An interview with Nashotah House’s new dean
The selection of Dr. Lauren Whitnah as Nashotah House’s next dean and president may seem to signal a major break with the Wisconsin Anglo-Catholic seminary’s 182 years of tradition.
Whitnah is only the second layperson to lead the institution and the first woman (indeed, she will be the only woman on the faculty). She hasn’t taught in a seminary before, and her current job is mostly focused on writing grants for a large-data computing lab. She is almost certainly the first dean to have a side hustle teaching Argentine tango.
But Whitnah was raised in an Episcopal rectory and is descended from generations of educators. Her background as a medieval historian deepens her appreciation for the seminary’s Benedictine ethos. The Pax Nashotah, a local truce in North American Anglicanism’s wars that allows Episcopal and Anglican Church in North America students to prepare for ministry together, matters deeply to Whitnah, because her life as a worshiper has been on both sides of this divide.
Whitnah recognizes that the job before her is challenging: building trust with stakeholders that often disagree, increasing residential enrollment as it declines across American seminaries, raising millions to put a cash-poor institution on a more solid financial footing. But keeping the 12th century so often in her frame of reference has its advantages.
“Maybe this is from my training as a historian, and particularly as a medievalist, that I take the long view and I think of things in terms of centuries. So, we are planting trees that we will not live to see grow to their full height. I find that a terrific opportunity,” she says.
“I don’t operate from a place of handwringing about it, because I see how things have ebbed and flowed over the life of the Church.”
“There is such a strong sense at Nashotah House of the distinctiveness of the site, as a place that people deeply love. Participating in that — and being able to be the next in line of the custodians of that place — is very, very appealing.”
Generational Service
For Whitnah, leading a seminary will be her way of carrying on the family business, what she describes as a life of “generational prayer and generational service.” Her father, John, is a retired Episcopal priest, and her brother, Michael, is associate rector of St. Paul’s Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Another sister teaches sociology at Westmont College in California. Her great-grandparents were missionaries and grandparents on both sides were devout Christians.
A historian whose research is focused on saints’ lives and sacred space in medieval England, Whitnah studied medieval history at Oxford University before beginning a doctorate at Notre Dame, where she studied with historian John Van Engen, former director of the Medieval Institute.
She went on to teach medieval studies for nine years at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. In addition to teaching about 400 undergraduates a year, she was involved in committees focused on student well-being and helped to mentor younger faculty. During her decade in the classroom, the number of students pursuing majors and minors in medieval and Renaissance studies at Tennessee doubled.
Stepping back from the classroom in reaction to the demands of pandemic-era hybrid instruction, Whitnah switched to an associate director post in the university’s Global Computing Lab, managing communications and multimillion-dollar grants for the institute, which helps scientists dealing with large data applications.
“The thread that ties it all together is my love of communicating complex things clearly,” she said. “And so whether that is the ins and outs of devotional practice in the 12th century, or non-determinism and MPI applications, I really like being able to get to the heart of the matter and communicate it in a compelling way.”
She also says that her time leading the lab honed her administrative skills, and helped her understand fundraising, how to craft a message that will gain the attention and confidence of donors.
Core Imperatives
An important part of that message, she believes, is that Nashotah House is distinctly positioned to form priests in the best possible way.
“The Church and the world need what they have always needed, which are leaders committed to the knowledge of God, the love of God, and the service of God in the world, in the contexts in which they find themselves. So the context may change, the world changes; God doesn’t change. And those core imperatives remain the same,” she said.
“I put knowledge first because I think you have to know something, really, in order to love it. And you have to love it in order to serve it. So in fact, a top-tier education is really an important part of the formation for the priesthood. It’s important to have highly qualified faculty — as Nashotah House does — who can provide an excellent education.
“It is important to provide the framework for learning to love God and put that into practice, and Nashotah House does that distinctively with its abiding commitment to the Daily Office and Daily Mass and to expressing this love of God through structured communal prayer.
“I think the ideal training for the priesthood has always been that we will form you in this place in order for you to leave it. Right from the day you arrive, we are preparing for you to go out, ‘to love and serve God with gladness and singleness of heart’ in the world as it is.”
“For 1,500 years, people have found the Benedictine model an effective way to structure life in community for human flourishing and for the flourishing of the Church. That looks different in sixth-century Italy than it does in 21st-century Wisconsin, but the continuities are still strong.”
The Breadth of the Anglican Tradition
Whitnah says that Nashotah House’s unique position as a bridge across Anglicanism’s divisions also drew her to the role. Students and faculty from the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church in North America, and several continuing Anglican denominations share a common life at the seminary, sometimes to the bewilderment of colleagues in their respective churches.
In a September 2023 TLC interview, Nashotah’s current dean, Garwood Anderson, said that the current mix of seminarians is about 45 percent Episcopalian, 45 percent ACNA, and 10 percent Continuing Anglicans and other denominations.
Whitnah has been actively involved in churches across the Anglican spectrum during her adult life. Raised as an Episcopalian, she has worshiped in Episcopal, Church of England, and ACNA churches (with a sojourn among the Roman Catholics to boot). She is now part of Apostles Anglican Church in Knoxville.
“Nashotah House is distinctive in its commitment to educating people from both TEC and ACNA churches and embodying the breadth of the Anglican tradition. I find that very compelling,” she says.
“It’s been very important in our family to be able to navigate the breadth of that tradition. And it’s a tremendous witness to the church and to the world: when we can pray and work and study and live together because we have the same goal of loving God and loving our neighbor. And so Nashotah House has long been on my radar, as it’s one of the very few places where that is happening.
“It is critically important that Nashotah House continues its long heritage of serving the Episcopal Church, and I’m deeply committed to that mission. Cultivating relationships with sending dioceses from the Episcopal Church (as well as the ACNA and Continuing churches) will be one of my top priorities.”
She believes the seminary’s Benedictine ethos will be crucial in preserving that witness.
“When you put people in the same place, praying and working and studying and living together, that is a framework that promotes a move towards harmony rather than away from it, right? So if we are all engaging with each other through screens, and with all of that anonymity, then it is so much easier for vitriol to win the day. When we are actually in the same physical space, doing the same activities towards the same goal, it advances that peace, and that peace is hard-fought and hard-won where it is won at all.”
A Strong Foundation
Whitnah says that Nashotah’s board was honest with her about the financial challenges the institution faces. In recent years, the seminary has regularly run operating deficits of 10-15 percent on an annual budget of about $4 million, even as giving to the annual fund has more than doubled in the last seven years.
“I think Nashotah House is uniquely well-situated to respond to these challenges because of its distinctiveness. And I think there’s a really strong foundation here. So yes, there are challenges, but certainly, the work of my predecessors has really been instrumental in rebuilding a financial foundation that will enable long-term stability.”
She added: “Our enrollment numbers or our giving numbers are up — that is all very encouraging to me. So it’s important to me, both to continue to nourish relationships with existing Nashotah House constituencies right so that we continue to have productive relationships with sending dioceses right, but that we also begin to broaden outward from that. So not only nourish existing relationships, but also cultivate new ones, both in terms of recruitment, and in terms of fundraising.”
She’s also ready to extend a warm welcome to people within the Episcopal Church who feel that Nashotah might not be for them:
“We would love to have you,” she said. “There is enormous breadth in the Anglican tradition. And I think Nashotah House has a clear sense of what it is and who it is. That is a great gift to the church broadly and to the Episcopal Church. And so yes, absolutely. Please come.”
The seminary’s Benedictine ethos will also inform the way she approaches change, which she acknowledges can be painful in institutions with a deep sense of their history and legacy.
She says she hopes to find the right balance between stability and change “by participating fully in the life of the community. That means the Benedictine ethos: prayer and work and study and life. But of course, the first word of the Benedictine rule is a command to listen. And I take that very, very seriously. So that’s where I plan to begin, and where I plan to be for a long time.
“Do things change? Absolutely. Because I mean, back to the tree analogy: you grow or you die. So I think it’s really important not to be held hostage by tradition, or let’s say, held hostage by nostalgia. And the tradition provides the deep, deep roots from which we flourish.”
Whitnah says she is also excited to explore the seminary’s rural surroundings.
“I really like being outside. I am an avid hiker. I am really looking forward to picking up cross-country skiing again. I did that when I lived in Indiana. That is not really an activity that one is able to do in Tennessee. We don’t have the winter sports,” she acknowledged.
There may also be some music and dancing in her future. “I was a choral singer for many years. I really enjoy church music, particularly early music and polyphony,” she said.
And Argentine Tango? “Tango unites my love of movement with my love of music,” Whitnah said. “Tango provides a framework for deep attentiveness: to the other dancers, to one’s partner, to the music, to one’s own movement through space.”
Mark Michael is a member of Nashotah House’s Board of Visitors and TLC publisher Matthew S.C. Olver is an affiliate faculty member. Neither was involved in the search for and hiring of the seminary’s new dean.
The Rev. Mark Michael is editor-in-chief of The Living Church. An Episcopal priest, he has reported widely on global Anglicanism, and also writes about church history, liturgy, and pastoral ministry.