Faculty Chairs

The Clarence N. and Betty B. Frierson Distinguished Chair of Reformed Theology

The Blair R. Monie Distinguished Chair of Homiletics

The Edward D. Vickery Sr. Distinguished Chair of Christian Ethics

By David Jensen

One common way of understanding faculty chairs is that they bestow honor: they signify status after a faculty member has established a strong record of teaching, research, and publication. Faculty chairs, in this understanding, convey gravitas, prestige, and a degree of authority gained after laboring in one’s academic discipline. When faculty members teach, speak, or write “from the chair,” they ought to be taken seriously. This understanding of faculty chairs is connected—however loosely—to the Latin phrase “ex cathedra” (literally “from the chair”) commonly used to describe papal authority. When professors or popes speak from the chair, others should listen. There is much to be appreciated in this understanding of faculty chairs: they ought to signify honor earned after years of service; they ought to convey a degree of expertise and authority in one’s discipline. But these characteristics are not the primary marks of a faculty chair at Austin Seminary. Instead, faculty chairs at Austin prize investment and conversation. First, a faculty chair signals the church’s and the Seminary’s investment in a field of study essential for ministry. We live in an age when seminaries are experiencing acute financial challenges to their ongoing viability. If seminaries in the past could rely on steady streams of support from their respective denominations, those days have long since passed. In the absence of this support, seminaries turn to: 1) increased tuition revenue; or, 2) increased endowment revenue. The problem with the first option is that it makes the cost of theological education fall disproportionately on students who must borrow heavily to prepare for a career that is not particularly lucrative. Saddled by debt, many seminary graduates are forced to limit their vocational paths to those options that allow them to pay off their loans. Austin Seminary’s comprehensive campaign, which increased financial aid for students, also increased its endowment by adding faculty chairs. These chairs represent an investment on three levels:

First, they are an investment in a theological discipline. The establishment of a chair means that a subject—preaching, ethics, or theology—becomes enshrined in the Seminary’s educational program in perpetuity. The investment stakes a claim that one cannot be a good pastor without a solid grounding in classic disciplines. Second, the chair represents an investment in faculty who are assured compensation and a place where their gifts can flourish. Good teachers make all the difference; they convey the passion of years of study, reminding us that theological education is not possible without people called to teach. Finally, a faculty chair is also an investment in students: it demonstrates that the burden of financing seminary education is shared in the community of faith and not shouldered primarily by those with the least to spare. Faithful establishment of faculty chairs expands possibilities for seminary graduates who can follow their true callings and not only the path with the highest salary. Faculty chairs at Austin Seminary also signify the importance of conversation. The origins of every faculty chair rest in conversation: between potential donors churches, and the Seminary on subjects that make a difference. But the conversation that the newest chairs at Austin Seminary enable are also between doctors of the church. Churches flourish when they are served by scholars who have devoted their lives to subjects that matter. At a medium-sized seminary like Austin, most disciplines are represented by one faculty member. This means that the Austin Seminary faculty has stimulating interdisciplinary conversations with each other, but sometimes eaves faculty members craving for deeper engagement in their particular disciplines. The newest chairs at Austin Seminary allow faculty members to host gatherings of scholars devoted to particular subjects (the future of Reformed theology, the church’s witness that Black Lives Matter) that make a world of difference. Conversations such as these can lead to constructive change in a society wracked by injustice and hopelessness. Faculty chairs certainly convey honor. But at Austin Seminary they mean much more: they signal life-giving investments and conversations for the sake of the church and the sake of the world.

Dr. David Jensen is academic dean and professor in the Clarence N. and Betty B. Frierson Distinguished Chair in Reformed Theology.