{"id":5,"date":"2010-09-07T14:36:58","date_gmt":"2010-09-07T18:36:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth-history\/home\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T13:39:24","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T17:39:24","slug":"home","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth-history\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

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The history of the School of Theology is written through the lives of its students and graduates.<\/h4>\n

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Decisions by the Board of Trustees, statistical breakdowns of the student body, or the evolution of degrees can only tell one part of the history.\u00a0 The people’s stories–those whose lives\u00a0 animate the institution–capture the spirit of the School of Theology, and carry its legacy.\"81_628_lrsunderland_ref\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The origins of the school, for example, do not only exist in a charter, but also in the writings of LaRoy Sunderland who argued in an Essay on a Theological Education<\/a> that a school or “college of the prophets” existed in biblical times (cf. 1 Sam. 10:5).\u00a0 Those\u00a0 in the Bible whom God called to ministry, Sunderland maintained, were also ordinarily educated for the ministry.\u00a0 Methodists, therefore, would do well to establish a similar institution of learning.\u00a0 His proposal was so contentious he could not publish it through ordinary channels, and after it appeared in pamphlet form, a debate raged over the necessity of a theological institution for five years.\u00a0 Ultimately, the validity of the school was not assured through attaining a charter, but through the ministries of its first graduates.\u00a0 The long and faithful service of the likes of John B. Foote<\/a>, John Paulson<\/a>, and Rodney Gage<\/a> cannot be untangled from the struggle for the school to survive.<\/p>\n

A little over one hundred years later, Sunderland’s call for a school of the prophets developed a new resonance, as James M. Lawson<\/a> graduated.\u00a0 Lawson, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s tutor in non-violence, was part of a wave of students that pulled the school into a deeper and a more prophetic engagement with American culture.<\/p>\n