By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
The sound of choral music sung in Latin filled gothic Princeton University Chapel on Oct.25, the beginning moments of a celebration 200 years in the making.
Princeton Theological Seminary, the training ground for generations of Presbyterian ministers, marked its bicentennial with a worship service of song, scripture and words of past leaders, faculty and graduates.
In her sermon, PTS alumna Marilyn McCord Adams spoke of the evolution of the seminary from a place with a narrowly focused curriculum.
”From the beginning, Princeton was focused on the word of God, in the beginning on the Biblical texts, and in the Presbyterian manner on mastery of the ancient languages,” she said from an raised pulpit.
Early church fathers, meeting in Philadelphia, formed the seminary to better train Presbyterian ministers for what was then a growing country. The first professor, Archibald Alexander, was named, and the first class consisted of three students, according to a seminary history.
During the mid 20th century, the seminary began to introduce clinical and developmental psychologically in the curriculum. Sociology and world religions “were also recognized as important for understanding the context of ministry,” Ms. Adams said.
Ms. Adams, a professor at the University of North Carolina, said the seminary is, has been and “always aught to be a both a theological university and a school of prayer.” She said it is a place where issues can be discussed openly, that confronts students “with a wide range of theological options and teaches them how, in the rabbinic manner, to question and to dispute them.”
Yet the school has had its moral blind spots. Though PTS graduated its first black student in 1828, Ms. Adams said the seminary was not at the forefront of the abolition movement. “It had too many southern students for that,” she said.
As for the present, Ms. Adams said academically rigorous theological schools are dwindling at a time when millions of people in Europe and in North America “are spiritually starving.”
”Graduates will need a diversified tool kit to re-imagine Gospel mission to them,” she said to an audience that included representatives of other seminaries and church leaders from as far as Scotland.
Earlier in the service, speakers talked of the impact of PTS. Manuel J. Fernos, the president of the Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico, said his school was started 100 years ago by seminary alumnus John Will Harris.
”And I think it was a divine providence that made it possible for me to come here to Princeton … to join you in the celebration of your bicentennial,” he said.
”How critical today remains the vocation as it was 200 years ago of preparing leadership that will be faithful and critical, learned and learning always, prophetic, compassionate, at peace with all that is peaceful and unaccepting of all that is unjust …,” said Alison L. Boden, dean of religious life at Princeton University and of the chapel.
Rochelle Hendricks, the secretary of Higher Education of New Jersey, was a student at the seminary in the 1980s. In her remarks, she said she owed much to the seminary, a place whose impact stretched far beyond its walls.
”The mission of this institution to change the world remains essential,” she said. “The values that are promoted hereof peace, justice and integritywere never more important than they are today.”
Change is already afoot at the seminary. On Oct. 9, the seminary announced that the Rev. M. Craig Barnes had been chosen to be its seventh president replacing current President Iain R. Torrance, who had held the job since 2004. Mr. Torrance’s tenure is the shortest of any of his predecessors.
Mr. Barnes was at the chapel for the celebration. He comes to Princeton from Pittsburgh, where he has led the Shadyside Presbyterian Church and taught at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

