#princeton theological seminary

[princetonarchives]

Throwback Thursday: A bird's eye view of Princeton, New Jersey, 1874. What we know as Princeton University (and was then named the College of New Jersey) is toward the middle right, near the train station. Toward the bottom middle left, the buildings that make up the always-separate institution named Princeton Theological Seminary can be seen.

Historical Photograph Collection, Grounds and Buildings Series (AC111), Box MP08, Image No. 198.

[africanamericanreports]

Jonathan Lee Walton, has been named the eighth president of the Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey. He will begin his new duties on January 1.

[battleforgodstruth]

Christian Evidences: How Affected by Recent Criticisms - B. B. Warfield

▶️Dear Brethren, I am now on Twitter https://twitter.com/RichMoo50267219 If you are as well, please consider following me there. ▶️B. B. Warfield playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFD0C7CA1B7D52171 Christian Evidences: How Affected by Recent Criticisms – B. B. Warfield ▶️SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/user/stack45ny▶️After subscribing, click on NOTIFICATION BELL to be…

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

In June 2022, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned more than a half-century of Supreme Court precedent. Five justices voted to deny constitutional protection for a woman’s right to choose and gutted privacy as a fundamental right. Texas and 13 other states now bar abortions in almost all circumstances. Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina have enacted six-week bans.

Writing for the Supreme Court majority, Samuel Alito, a George W. Bush appointee, explicitly compared the death of Roe to the end of state-enforced racial segregation, 68 years before. Back in 1954, in a landmark ruling, Brown v. Board of Education, a unanimous court overruled the doctrine of “separate but equal.” These days, Brown is under attack from Alito’s allies on and off the bench.

In their new book The Fall of Roe, named for Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that previously safeguarded federal abortion rights, Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer masterfully lay out how the cultural right and pro-life movement refused to take “no” for an answer, played the long game, and attained the victory for which they had yearned. Dias and Lerer also capture the somnolence of the left and how “intersectionality” came to divide old allies.

Dias is the New York Times religion reporter. A graduate of Wheaton College, the late Rev. Billy Graham’s alma mater, she holds a master’s degree in divinity from Princeton Theological seminary. Lerer, a veteran of five presidential campaigns, covers politics for the Times. The two of them got Hillary Clinton to speak for the record.

The Democratic presidential nominee in 2016 acknowledges that her party underestimated its adversaries, but doesn’t point the finger at herself.

“We didn’t take it seriously, and we didn’t understand the threat,” Clinton said. “We could have done more to fight.”

“I just think that most of us who support the rights of women and privacy and the right to make these difficult decisions yourself, you know, we just couldn’t believe what was happening.”

“Our side was complacent and kind of taking it for granted and thinking it would never go away.”

Even as polls show that abortion rights have widening public acceptance, the mechanics of federalism have left legislatures in red states to act as a counterforce to the more liberal national ethos, a point stressed in The Fall of Roe.

“Republicans had the state legislatures,” Dias and Lerer write. “They had a top-to-bottom network. They had the court. They had the power to change American life.”

The Fall of Roe also sheds light on the infrastructure that undergirded opposition to Roe. Libertarian-minded donors didn’t particularly care about curbing abortion access and David Koch personally supported abortion rights. That having been said, Freedom Partners, a Koch-driven industry group, donated almost $1 million to anti-abortion efforts, which could be paired on election day with tax cuts and lower regulation.

Said differently, fetuses weren’t the only reasons large checks were being cut to the Federalist Society, or that constitutional originalism had become the civic religion of the right. FDR’s legacy has to be gutted. Social security may no longer be so secure.

Leonard Leo, the driving force behind the Federalist Society, receives particular attention.

“Who’s this little fucking midget?” Donald Trump once said of Leo, a close friend of Justice Clarence Thomas.

Short answer: Leo helped get each of Trump’s Supreme Court nominees across the finish line. Think of him as the straw that stirs the drink.

“After Alito was confirmed to the court, Leo connected him with ideologically aligned businessmen, some of whom had cases before the court,” Dias and Lerer write.

They add that Leo “spent time with Thomas at… a private lakeside resort owned by a major Republican donor, Harlan Crow. Their visits were memorialized in a painting, hanging inside the lodge.”

Thanks to ProPublica’s Pulitzer-winning reporting, the painting is now well known. The group is shown thoughtfully smoking cigars.

Leo’s connections also helped found a nonprofit, the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN), “on the same hallway in a downtown office building as the Federalist Society.”

Which all brings us back to Brown v. Board of Education and where the right goes next.

In Justice on Trial, an examination of Brett Kavanaugh’s elevation to the Supreme Court, conservative talking heads Carrie Severino, of JCN, and Mollie Hemingway, of the Federalist, trashed Brown.

According to Severino and Hemingway, social science wrongly played a role in the court’s calculus. They declared that such decisions “may have been correct in their result but were decided on the basis of sociological studies rather than legal principles.”

Notice the word “may.”

Fast forward to May 2024, when Thomas—who joined Alito’s opinion in Dobbs—turned his fire on Brown.

“Such extravagant uses of judicial power are at odds with the history and tradition of the equity power and the Framers’ design,” he wrote in a concurrence, sustaining a South Carolina congressional map in the face of voting rights challenge.

As another election looms, abortion and contraception have emerged as campaign issues, to the horror of Trump. On the stump, the presumptive Republican nominee has vacillated over possible restrictions on contraception. Then again, Stormy Daniels testified that Trump did not wear a condom during an encounter Trump still denies, notwithstanding 34 guilty verdicts in the case arising.

As for meting out punishment to women who have abortions, Trump would leave that to the states.

“The states are going to make that decision,” he told Time. “The states are going to have to be comfortable or uncomfortable, not me.”

He also declined to say “no” to states monitoring women, to identify those who terminate pregnancies. Think The Handmaid’s Tale.

In the 2022 midterms, Dobbs cost the Republicans their “red wave.” In 2024, it may lead to another Trump loss and Democrats retaking the House. Right now, things are that close.

[readingsquotes]

"Our actions on Monday were informed and inspired by generations of brave student activists, such as those who rallied for divestment from apartheid South Africa in the 70s and 80s, the Black Justice League students who staged a sit-in in 2015, as well as the growing Palestinian solidarity movement currently sweeping the country. We stand with our resilient comrades at Columbia, the New School, UCLA, Brown, Rutgers, the University of Michigan, UT Austin, and elsewhere. We have learned from these movements, and we will not be deterred. We condemn the mass arrests and brutalization of Columbia, UCLA, and CCNY student protestors by militarized police forces.

Our university conveniently platforms its history of activism while criminalizing activists on campus today. As of Tuesday morning, Morrison Hall, home of our African American Studies Department—established after the 2015 Black Justice League sit-in in Nassau Hall—has been entirely locked down and remains inaccessible to students. Morrison Hall is also the site of the Effron Center, which houses Latino Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Asian American Studies. We are deeply concerned about the disproportionate disciplining of students of color. We call upon students and faculty at Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, as well as the greater community at Princeton and across the country, to join us in our struggle for peace, equality, and liberation for Palestine."

-Statement from Clio Hall Sit-In Participants

[azspot]

The wealthy industrialists in the 1930s and 1940s poured money and resources into the church, including seminaries such as Princeton Theological, to crush the Social Gospel, led by Christian radicals and socialists. They funded a brand of Christianity — which today is dominant — that conflates faith with free enterprise and American exceptionalism. The church has gone down the rabbit hole of a narcissistic how-is-it-with-me form of spirituality. The rich are rich, this creed goes, not because they are greedy or privileged, not because they use their power to exploit others, but because they are brilliant and gifted leaders, worthy of being lionized, like Bill Gates or Jamie Dimon, as oracles. This belief is not only delusional, but Christian heresy. The word heresy comes from the Greek verb hireo, which means to grasp or to seize – to seize for yourself at someone else’s expense. You don’t need to spend three years at Harvard Divinity School as I did, to figure out Jesus did not come to make us rich.

Chris Hedges

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1/2 daguerreotype

princeton theological seminary class of 1848

[lboogie1906]

Melissa Victoria Harris-Perry (October 2, 1973) known as Melissa Victoria Harris-Lacewell is a writer, professor, television host, and political commentator with a focus on African American politics. She hosted the Melissa Harris-Perry weekend news and opinion television show on MSNBC (2012-16).

She was born in Seattle and grew up in Chesterfield County, Virginia. Her father was the first dean of African American Affairs at the University of Virginia. Her mother, Diana Gray, worked for non-profit organizations.

She graduated from Wake Forest University with a BA in English and earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from Duke University. She received an honorary doctorate from Meadville Lombard Theological School and is studying toward an M.Div in Theology at Union Theological Seminary of Columbia University.

She joined the political science faculty of the University of Chicago (1999-2006) when she accepted a tenured appointment at Princeton University as an Associate Professor of Political Science and African American Studies. She left Princeton in 2011 for Tulane University, where she was the Founding Director of the Anna Julia Cooper Project, a center for the study of race, gender, and politics in the South.

On July 1, 2014, she returned to Wake Forest as the Maya Angelou Presidential Chair Professor of Politics and International Affairs. She is a regular columnist for the magazine The Nation, the co-host of the magazine’s podcast System Check, and the author of two books (one published under the name Melissa Victoria Harris-Lacewell). On February 18, 2012, she began hosting an MSNBC weekend morning show titled Melissa Harris-Perry.

On April 18, 2016, it was announced that she joined Elle.com as editor-at-large. On July 23, 2021, she was named as interim host of The Takeaway following the departure of the show’s previous host, Tanzina Vega. She was announced as the permanent host and managing editor on October 18, 2021.

She married attorney James Perry (2010). He is the CEO of the Winston-Salem Urban League. She has two children. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence #deltasigmatheta

[sabakos]

Cornel West, the progressive activist and professor, announced a presidential campaign on Monday with the People’s Party, a third party led by a former campaign staff member for Senator Bernie Sanders.

Dr. West has taught at Yale, Princeton and Harvard and is currently a professor of philosophy at Union Theological Seminary.

The People’s Party was founded by Nick Brana, who worked on Mr. Sanders’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, but later broke away. The party tried to recruit Mr. Sanders after his 2016 campaign, but he declined to get involved and again sought the Democratic nomination in 2020.

The continued existence of the New York Times is a crime against humanity, but they really do character assassination byline like no one else.

[princetonarchives]

Charles Augustus Aiken taught Latin at the College of New Jersey in Princeton (now named Princeton University) from 1866-1869. Students reportedly referred to this Dartmouth grad as "Yank." After a short stint as president of Union College in New York, he returned to town to take a position at nearby Princeton Theological Seminary.

Historical Photograph Collection, Individuals Series (AC067), Box 25.

[beardedmrbean]

A greater share of young adults say they believe in a higher power or God.

About one-third of 18-to-25-year-olds say they believe—more than doubt—the existence of a higher power, up from about one-quarter in 2021, according to a recent survey of young adults. The findings, based on December polling, are part of an annual report on the state of religion and youth from the Springtide Research Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit.

Young adults, theologians and church leaders attribute the increase in part to the need for people to believe in something beyond themselves after three years of loss. 

For many young people, the pandemic was the first crisis they faced. It affected everyone to some degree, from the loss of family and friends to uncertainty about jobs and daily life. In many ways, it aged young Americans and they are now turning to the same comfort previous generations have turned to during tragedies for healing and comfort. 

Believing in God “gives you a reason for living and some hope,” says Becca Bell, an 18-year-old college student from Peosta, Iowa.

Ms. Bell, like many in her age group, doesn’t attend Mass regularly as she did as a child because of studies and work. But she explores her faith by following certain people on social media, including one young woman who talks openly about her own life and belief, which Ms. Bell, who was raised Catholic, says she finds more meaningful and relevant. 

The Springtide survey uses the term “higher power,” which can include God but isn’t limited to a Christian concept or specific religion, to capture the spectrum of believers. Many young adults say they don’t necessarily believe in a God depicted in images they remember from childhood or described in biblical passages, but do believe there is a higher benevolent deity. 

Other polls, including Gallup, ask specifically about believing in God and show a decline in young adults who believe in God.

The Rev. Darryl Roberts, pastor of the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., says the pandemic, racial unrest, fears of job loss and other economic worries, stripped away the protective layers that many young people felt surrounded them. No longer feeling invincible, he says, some are turning to God for protection.

“We are seeing an openness to transcendence among young people that we haven’t seen for some time,” says Abigail Visco Rusert, associate dean at Princeton Theological Seminary and an ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church.

At the same time many young adults say they feel disconnected from organized religion over issues like racial justice, gender equity and immigration rights. And belief in God or a higher power doesn’t necessarily translate into church attendance or religious affiliation. 

A Wall Street Journal-NORC poll published last month found that 31% of younger Americans, ages 18 to 29, said religion was very important to them, which was the lowest percentage of all adult age groups. A Pew Research Center study also released last month found that 20% of 18-to-29-year-olds attend religious services monthly or more, down from 24% in 2019.

Desmond Adel, 27, describes himself as an “agnostic theist,” which is someone who believes in one or more deities but doesn’t know for sure if they exist. He attended church every Sunday as a child, but doesn’t recall “which subset of Christianity” it represented, and quit going as a teen. He says he’s not 100% convinced there is a higher power, but “leans towards” the existence of one that isn’t tied to one denomination.

“I don’t think it’s like any Gods described by major religions,” says Mr. Adel, of Carmel, Ind.

Nicole Guzik, a rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, says she’s observed more young adults coming to Friday night services at the synagogue as well as monthly events that might include hikes and yoga in the park.

 “I think this demographic has a need to connect socially and spiritually,” she says. 

Christian Camacho, 24, was raised in a conservative Catholic household and says he has had doubts about God when his parents were going through a divorce and when he was dealing with depression. “How could God allow something like this to happen?” he would ask.  

Over the years, his image and perception of God has changed, from a judgmental punitive God of his childhood to a more accepting one. He thinks this belief is common among his generation, who don’t associate God with a specific organized religion.  

“A lot of people are turned off by the institutions,” says Mr. Camacho, who lives in Minneapolis and is studying to join a religious order. 

Courtney Farthing, 26, who works as a customer-service representative for a call center, attended Baptist and Pentecostal churches growing up and identifies as Christian. Ms. Farthing, who lives in Richmond, Ky., believes in God but says she questioned that belief as a teen.

Now, she says, she chooses to believe. 

“If I ever started to doubt, or believe there wasn’t a God, it would send me into a spiral of ‘What ifs,’ things that I would rather not get into.” 

Alora Nevers, a 29-year-old stay at home mom of four in Sidney, Mont., has always believed in God. She no longer goes to her Catholic church, where, she says, they talked too much about making donations. 

“I would rather praise God the way I do with my family. We pray every night.” 

[hoursofreading]

The first responsibility of personalism is to see each other person in his or her full depth. This is astonishingly hard to do. As we go through our busy days it’s normal to want to establish I-It relationships — with the security guard in your building or the office worker down the hall. Life is busy, and sometimes we just need to reduce people to their superficial function. But personalism asks, as much as possible, for I-Thou encounters: that you just don’t regard people as a data point, but as emerging out of the full narrative, and that you try, when you can, to get to know their stories, or at least to realize that everybody is in a struggle you know nothing about. The second responsibility of personalism is self-gifting. Twentieth-century psychologists like Carl Rogers treated people as self-actualizing beings — get in touch with yourself. Descartes tried to separate individual reason from the bonding emotions. Nikolai Berdyaev said that tends to turn people into self-enclosed monads, with no doors or windows. Personalists believe that people are “open wholes.” They find their perfection in communion with other whole persons. The crucial questions in life are not “what” questions — what do I do? They are “who” questions — who do I follow, who do I serve, who do I love? The reason for life, Jacques Maritain wrote, is “self-mastery for the purpose of self-giving.” It’s to give yourself as a gift to people and causes you love and to receive such gifts for others. It is through this love that each person brings unity to his or her fragmented personality. Through this love, people touch the full personhood in others and purify the full personhood in themselves. The third responsibility of personalism is availability: to be open for this kind of giving and friendship. This is a tough one, too; life is busy, and being available for people takes time and intentionality. Margarita Mooney of Princeton Theological Seminary has written that personalism is a middle way between authoritarian collectivism and radical individualism. The former subsumes the individual within the collective. The latter uses the group to serve the interests of the self. Personalism demands that we change the way we structure our institutions. A company that treats people as units to simply maximize shareholder return is showing contempt for its own workers. Schools that treat students as brains on a stick are not preparing them to lead whole lives.

Opinion | Personalism: The Philosophy We Need (Published 2018)

[battleforgodstruth]

COMMENTARY ON ROMANS 1:1-5 - CHARLES HODGE

COMMENTARY ON ROMANS 1:1-5 – CHARLES HODGE

Hodge was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on the 28th of December 1797. He graduated at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) in 1815, and in 1819 at the Princeton Theological seminary, where he became an instructor in 1820, and the first professor of Oriental and Biblical literature in 1822. Meanwhile, in 1821, he had been ordained as a Presbyterian minister. From 1826 to 1828 he studied…

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Loraine Boettner: A Man of God

Loraine Boettner (March 7, 1901 – January 3, 1990) was an American theologian, teacher, and author in the Reformed tradition. He is best known for his works on predestination, Roman Catholicism, and Postmillennial eschatology.

Boettner was born in Linden, Missouri. He received a Th.B. (1928) and Th.M. (1929) from Princeton Theological Seminary, and he received the honorary degrees of Doctor of Divinity (1933) and Doctor of Letters (1957). He was a member of theOrthodox Presbyterian Church. For eight years he taught Bible at Pikeville College in Kentucky, and in 1937 he began working at the Library of Congress and the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

While his daily vocation was not theology or Biblical studies, he continued to write and publish books until near his death, the most successful of which were The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination and Roman Catholicism, Boettner’s critical commentary on the Roman Catholic faith. This book has been called by its critics “The Anti-Catholic Bible” because of the author’s aim to antagonize the Catholic Church, which, according to them, “has gravely compromised his intellectual objectivity”. A recent doctoral study claims that the research done by Boettner in Roman Catholicism “is simply flimsy” and makes use of old and refuted anti-Catholic clichés.

The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination and Immortality were translated into Chinese by Charles H. Chao (1952, 1962), into German by Ivo Carobbio, and into Japanese.

Taken from Wikipedia: Loraine Boettner

Biographical sketch

Born: March 7th 1901, Linden Missouri

Father: William; Christian School Superintendant

Mother: Vinn; Homemaker

Mom & Dad had different theological positions; Mom was a Methodist.

In 1917 studied agriculture at the University of Missouri.

Finished his degree from Tarkio Presbyterian College (Cum Laud).

While at Tarkio, Loraine was greatly influenced by professor J.B. Work, who was a staunch Calvinist.

In 1925 Boettner furthered his education while attending Princeton. In 1928 he received his Th.B, and in 1929 his Th.M.

While attending Princeton, Boettner syudied under Casper Hodge.

1932 married Lillian Henry

1932 wrote “Reformed Doctrine of Predestination”.

1937 Boettner taught at Pikesville Presbyterian College

1937 Hired on at the Library of Congress & Internal Revenue Services.

1948 Moved to Los Angeles due to Lillians health; She died in 1958.

1989 Boettner’s health diminished. He later died in Fairfax Hopsital, Montana in the year of 1990.

[klubhead76]

Francis J. Grimke was born a slave in Charleston, South Carolina on November 4, 1850.  After the war he and his older brother, Archibald, went north to Lincoln University.  Francis graduated from Lincoln in 1870.  After working briefly at Lincoln, Grimke attended Princeton Theological Seminary from which he graduated in 1878.  Soon after graduation he became pastor of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., a post he held until 1928.  On Christmas Eve, 1918, Rev. Grimke delivered the sermon below summarizing the aims and objectives of the recently ended World War as well …