Seminary Addendum to Life Together Commitment

The seminary seeks to provide an educational setting where faculty, administration, staff, and students work together in the common purpose of creating and maintaining the highest ethical and lifegiving standards of academic and community life. This task occurs in the context of theological learning and practice rooted in Jesus' radical ministry of beloved community.

We are an Anabaptist, ecumenical, and interfaith community practicing intellectual noncoercion, celebrating diversity of cultures and experiences, and cultivating critical hope amid a plurality of ideas and perspectives. We are a hermeneutical community engaging critically with texts and traditions, analyzing the dynamics and structures of power, and deepening our understanding of peace with justice. We are a community of praxis, amplifying marginalized voices and putting peace into practice through solidarity with all creation.

We believe that personal maturity and growth are fostered as all community participants share in responsibility for one another.  Thus, growth is both an individual process and one that involves the entire community as we share our own concerns and at the same time respect and are shaped by the faith convictions of others. Our commitments include responsibility to love God and to seek after righteousness, to love others and practice justice, to exercise stewardship with freedom and responsibility, and to engage differences in viewpoints in a peace-seeking spirit rooted in the reconciling power of Jesus.