Drew Theological School Mission
Rooted in the Methodist tradition of innovative and bold interpretations of Christian theology and spiritual practices, we empower creative thought and courageous action to advance justice, peace and love of God, neighbor, and the earth.
Our faculty prepare alums to be leaders who work for the justice and love central to a progressive understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As theologically reflective practitioners they are able to…
- INTERPRET texts and contexts critically, creatively, and faithfully
- EMBODY a vision of radical personal and social holiness
- MOBILIZE diverse communities for effective personal, communal, societal wellbeing, and transformation
- And be IMPROVISATIONAL in all things for the flourishing of the world
Drew’s faculty firmly believes that engaging the world’s challenges and struggles for social and ecological justice is critical to and integrated throughout the student learning experience
Faculty Shared Values | Social & Ecological Justice
Dismantling Racism | Racial Justice
Our faculty will focus on envisioning and building racial justice and interrelatedness within our institutional practices and communal habits in a manner that directly identifies and supplants the harms of white supremacy and sparks restorative responses to its deleterious impact on emotional, spiritual, communal, and planetary becoming and thriving.
Student Learning Outcomes
Students will:
Know how advocacy for racial equality and resistance to systemic forms racial injustice such as white supremacy are conceptualized and grounded in theological and biblical principles.
Be able to work with others across racial groupings to coordinate and construct joint understandings of racial justice.
Do craft language to articulate context-specific and intersectional visions of racial justice, engage others in expanding (student’s own) vision of racial justice, and instigate strategies for creating lasting structural change in response to the systemic harms of white supremacy.
Interfaith and Ecumenical Understanding and Solidarity
Drew focuses on interfaith and ecumenical partnership and solidarity and thus prioritizes learning to live, work, grapple, and engage with and alongside religious people in a pluralistic world. This approach prioritizes learning from a multiplicity of religious people and within multifaith contexts and partnerships. It understands religion as the lived, visible expression of a cumulative tradition by the people who embrace and practice it.
Students seek to understand the ways that communities draw on faith traditions to address challenges, cultivate hope, and create meaning and action for social transformation. Students will learn about social, economic, theological, and political histories; current realities; and contributions to social oppression and violence (including such issues as colonization, genocide, climate change, and sexual violence) from the view of multiple religious traditions and perspectives.
Student Learning Outcomes
Students will:
Know how to articulate ways that a multiplicity of religious people address challenges, cultivate hope, and create communities of meaning and action for social transformation, and analyze how various Christian institutions, ideas, and practices have both impeded and promoted justice and peace for religious others.
Be able to embody Christian ethical self-reflection and radical hospitality—in speech and in action—in multifaith and ecumenical contexts.
Do participate and lead effectively in ecumenical, interreligious, and community activities and partnerships that increase understanding, love, peace, and speak to and act for social and environmental justice.
Ecological Sustainability and Environmental Justice
Drew’s approach incorporates eco-literacy and gratitude for the intricacies of creation with social justice literacy of the overlapping problems of deteriorating ecosystems and climate disruption. We emphasize critical reflection on the anthropocentrism of much of our scientific, religio/cultural, socio-political, and economic systems, as well as learning about environmentally-sound methods of the production and consumption of food, energy, and economic goods. Students also examine their respective life practices and those of their cultures that can lead to their own transformation and that of those with whom they engage professionally, spiritually, and personally.
Student Learning Outcomes
Students will:
Know how to articulate the dimensions and causes of the environmental crises facing societies, and recognize the unjust consequences of environmental destruction and degradation with the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, disability, age, and class.
Students will become more aware of the depth of the responsibility needed as a result of global economic and health disparities, growing consumerism and waste, the destruction of vital ecological systems, the oppression of the poor and marginalized peoples, and the urgent need to respond to such examples of social injustice as imperatives for ecological and environmental justice.
Be able to deepen their spirituality and religious practices through scientific understanding, experiential encounters and appreciation of creation, and eco-ethical behaviors based on a sense of responsibility for the common good.
Do embrace and effectively advocate for ecologically just institutional and communal practices and policies to be incorporated in their workplaces, churches, and private lives, and become activists for ecological and environmental justice.
Sexual and Gender Justice
This approach begins with a recognition of heterosexism and sexism and its deleterious impact on emotional, spiritual, communal becoming and thriving as necessary to the work of gender and sexual justice. The clarity of this approach and starting points related to systemic oppressions can be threatening to heterosexual and cis gender student experience. At other times, this approach can seem like LGBTQ students become objects of study. This tension will need to be clearly addressed. Beginning with awareness of and work to dismantle systemic gender and sexual oppression, truthfully identifies intersections of heterosexism and sexism prior to constructive attempts at justice-making.
This approach moves from individual, structural and communal awareness and disruption of heterosexism and sexism to focus on envisioning and building sexual and gender justice within our institutional practices and communal habits in a manner that directly restores and supplants harms of hetero/sexism. This movement is not a quick attempt at inclusion in ways that often reify sexual orientation and gender identity categories as static and impermeable which misidentifies gender fluidity and an individual’s spectrum of sexual orientation which can change over time and within different contexts. Rather, sexual and gender justice seeks concrete responses via everyday practices and accountability needed to respond directly to inequalities, harms, and oppression.
Student Learning Outcomes
Students will:
Know how to analyze systemic investment in heterosexual and male privilege including ways theological and biblical resources and the Christian practices that are used to sustain it;
Be self-reflective about and aware of sexual and gender understandings as they contribute to sexual and gender justice;
Do participate effectively in community activities and partnerships that structurally implement context-specific visions of sexual and gender justice.