Meet the Dean:
A conversation with Dr. Stephen Fowl Interview by the Rev. Kyle Oliver, EdD
On August 1, 2023, Dr. Stephen Fowl began his role as president and dean of CDSP. A few weeks later, he sat down with Crossings Conversations to reflect on the months ahead. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Kyle Oliver: I thought we could begin with your scholarship. I’ve been reading what I think is your most recent book, the book on idolatry. It sounds like you’re interested in doing theology alongside scripture, if that makes sense. I’m wondering if you might say a little bit more about why that makes sense to you as a scholar.
It’s an instrument to what’s ultimate. It’s not the ultimate thing itself. I think if you begin to adopt that view, it helps you be a little bit more relaxed about places in the Bible that don’t seem consistent with other places or historical findings that might seem to be at odds with the historical statements of scripture.
KO: For the last six years or so, you’ve been the dean of the Loyola College of Arts and Sciences at Loyola University Maryland. I’m curious what kind of takeaways you’re bringing with you from supervising almost 300 faculty members and managing a budget in the tens of millions of dollars.
Stephen Fowl: Really, the entirety of my career has been about trying to combine the interests of theologians and biblical scholars. While I do think technical questions are really important, answering them on their own doesn’t open up the scripture to believing people. As Christians, we are called to embody our reading of scripture. If I can help folks do that, that would be wonderful. I’d consider myself successful.
Augustine understands that you can get so used to the ride that the vehicle is providing that you actually forget that you’re on a journey somewhere.
SF: Those numbers are helpful to the extent that they indicate no one person can micromanage that many people and that much money. One of the steep learning curves in becoming dean was to realize I can’t control everything. I can’t micromanage. Although CDSP is a smaller institution, I do think that’s a good habit. I’m just so impressed with the work that the people who work here are capable of. I’m quite happy to be better at delegating than I was six years ago.
KO: How do you wish more people thought about that connection between scripture and what it’s like to live the Christian faith? SF: Let me use an image from St. Augustine: to think of our lives as a journey into ever deeper love of God and of neighbor. If that’s what we are called to do, then scripture is one of the vehicles, perhaps the best vehicle we can get on to make that journey.
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KO: What kind of a teacher would you say that you are? SF: As I have moved through my career in the classroom, I’ve become ever more concerned that I joined the concerns of the writers and texts that I’m looking at with the concerns of the students in that classroom, to see these texts as ways of having a temporally or geographically extended conversation about things that both the students and the texts care about. As I’ve gone on in my career, I’ve actually ended up covering less material than I used to, in order to facilitate those conversations, and I’m more at ease with that.
I also think both institutions are really mission-driven. Part of my job is helping to articulate a vision of that mission for everybody and to help them understand that they are pursuing a mission that’s bigger than themselves.
Fowl (left, with colleague Terrence Sawyer) served Loyola University Maryland in numerous capacities during his 34 years on the faculty. He comes to CDSP after six years as dean of the Loyola College of Arts and Sciences, where he supervised 271 full-time faculty and managed an operating budget of more than $24 million. | Photo by Sam Levitan
KO: You said that you’ve thought for a long time about what you call the “headwinds” that are facing people who are preparing for ministry leadership in today’s religious and social climate. How would you characterize the road ahead for people thinking about the future of ministry? SF: Let me try and answer that big question in the light of CDSP. Anyone today hearing a call to ministry, especially ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church, is faced with an
immediate set of challenges independent of the whole discernment process: Will I have to uproot my family and move to seminary? Take on debt? Even if there’s a scholarship, will I have to take on debt for living expenses? What about all these people who have been part of my discernment journey and have been there with me and the community I know well? I’m going to pull myself out of that and then take on debt and then not necessarily have a guarantee of a full-time job at the other end? All of those things put pressure on anyone who is discerning a call to ministry. That’s even before they really begin the hard work of engaging in the formation that seminary is. Without question for me, one of the things that is most exciting is our low-residence Hybrid MDiv Program allowing people to be in their contexts. We will be able to help them form community, both in the in-person moments that we have, but also to use the technology that is available
to sustain other forms of community. And then we’ll send them out into two years of curacy, without debt and with a guarantee of a job. I couldn’t imagine richer ground to be able to plant a seed into. KO: To the extent that you have some insight into this now, what do you think is going to be the most important part of your job in the next year or so? How are you going to try to focus your time and energy? SF: Well, leading the revision of the curriculum for the Hybrid Program is really the most important and pressing thing. This will be the sixth time in my career in higher education that I’ve participated in curriculum revision, and they’re always hard work. All of that is really forward-looking and exciting. We also have a wonderful community of residential students here. The excitement of the future always provides that temptation for letting the folks engaged in the present fall through the cracks. I want to be really sure that we don’t do that. That’s partly why I’ve been reaching out to as many students as I can. The residential students we have now need to have that residential student experience: Corporate worship together on a regular basis. Living, praying, and eating together. Regular opportunities to gather in person with the faculty and the staff to celebrate our togetherness, our community. We want to make sure that they have an opportunity for all of the benefits that a residential program has of learning in person with other people who are also learning in person.
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