially intelligence in ministry, a passion for the unity of the church and of humanity, the cultivation of ethical and aesthetic sensibilities as an inseparable part of religious formation, and the necessity of cooperative and critical engagement in society.
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To this end, the Disciples Divinity House makes available superb resources for professional preparation. For example, an ongoing seminar considers Disciple history and thought. A ministry practicum focuses on aspects of congregational ministry within the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Advanced Ph.D. students meet in monthly seminars. Significant resources are available through our affiliation with the Divinity School, the top-ranked graduate program in religion in the nation. Other resources are available through general, regional, and local manifestations of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). But Disciples House does more than make resources available. |
The preparation offered is not merely professional training for careers in ministry or the academy but also a teaching/learning ethos that addresses persons’ vocations as ministers, intellectuals, leaders, Christians, and human beings. Its teaching/learning ethos imparts a standard of excellence that equips ministers and teachers to take up their callings on behalf of the well-being of all life.
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CONNECTING FAITH AND INTELLECT
The Disciples Divinity House provides a link between church and academy. It offers both context and model for combining a searching faith with a questing intellect. In seminars and around the dinner table, House Scholars explore ways of integrating accountability to Christian faith and the purposes of the church with accountability to knowledge and scholarly excellence.
The community of Disciples House Scholars is composed of a mixture of ministry students and A.M./Ph.D. students in roughly equal proportion. Persons prepare for a life of scholarship, inquiry, and ministry wherever they ultimately serve, whether this is the academy, the congregation, or the broader society.
The connection between faith and intellect is part of a broader ecumenical task, namely, to understand Christian faith and manifest it as a single, common life lived on behalf of the world. To this end, the Disciples House community includes a group of ecumenical Divinity School residents, who participate fully in its common life.
A GREAT UNIVERSITY
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An exhilarating interplay of intellectual and religious perspectives also characterizes the Divinity School. Ministry students and doctoral students have a common graduate faculty. They study with world-renowned scholars of religion. |
The Divinity School’s interreligious, interdisciplinary environment informs both ministerial and doctoral studies. Ministry students learn the "art of ministry"--preaching, worship, pastoral care--as practices that require knowledge from diverse disciplines as well as a high degree of vision and artistry. Ph.D. students pursue their work in one of the three Committees of Study--constructive studies, historical studies, religion and the human sciences--within the Divinity School curriculum.
Former Divinity School Dean W. Clark Gilpin explains, "Chicago has remained both a professional school training people for professional religious leadership and the largest Ph.D. program for academic careers in religious studies and theological studies. In this sense, Chicago is unlike other university-related divinity schools, which basically are professional schools, often closely related to Ph.D. programs that are situated in the graduate division of the humanities of their respective universities, but that nonetheless have institutionally, and therefore, curricularly, separated these two enterprises."
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The Disciples Divinity House and the Divinity School are part of one of the world's great intellectual communities: the University of Chicago. At the University of Chicago one has both the opportunity and the obligation to test one’s ideas in a community of scholarship. Citizens of this community–both faculty and students–believe that knowledge is advanced through interdisciplinary research and teaching. Students have access to the resources of the renowned humanities and social science graduate divisions, and of the distinguished professional schools of medicine, law, social work, public policy, and business. |
Disciples Divinity House is located in Hyde Park, a racially and culturally diverse neighborhood alongside Lake Michigan and eight miles south of Chicago’s Loop. Hyde Park is noted for its tree-lined streets, great bookstores, and mixture of Victorian homes, vintage apartment buildings, and contemporary townhouses, as well as for its cosmopolitan and activist character. Around the corner and down the street from Disciples House are five denominational seminaries and several museums, including the Museum of Science and Industry and the DuSable Museum of African American History.
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The city of Chicago provides a setting that stimulates one culturally and engages one morally. It is a city of neighborhoods filled with ethnic communities, local festivals, restaurants, and shops. Chicago has museums, orchestras and opera, jazz clubs, dance and theater, and major league sports as well as vigorous commercial and industrial life. The magnificent architecture of the city is enhanced by lake front parks, beaches, and boulevards. At the same time, the social, political, and economic challenges of a diverse urban center can be taken up firsthand in Chicago.