Beyond Walls
A Bicentennial History of Bexley Hall Seabury-Western Seminary Federation
- History & Biography
- Publisher: Wipf and Stock
- Published: 2025
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Publisher's Description
The story of theological education is central to the story of the Episcopal Church and a key element to the history and development of Christianity in the United States. This book charts the history of Bexley Seabury Seminary and its predecessor bodies, Bexley Hall and Seabury-Western Theological Seminary. This history reflects the significant changes that have impacted the Episcopal Church, in part examining how theological education and formation has been complicit in structures of systemic racism, marginalization, and oppression. Yet this is also story of innovation and development in response to sweeping changes that have impacted North American Christianity. Beyond Walls tells the history of Bexley Seabury Seminary on the occasion of its bicentennial, yet in doing so holds up a mirror that reflects many elements of the Episcopal Church and mainline Protestant Christianity over the past two centuries.
Endorsements (4)
“The history of Bexley Seabury, like that of all Episcopal Seminaries—and indeed the Episcopal Church—is fraught with white supremacy, heteronormativity, and gender inequality. As one-time Dean of Bexley Hall, and longtime faculty member at Bexley Seabury, Tom Ferguson is in a unique position to tell that story across the 200-year history of Bexley Seabury and its predecessor institutions with authenticity and grace. Ferguson offers a fascinating and sometimes brutally honest telling of the ways in which the ever-present changes in the church, higher education, and the United States of America have made Bexley Seabury the important player in seminary education that it is today.”
“This book illuminates the history of the Episcopal Church and education for ministry through the complex and intertwined history of what is now the Bexley Seabury Seminary Federation. Ferguson shows that what has transpired in the history of Episcopal seminaries are not isolated events but ways of interpreting how the Episcopal Church has never been a static institution. Its history reveals a continual state of development, discernment, and experimentation.”
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