The Words of the Hendricks Family
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The Words of the Hendricks Family |
On September 18, Dr. Hendricks discussed new policies and UTS interfaith initiatives with Universal Peace Federation leaders in New York. At first, UTS is directing these opportunities mainly to interfaith focused FFWPU members sent by UPF chairs, though two ambassadors for peace have already enrolled. As the seminary increasingly absorbs the interfaith vision of True Parents and Hyun-jin nim, they foresee ambassadors for peace of all faiths making up an increasing portion of their student body. The following is an edited transcript of his talk and the exchange that followed.
In the last six months, at the direction of the Board of Trustees and the deep inspiration of Dr. Hyun-jin Moon, UTS has developed in the direction of becoming an interfaith seminary. We have an interfaith, peace-building curriculum, spiritual formation program, field education and placement strategies and are able to offer substantial financial aid for interfaith students.
As a result, UTS is becoming aligned with our global movement. You are leaders of the global movement, so we are becoming aligned with you as we all strive to align in faith and action with God. You have sent students to UTS over the summer at very short notice and we are very grateful for that support.
We have developed a start-up inter-religious curriculum consisting of new, adapted and already-existing courses. [See box, page 261 We require the interfaith scholarship students to take this track, which leads to a Masters of Religious Education (MRE), a two-year program, and for some a three-year Masters of Divinity (MDiv). It has the purpose of preparing students to be inter-religious peace builders in the field. Our faculty, led by Dr. Andrew Wilson, developed the curriculum, and it will be further developed. In order to implement the most intelligent developments, we need advice from the field, from the movement worldwide, to let us know what you want to see this curriculum accomplish for the people whom you send to UTS. The survey we are asking you to fill out will be analyzed and the results published.
First, I am going to speak about financial aid. We are all grateful to our generous benefactors internationally. Every continent was able to send students because financial aid is now available beyond borders. That came from our partnering with the movement to restructure the financial aid program. Nov UTS has a substantial financial aid reservoir, a resource that we can make available to qualified Family Federation members and ambassadors for peace from your regions. In this way, they can come to gain the benefits of this education and go on from UTS to serve the purposes of building peace, family and community life in your areas under the overarching rubric of the Universal Peace Federation.
Because we had this financial aid, we could work with you to recruit students. We received eighty-two applications in May and June. We accepted only forty-two, because the standard has been raised. Each candidate's application was rigorously screened at the highest level. The admissions standard is more rigorous than it was in the past. We want a good deal of information about the candidates whom you feel are the right people to come. We want the regional chairs to approve of each candidate for this interfaith scholarship, which means you and the candidate have a common understanding and shared vision of that candidate's future mission in your region to advance peace building goals and objectives. We needed you to sign off on these candidates; then we vetted them through our admissions committee, financial aid committee and representatives of the benefactors. It's a process that takes several steps, but the result is that the quality of the students is quite good. As a group, our twenty-eight new students, from eighteen countries, are younger than in the past; as a group, they have better English than in the past; as a group, they have an excellent mission consciousness, a clear idea of their goals. Also, we are discouraging people from bringing their families, especially in their first year. The reason is that we would like students to move through UTS as fast as possible and return to the field. Also, it is expensive and time-consuming to move one's family from another country, and then a year or two later have the expense of moving back, finding a new place to live, and so forth. It tends to impede a person's momentum.
To build momentum, we have instituted a December graduation in addition to the May graduation. If students can finish the program in the fall, they do not need to wait until May to graduate; they can graduate in December. Those students will receive special attention for placement.
We want the students to maintain their connections with you in the field. We don't want you to just send them off to UTS and wish them the best. We would like you to maintain your mentoring, your coaching and your prayer for the people you send, because they are accountable to you, who are trusting them and are investing in their future, to perform well as students. They are accountable also to UTS and UTS is accountable to you to produce great graduates who can add value to what you are doing in the field. That's why we need to know what competencies, what skills you want to see UTS provide to your future leaders. We would like to know how you define interfaith and how effective your interfaith activities are. The survey you are giving us will help us understand this.
Placement refers to where the graduates work after graduation. We believe that placement is for the sake of the success of inter-religious peace building. The goal is not to create a great seminary; it is to create peace and, in the founder's words, one family under God. The people you send will come back to your nation. Movement greatness is defined by the ability to lead society to discover oneness, end war and build culture. If the seminary can serve that purpose effectively, then it is a great seminary.
Over the last ten years, because he stopped placing graduates himself, our founder was asked on several occasions to provide guidelines as to the placement of UTS graduates. True Father's answer was always the same: they should return to the country they came from. He gave that answer several times; Rev. Kwak sent it out in an official memo, and it was even written in Today's World. There are exceptions, but that is the rule and we are focused on implementing this rule, because it is the right thing to do, it makes sense and it brings the best results for all concerned. The people you send will come back to your nation.
UTS wants to be rigorous about fulfilling this promise. In the past, we have not had this policy for various reasons. But we are very serious about this no because we need to be systematic about the placement of the students in their home area, unless there is a very good reason for a different placement with which all parties agree. This means you can be confident when you send a person you want to develop as a future leader, that he or she will come back and fulfill the vision you share with them in their country.
I met with a new student who has a critical network of contacts in his and neighboring countries. Clearly, this person is very valuable to building inter-religious peace in his part of the world. He has active, constructive relations with civic and religious leaders from a broad spectrum, so that person will be able to fulfill his greatest potential, at least for the foreseeable future, probably right there. He speaks the language; he knows the culture; he knows the people; it is his hometown. This principle is something we are serious about implementing. This also makes UTS, the student and the sending organization accountable. As I mentioned, this is the purpose of the survey: what are the skills you want these people to come back with in order to improve results. Please think concretely.
We also have strengthened student life with a small group system that focuses on spiritual formation, small-group competencies, interpersonal relationship skills and a weekly chapel. We want to work with you in strengthening the spiritual formation of the seminary students. Spiritual formation refers to mentoring and staying connected with the people you recommend as students, both Family Federation members and ambassadors for peace from other organizations and faith traditions. We want to implement a systematic means through which you stay in touch with your students who are at UTS to keep them focused and to keep UTS focused. We want you to be mentoring, coaching, even to the point that if they are not moving forward according to the expectations you and they had when they came, we would look at counseling them and determining whether they are really going to succeed as a UTS graduate or it would serve their purposes better to move in another direction.
The step between matriculation and placement is field education. Field education refers to students going out to the field while they are a student to work in a supervised setting. Field education can be set up through the Family Federation, the Universal Peace Federation, Service for Peace, the Religious Youth Service, Sports for Peace, the Women's Federation and Youth Federation, and so forth. It can take place with organizations in the wider community, such as UNESCO, the World Food Program, the Red Cross, Points of Light Foundation, or a community-based interfaith or social entity. Many organizations offer formal internships. UTS is strengthening its field education. It is good for our students and our movement to build bridges with other organizations, to work as allies. The value of field internships cannot be over-exaggerated.
Mr. Antal, our field education director, just accomplished something very noteworthy. He facilitated the acceptance of the first Barrytown student, who happens to be a Korean, into a clinical pastoral education internship at a major medical center, a nationally recognized American institution. This happened about a month ago and is a tremendous foundation for this individual's future in the Universal Peace Federation and toward certification as a professional chaplain.
One of the emerging front lines in peace building, believe it or not, is military chaplaincy. Military chaplains are in a position to build relations among religious leaders in conflict situations. As we are well aware, and the wider society is gradually waking up to, local religious leaders wield tremendous influence in many conflict-ridden societies, for good or ill. Military chaplains need training as inter-religious peace builders in order to relate with the local populace through their spiritual leaders. A Master of Divinity degree from an accredited seminary such as UTS is a requirement to become a military chaplain. Our students can become military chaplains. So, chaplaincy training, which is called "CPE" (clinical pastoral education), is one purpose of field education. UTS is now able to offer stipends for students who are accepted into accredited CPE programs.
Another advance in field education is the development of internships in the Holy Land. Dr. Wilson, our Academic Dean, and Mr. Antal are in close discussion with MEPI leadership for the placement of UTS students for fieldwork in Israel. Two students, a young woman from Russia and a young man from the Philippines, recently won grants to make possible their internships in Israel next spring and summer.
One reason it is useful for you to understand field internships is in case you desire to have a UTS student as an intern. Internships can last anywhere from two weeks to six months, depending on what activities the interns are doing. I recently spoke on this to our leaders gathered in London, with Reverend and Mrs. Song, and it appears that field education placements are plentiful in Europe. You could benefit from this important asset. It allows you to mentor, to participate in the student's education.
It should be a strategic placement, for you as well as for the intern. If he or she were interested in working with the Catholic Church in Zambia or in the Philippines, for example, the intern could prepare by doing an internship in Rome. But this requires the student's personal vision and zeal, so we need you to send young people with energy, skills and heart.
UTS has shifted to the standard American academic calendar. We now have two semesters per year, not three. We have a term that begins in late August and a term that begins in late January. We basically bring in students once a year, for the fall semester. That means we have an intake of students in autumn, at the end of the summer. Students who try to get into the program in late August but cannot for some reason, perhaps a visa delay, can enter in January. And of course we can absorb special cases in January, but basically we are working with a holistic annual calendar and want to bring in new students once a year.
We will be talking to you about new recruits soon, for students coming next August. We want to give you time to pick the right people, give them time to arrange their lives, to get their documents, to work out their visas and to go through the vetting process for financial aid. I spoke with one regional chair about a continent-wide competition for selection, like the Mr. and Miss University Contest.
I mentioned the Admissions Committee and the Financial Aid Committee. These very important committees review applications and the applicants financial status; they make the grant awards for financial aid. We are going to be including American Clergy Leadership Conference (ACLC) clergy on the Admissions Committee and in financial aid processing for the Extension Center, so that we can screen the applicants from all churches carefully. We want this to be done by their peers in order to establish equitable and fair financial aid awards. Overall, in both Barrytown and the Extension Center, the purpose is to raise the standard for admission, to make UTS education a valued prize.
We prefer to accept younger people. Of course, seminary education is good for us older folks, too. Many people choose seminary education to launch a second career. Second-career people should be at a point in life, though, where family or financial burdens do not weigh them down, where they have some financial independence. If they have passed through that financial and family building stage, it can be good to move on to the second career and come to UTS. But in general, we have a preference for younger candidates with field experience who are not so embedded in their family or career that spending two or three years at seminary would exact a great cost. We are looking for people who have flexibility, younger people with mission consciousness, who when they come to the seminary pretty much know what their goals are and are able to focus on those goals.
As all seminary graduates of any denomination know, seminary is a place where you hear many things, study many topics, encounter many questions and face a lot of options. This is good because it broadens your horizons, but it shouldn't be something that disorients you and leads to losing faith. We need people who have a strong focus and a mature faith. We are looking for students who are committed to moving through the program at a good pace and graduating as quickly as possible. We are looking for students who have worked through, at least to a preliminary degree, their plans with you. We do want students to have a broad experience and to sample many things, but that has to be balanced with the reality that seminary is not the end goal; it is preparation for something else. They have a career and a mission they are accountable to fulfill. By the time you get to graduate school, your basic searching should be over; you should be there to equip yourself to accomplish the responsibilities you will take on when you return to serve in the field.
We also want to raise the standard of English, so gradually we are going to raise the expectation for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) score. This will raise the standard of academics for all the course work.
Finally, I want to whet your appetite in relation to the possibility of expanding the domain of UTS education. It begins by formalizing what it means to be an inter-religious peace builder. That's one of our goals. What kind of spirituality and technologies does an inter-religious peace builder possess? Then we line up a series of courses to support those. Maybe it would be a three or four-course package. A person would not need to apply and be accepted at the seminary itself; she or he could just get that certification. UTS would partner with UPF, and it could actually be UPF that certifies that a person is an inter-religious peace builder. This could be "the next step" for people who become ambassadors for peace. The education would come from UTS. This could be the first thing that we could actually get online.
If we were able to this certification package going well, with students going through it and getting certified, we could set up locations around the world that could be authorized to teach those courses and provide this certification. There would not be a full-blown seminary in New Delhi or Nairobi or Moscow or wherever, but you could have a school that would begin by providing this inter-religious peace-building certification program. Then you could build from that. That step is doable without a lot of complicated legal and international issues coming into play.
Are you focusing on Unificationists or others as students?
At the New York Extension Center, our student body is very diverse within the Christian world. Unificationists comprise perhaps 10 percent there. Our long-term goal is to have a diverse student body with many ambassadors for peace at Barrytown as well. We have two this year at Barrytown; one is a nondenominational pastor from California, the other a Methodist peace worker from Zimbabwe. Gradually we do want to move toward having at least half the students be ambassadors for peace, but it may be more-this is still under discussion.
How are you going to deal with people of other faiths in what is very much a Christian-type environment?
It is not going to remain a denominational environment. We've had a good deal of discussion about this. We know we have to change the decor, we have to provide multiple worship spaces; we have to become religion positive but religion-neutral, so that everyone can feel comfortable. It is a challenge, no doubt about that. It's not easy to remove towering stained glass windows and we haven't even considered the idea. It is a task in front of us. We would perhaps be solving some problems, doing some innovative work from which the wider society might benefit in terms of how to affirm religion, affirm everyone's faith, and yet help everyone affirm each other's faith, listen first, in the context of the overarching ideal of one family under God.
That is the task we are taking on. The students keep their inherited religion-if they so desire. We know that our founder has used the phrase, "the mask of religion," and declared that, in the ideal, religion as a restorative process is unnecessary. I asked one of my authorities what second-generation Unificationists should write on the application form where it asks for one's religious affiliation. He said they should identify with the religion of their ancestors.
Are members of the faculty from different faiths?
We have a Catholic lay-person and an active Lutheran pastor on the full-time faculty at Barrytown. We are bringing a Buddhist monk to teach over the Thanksgiving break, and we are trying to attract him to join the faculty. At the Extension Center, there are Baptists, a United Church of Christ, an Episcopalian, who is also our field education director in the city, a United Methodist and others on the faculty. We need a Muslim and have some conversations going. We will bring in a Muslim adjunct for a course on Islam, but we haven't lined anyone up yet. We bring in a speaker or a worship leader from another faith to the chapel event once a month. So far, we've welcomed an Imam and a Presbyterian pastor.
How about the name? Is it going to stay Unification Theological Seminary, or will it change?
We are thinking for the time being to use the initials, UTS. You've heard of International Business Machines, right? No? Have you heard of IBM? Nobody says International Business Machines. They say IBM. They say AT-and-T -- no one talks about American Telephone and Telegraph! So, we are UTS.
The interfaith program culminates in a Masters of Religious Education accredited by the Commission on Higher Education, Middle States Association. UTS also offers Masters of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry degree programs, both with interfaith options. For more information, interested parties are directed to the UTS web site, www.uts.edu.
UTS courses for their Masters of Religious Education with a focus on inter-religious peace building include:
Theology of Peace Building
World
Religions and Global Conflict
World Scriptures and World
Peace
Ethics and Social Justice in the Age of Globalization
Fundamentals of Interfaith Leadership
Muslim-Christian
Relations
Jewish-Christian Relations
Spiritual
Development
Intercultural Communication and Conflict Resolution
Models of Teaching for Peace and Justice
Character Education and
Development
Perspectives on the Family and Peace Building