from the president's desk

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

As we near the end of the 2002–2003 academic year, our nation is at war, occasioning controversy at home and abroad. It should come as no surprise that the Seminary campus is embroiled in that discussion that generates both heat and light.

Chapel sermons have focused on the conflict, teach-ins have been held on “just war” theory and its implications for the present situation, prayer vigils have been held, and forums for debate have been arranged. Typically, the varied views and perspectives pretty much reflect those of our society at large.

Perhaps what is unique to this and other theological schools is the conscious effort on all sides to discern the best public policy in the light of our shared faith in Jesus Christ and the God we know and trust through him. That touches us all at the deepest and most sensitive nerve in our lives. Thus, emotions run high and occasionally tempers flare.

It is encouraging to note, however, that the members of the campus community have demonstrated considerable maturity and exercised evident goodwill in their efforts to come to terms with an issue of national, international, and theological impact. Nonetheless, those who think of seminaries as ivory towers far removed from the real world reveal the fact that they have never attended one.

Princeton Seminary, once again and still, stands in the Reformed theological tradition, which mandates that faith engages, both intellectually and practically, the world that God loves and for which Christ died.

Faithfully yours,

Thomas W. Gillespie