This school is a paradox and I can't imagine being anywhere else. It's a seminary. So, if you are…read morelooking for a secular institution you won't find that here. What many who have embraced this place have found it to be, is a place for individuals who have been wounded by 'the Christian church' or their more fundamentalist upbringings but who are not necessarily wanting to abandon their faith. This place is by no means conservative, in fact it really does occupy the space right between the point of secular humanism and Christianity which is why you see some of the extreme reactions from both ends of the spectrum in the reviews.--conservative Christians who expected TSS to be a traditional Christian seminary are deeply uncomfortable and sometimes even enraged by its not being 'christian' enough, and then there are those who come to a Christian seminary who are not Christian and are deeply offended that professors engage their own Christian faith (which by the way is completely different for each of them: another thing some more conservative students have a hard time with. Understandable considering many of us are raised being taught one or another denomination is more accurate than the other) and ask students to do the same for themselves, mainly for the purpose of challenging students to deeply consider and define for themselves what they believe and why. For those who are deeply guarding their evangelical roots, this place will likely feel like a challenge to their beliefs, as professors discuss some of the origins of those beliefs, present alternative voices and perspectives, and ask students to deeply wrestle with how their beliefs have historically been used to oppress, control and turn away from marginalized communities. So, students who want this place to: 1. be like their particular conservative church growing up, 2. Or are not comfortable with being asked to wrestle with why they believe what they do, and/or 3. are expecting this place to only talk about faith from the perspective of a secular institution but not ask you to personally wrestle with or engage Christian theology as it relates to your life, then you might find yourself challenged here. But, this tends to be a place where students find that they can bring their anger and their questions and their dissatisfaction with God, the church, how Christians have traditionally acted out harm throughout history and in their own lives. This place requires counseling students to take a few theology, bible and spiritual formation classes but they are engaged in ways very different from conservative seminaries--inviting you to engage your body, your sexuality, the ways you've been silenced and have silenced others, the ways patriarchy and racism have informed our view of self, faith and others etc. This school is def a place for students who are clinging more tightly to a desire to live out their faith in a way that feels more congruent to the practice of love, than they are with their faith maintaining the particular boundaries or structure that they came to the school with. This school isn't perfect. None of them are. But more than any other institution I've been at, they seem to desire to grow and are constantly asking, listening and being changed because of their engagement with students. This is a quality that is so unique to this school. I have so much more to say but this is already way to long. To sum it all up. What it boils down to is, whether you are a Christian, humanist, or anything else, if you want to stay comfortable, or are clinging so tightly to your particular worldview that you cannot or do not want to be challenged than this might not be the place for you. However, if you want to ask hard questions, be challenged to look inward at yourself in a way that will be deeply uncomfortable, yet profoundly transformative in how you engage yourself and your future work with others, this may be a place worth checking out.
