Multiple graduates of General Theological Seminary have sent a letter to Bishop Mark Sisk and the seminary’s board of trustees:
We are members of The General Theological Seminary’s classes of 1972 through 1987. We are no strangers to pain and conflict in Chelsea Square. Ours were the years when the General Convention passed the ordination of women and Rachel Hosmer became the first woman to celebrate the Eucharist in the Chapel of the Good Shepherd. Ours were the years when petitions against Roland Foster remaining dean were brought to the Board of Trustees, and eventually he returned to using his considerable gifts as a church historian and professor. Ours were the years when HIV-AIDS first took the lives of our classmates’ partners or our classmates themselves. So we write to you at this painful, present time first of all with the assurance that the Way of the Cross is the path to Resurrection.
… We also wish to add a request we have not yet seen elsewhere: The allegations concerning the Dean and President noted in the faculty letter are allegations of clergy misconduct. We believe you are quite correct in retaining advisers to investigate those allegations with respect to the seminary as a work place. However, the allegations must also be brought to the bishop in the diocese of Dean Dunkle’s canonical residency. His bishop can and must invoke whatever the policies and processes are in his diocese for dealing with allegations of clergy misconduct. All of us who are ordained would expect nothing less to happen in our own situations.
Read the rest at Episcopal Café.
Image of the Close at General Theological Seminary by Beyond My Ken (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons
