Йельская духовная школа: история и современность

Graduate school of Yale University

Yale Divinity School (YDS) is one of the twelve graduate and professional schools of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Congregationalist theological education was the motivation at the founding of Yale, and the professional school has its roots in a Theological Department established in 1822. The school had maintained its own campus, faculty, and degree program since 1869, and it has become more ecumenical beginning in the mid 19th century. Since the 1970s, it has been affiliated with the Episcopal Berkeley Divinity School and has housed the Institute of Sacred Music, which offers separate degree programs. In July 2017, a two year process of formal affiliation was completed, with the addition of Andover Newton Seminary joining the school. Over 40 different denominations are represented at YDS.

Theological education was the earliest academic purpose of Yale University. When Yale College was founded in 1701, it was as a college of religious training for Congregationalist ministers in Connecticut Colony, designated in its charter as a school "wherein Youth may be instructed in the Arts & Sciences who through the blessing of Almighty God may be fitted for Publick employment both in Church & Civil State." A professorship of divinity was established in 1746. In 1817, the occupant of the divinity chair, Eleazar Thompson Fitch, supported a student request to endow a theological curriculum, and five years later a separate Yale Theological Seminary was founded by the Yale Corporation. In the same motion, Second Great Awakening theologian Nathaniel William Taylor was appointed to become the first Dwight Professor of Didactic Theology. Taylor was considered the "central figure" in the school's founding, and he was joined in 1826 by Josiah Willard Gibbs, Sr., a scholar of sacred languages and lexicographer Chauncey A. Goodrich in 1839. In October 2020, YDS received a $1 million grant from the Lilly Endowment as part of the foundation's Thriving Congregations Initiative to fund a program entitled, "Reimagining Church: New Models for the 21st Century." Reimagining Church will involve 40 congregations in Connecticut as well as YDS students, faculty, and staff over a five year period. In November 2020, the Yale Divinity School Women's Center revived the publication of The Voice Journal of Literary and Theological Ideas, a feminist journal that initially ran from 1996 to 2002.

Gregory Sterling, a New Testament scholar and Church of Christ pastor, has been the dean of the divinity school since 2012, succeeding New Testament scholar Harold W. Attridge, who returned to teaching as a Sterling Professor upon completing two five year terms as dean. The leaders of the affiliated seminaries are Andrew McGowan, Dean and President of Berkeley Divinity School, and Sarah Drummond, Founding Dean of Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School. Organist Martin Jean is director of the Institute of Sacred Music.

+NameYears ServedAcademic FieldDenominationGregory E. Sterling2012–PresentNew TestamentChurches of ChristHarold W. Attridge2002 2012New TestamentCatholicRebecca Chopp2001 2002TheologyMethodistHarry B. Adams (acting dean)2000 2001Pastoral TheologyRichard J. Wood1996 2000PhilosophyQuakerThomas Ogletree1990 1996EthicsMethodistAidan Kavanagh (acting dean)1989 1990LiturgicsCatholicLeander Keck1979 1989New TestamentChristian Church (Disciples of Christ)Colin W. Williams1969 1979EthicsMethodistRobert Clyde Johnson1963 1969PresbyterianCharles Forman (acting dean)1961 1963Liston Pope1949 1962EthicsCongregationalistLuther Allan Weigle1928 1949Christian EducationLutheran/CongregationalistCharles Reynolds Brown1911 1928TheologyCongregationalistEdward Lewis Curtis (acting dean)1905 1911Frank Knight Sanders1901 1905SemiticsCongregationalistGeorge Park Fisher1895 1901Church HistoryCongregationalistGeorge Edward Day1888 1895HebrewCongregationalist

When the department was organized as a school in 1869, it was moved to a campus across from the northwest corner of the New Haven Green composed of East Divinity Hall (1869), Marquand Chapel (1871), West Divinity Hall (1871), and the Trowbridge Library (1881). The buildings, designed by Richard Morris Hunt, were demolished under the residential college plan and replaced by Calhoun College, now known as Grace Hopper College. In 1929, the trustees of the estate of lawyer John William Sterling agreed that a portion of his bequest to Yale would be used to build a new campus for the Divinity School. The Sterling Divinity Quadrangle, completed in 1932, is a Georgian style complex built at the top of Prospect Hill. It was designed by Delano & Aldrich and modeled in part on the University of Virginia. A $49 million renovation of Sterling Divinity Quadrangle was completed in 2003. Sterling Divinity Quadrangle contains academic buildings, Marquand Chapel, and graduate student housing for YDS students. Yale Divinity School is currently planning the construction of the Living Village, a zero waste, sustainable living community that will house 155 YDS students.