Duke Divinity School

The Divinity School at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina is one of thirteen seminaries founded and supported by the United Methodist Church. It has 39 full time and 18 part time faculty and over 500 full time students. The current dean of The Divinity School is Richard B. Hays, who replaced the former dean and now, senior advisor for international strategy, L. Gregory Jones.

The Divinity School was founded in 1926 as the first graduate school at Duke, following a large endowment by James B. Duke, a tobacco magnate, in 1924. The Divinity School carries on from the original founding of Trinity College at the site in 1859, which provided free training for Methodist preachers in exchange for support from the church. Though the school is affiliated with the United Methodist Church, it is also ecumenical in outlook and has both faculty and students from a variety of denominations.

The Divinity School building was recently renovated and also expanded. The Hugh A. Westbrook Building, which opened in 2005, is 53,000 square feet (4,900 m²). It also contains the 315-seat Bishop W. Kenneth Goodson Chapel with 55-foot (17 m)-high ceilings, office space, a bookstore, cafe, outdoor patio, and a 177-seat lecture hall.

Academics and Programs

The Divinity School offers a Master of Divinity, Master of Theological Studies, and Master of Theology degrees. A Ph.D. as well as an M.A. in religion is available through the Graduate School, drawing upon the resources of faculties of the Divinity School and the Department of Religion. A Doctor of Theology, or Th.D, program began in the fall of 2006. It focuses on areas of study such as worship, evangelism, preaching, and the arts which are neglected by the Ph.D. program.

The programs run through the school include the following.^[1]

Theology and the Arts
Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition
Anglican Episcopal House of Studies
Baptist House of Studies
Black Church Studies
Center for Reconciliation
Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life
Duke Youth Academy for Christian Formation
Ormond Center
Pulpit and Pew
Sustaining Pastoral Excellence
Health Initiatives Program
Thriving Rural Communities
Leadership Education at Duke Divinity

The Divinity School is perhaps most noted in American theological circles for serving as a fountainhead of postliberalism, or narrative theology, a movement originating in the 1960s and 1970s at Yale Divinity School.

Duke Divinity also benefits from the resources of the Duke Endowment, providing an outlet for this fund's support of higher education and the rural church in North Carolina. Resources from this endowment go towards student internships in rural North Carolina Methodist churches, further clergy development, and other programs. The Divinity School is home to Stanley Hauerwas, whom Time named "America's Best Theologian" in 2001.^[2]

Notable faculty

The recently completed Goodson Chapel, part of the Divinity School's latest addition.

Jeremy Begbie, Thomas Langford Research Professor of Theology and Director of the Duke Initiative in Theology and the Arts
Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics (1984- )
Richard B. Hays, Dean and George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament
Reinhard Hütter, Associate Professor of Theology
L. Gregory Jones
Timothy Tyson, Visiting Professor of American Christianity and Southern Culture
Geoffrey Wainwright, Robert Earl Cushman Professor of Christian Theology
Roy Kinneer Patteson, Jr., Noted ancient language scholar, authority on the origin of the alphabet and former president of Southern Virginia University and King College

Notable alumni

Edwin Charles Boulton (M.Div. 1953) - a Bishop of the United Methodist Church
Ernest A. Fitzgerald (B.D. degree, 1951) - retired Bishop of the United Methodist Church
Gregory V. Palmer (M.Div. 1979) - a Bishop of the United Methodist Church
Andrew Purves (Th. M. degree) - holds the Hugh Thomson Kerr Chair in Pastoral Theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
Mack B. Stokes (B.D. degree, 1935) - retired Bishop of the United Methodist Church
Randall Wallace (Did not graduate, but did attend) - Hollywood Screenwriter, producer and director, involved with Braveheart, The Man in the Iron Mask, Pearl Harbor, and We Were Soldiers