Recently, a former president of Asbury seminary, Timothy Tennent, wrote a blog post disparaging the United Methodist Church after his school did not pass the accreditation process of the university senate.
Here is my response.
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There’s much more to the story.
While once a good Wesleyan holiness seminary (they have never been United Methodist and in times past they weren’t approved for United Methodists, so it’s not new), during the last ten years Asbury has been a seedbed of schism against the UMC and were directly involved in it like no other seminary.
Add to that the fact that suddenly they no longer have UMC professors or a UMC program track. Now only 8-9%of their students are United Methodist because of their recent positioning. If they no longer meet the standards, they simply don’t meet them.
What did they expect? They brought this loss of accreditation upon themselves. The university senate acted with integrity. Why would the UMC send candidates to them when they have developed such open disdain for the UMC?
Having said that, I know a number of United Methodists who had a good education from there and they serve faithfully. But they tell me they wouldn’t recommend it now.
We have 13 United Methodist seminaries and a number of others that meet the standards for approval. Asbury has clearly aligned itself solely with the GMC, openly promoted schism, and adopted an openly anti-UMC stance. To imply that this is sudden or claim Asbury is being victimized by a denomination that is no longer a “big tent,” as some of their leadership have written, is hogwash. They simply no longer meet the requirements.
I’d encourage everybody to take a step back from making culture war assumptions and see that this is a natural consequence.
I have nothing against Asbury. But I stand firmly against misinformation about the UMC which gets thrown into the discussion.
