Alston began to tangle with theology when, while stationed in Boston with the Navy, he heard George Buttrick preach at Harvard University. “I went to [Union] seminary on a dare from Buttrick,” says Alston. “I had been leaning in the direction of atheism, and he challenged me to read Tillich. I read everything that Tillich wrote, and then I went to seminary.”

After graduation from Union, Richmond, he went to Zurich to do doctoral work on the relationship between biblical studies and theology. “I was enthralled by biblical interpretation that identified God as the Lord of history,” he explains. He really fell in love with theology in a seminar he took with Karl Barth in Basel. “Barth gave me the capacity to retrieve my tradition; he gave me back Calvin, Luther, the church fathers, as people who had exciting ideas,” Alston says.

Back in the States, he followed God’s calling into the church. He pastored churches in Wadesboro, North Carolina; Auburn, Alabama; and Durham, North Carolina; and as a southern pastor he became deeply involved in the Civil Rights movement. “Because Reformed theology understands God as the Lord of history, God is also the Lord of my history,” Alston says. “That meant that God was active in the struggle of Black people in this nation, working to set people free, and the church needed to be present in that struggle.”

In 1974, Alston came north, with a Union Ph.D. in hand, to answer the call to be pastor of Nassau Presbyterian Church in Princeton. He stayed for twenty-two years.

Alston believes that his many years in the pastorate as a “practicing theologian” helped prepare him for his position as CTI’s director. He knows from first-hand experience that pastors need theologians.

“It’s important that the Center not become merely a think tank for the academy,” Alston explains. “It must also be relevant for the life of the church. I am committed to getting the thought and creativity that goes on at CTI into the lifestream of men and women who are seeking to be faithful in the church.”

To accomplish this goal, the Center has begun a program for pastors and theologians that is directed by William H. Lazareth, a retired bishop in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Funded by a Lilly Foundation grant, the three-year program is open to ministers from all denominations who have demonstrated a commitment to theological reflection within the context of congregational ministry. Ten pastors from each of five regions are chosen based on their applications and given the opportunity to gather three times a year in their regions to consider theological issues facing the church. A CTI resident scholar acts as theologian-in-residence for each regional meeting. A concluding conference, at which papers generated in the seminars are presented and discussed, is held in Princeton.

Seminars in this pilot year of the Pastor-Theologian Program have been held in Tucson, Arizona; Galena, Illinois; Sante Fe, New Mexico; New Paltz, New York; and Callaway Gardens, Georgia.

“There are so many intellectually able and theologically active

vice versa. This program provides that opportunity.”

A second new initiative at CTI is a series of major, ongoing consultations on issues within theology that the Center’s board feels need focused attention. Alston describes such consultations as “dialogical research.”

“We have identified four areas for these consultations—eschatology, globalization, theological anthropology, and the Scripture Project,” he explains. “In the latter, we are looking at the crisis of biblical theology in the contemporary church.”

Each consultation brings scholars from around the world to Princeton for several days to reflect on and grapple with theological ideas. The consultation on eschatology has included both scientists (like John Polkinghorne of Cambridge University, William Stoeger of the Vatican Observatory Research Group, and Owen Gingerich of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and theologians (like Jürgen Moltmann from Tübingen and Michael Welker from Heidelberg) who talk about the possibility for hope in the midst of cosmic uncertainty.

Key to the consultations, according to Alston, is an interdisciplinary approach. “Too often theologians don’t talk to biblical scholars, and vice versa,” he says. “They’re all working in their own little areas. But wouldn’t it be exciting if students were taught Bible by ethicists as well as by Old Testament scholars?”

The consultation on globalization is addressing social ethics—how the resources of the Christian faith can give shape to global reality in the twenty-first century. It will include topics like mass communications, global economics, and multiculturalism. The newest consultation, on theological anthropology, will look at the Christian doctrine of man, revisiting questions like Who is a person? “We want to talk about how the preciousness of human life is not lost in the commercialism, the power struggles, and the technological manipulations that underlie our culture,” says Alston.

The scholars who have the privilege of spending six to twelve months of their own lives at CTI feel valued just by being there. Hamilton, who left the demands of law school teaching for a year, called CTI’s environment “blissfully intellectual and restoring.”

And as these scholars are valued and connected in the conversations they have in the Luce Hall kitchen at lunch and in each others’ studies in midafternoon over a cup of tea, it may be that the church and even the world will begin to find understanding and healing.

CTI has come a long way since it was a dream in McCord’s fruitful mind. “That was liftoff,” Alston says. “The Seminary’s involvement was like the second-stage booster rocket. Now we’re in orbit!”