NEW YORK — Serene Jones has been selected to become the 16th, and first woman, president of the historic Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The announcement was made Monday by David Callard, chairman of the seminary’s board of trustees.
Dr. Jones will assume the presidency of the seminary on July 1. She will succeed Joseph C. Hough, Jr., who is retiring after serving as Union’s president since 1999. Dr. Jones, the Titus Street Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School, will come to Union after seventeen years on the Yale faculty. At present she also serves as chair and faculty member of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Yale University. Jones has held faculty appointments at Yale Law School and in the Department of African American Studies and Religious Studies. She earned her M.Div. from Yale Divinity School (1985) as well as her Ph.D. in theology from Yale University (1991). She holds a B.A. from the University of Oklahoma (1981) and is an ordained minister in both the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ.
“Dr. Jones’s exceptional leadership style and distinguished scholarship make her the ideal person to lead this vibrant theological institution, which has been home to notable scholars Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” stated Callard. “With Dr. Jones’s vision and commitment, Union is positioned not only to continue its role as a leading institution of theological education but also to be a strong voice at a time when religion, with all its pluralistic manifestations, has become an increasingly powerful and divisive issue.”
Dr. Jones expressed her hope and vision for the school as it moves into the next chapter of its life and mission. “In the intellectual Christian world, Union Theological Seminary has long held a preeminent position shaping not only American religious life but its cultural and political values as well. At the present historical moment, in North America and globally, Union stands ready to assume this role with renewed vigor, intellectual acuity and abiding faith,” Jones said. “With its outstanding faculty and student body and a location in New York City, Union is wonderfully positioned to be the hub for building and sustaining religious and political dialogue and partnerships. I look forward to being part of this exciting community, whose future promises to outshine even its past.”
A prolific and popular scholar in the fields of religion and gender studies, Dr. Jones has published 37 articles and book chapters since 1991, She has delivered a long list of professional papers and public lectures across the United States and around the world. She is the author of Feminist Theory and Theology: Cartographies of Grace (2000) and Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety (1995). She co-edited Feminist and Womanist Essays in Reformed Dogmatics (2006), Constructive Theology: A Contemporary Engagement with Classical Themes (2005), Liberating Eschatology: Essays in Honor of Letty Russell (1999), and Setting the Table: Women in Theological Conversation (1995).
Dr. Jones is the recipient of numerous awards and honors. She has received grants from the Pew Scholars and the Louisville Institute and is currently co-principal investigator on the “Women, Religion, and Globalization Grant” for the Henry T. Luce Initiative on Religion and International Affairs. From 1996-2006, she served on the advisory board of the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Religion and Theology at Wabash College in Indiana, and since 1999 she has co-convened the Constructive Theology Workgroup, a national organization of progressive theologians.
Union Theological Seminary, founded in 1836, is an independent, ecumenical graduate school of theology.
