Andover Theological Seminary traces its roots to the late 18th century and the desire for a well-educated clergy amongCongregationalists in the United States. That desire was expressed in the founding ofPhillips Academy in 1778 for "the promotion of true Piety and Virtue".
In 1806, a growing split within the Congregational churches, known as theUnitarian Controversy, came to a full boil on the campus ofHarvard College. TheHollis Chair of Divinity sat empty at Harvard for two years owing to tensions between liberal and more orthodoxCalvinists. This theological battle soon divided many of the oldest churches in Massachusetts and began to impact church polity and the hiring of ministers. When theHarvard Board of Overseers appointed well-known liberal[citation needed]Henry Ware to the Hollis Chair in 1805, the Calvinists withdrew to organize and establish a new school in 1807, Andover Theological Seminary on the campus ofPhillips Academy (est. 1778) inAndover, Massachusetts. This act, covered widely in the national press, was one of the significant events that contributed to the split in the denomination and to the eventual founding of theAmerican Unitarian Association in 1825 (which joined theUniversalists, founded in 1793, to become theUnitarian Universalist Association in 1961).
Between 1886 and 1892, a theological dispute known as the "Andover Controversy" broke out between the conservative "New England Calvinism" of the founders and the liberal theology of many on the faculty. President E. C. Smyth was investigated and dismissed for his liberal views in 1887, but in 1891 his dismissal was reversed, on technical grounds, by the Massachusetts Supreme Court, and the matter was dropped the following year.[2]
In 1908,Harvard Divinity School and Andover attempted to reconcile, and the seminary moved its faculty and library to the Harvard campus[3] (and soon into Andover Hall [1911]). Plans for a formal affiliation between the academies were made, but the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts disallowed the alliance since Andover's endowment is designated for a Christian theological education. Andover, therefore, relocated to the campus of Newton Theological Institution in 1931.
Andover Theological Seminary and the Newton Theological Institution formally merged in 1965 as theAndover Newton Theological School (ANTS).Newton Theological Institution began instruction in 1825 at Newton Centre, Massachusetts as a graduate seminary formally affiliated with the group now known asAmerican Baptist Churches USA, the oldest Baptist denomination in America. As the institution developed, it adopted Andover's curricular pattern and shared the same theological tradition of loyalty to the evangelical Gospel and zeal for its dissemination.
In November 2015, ANTS announced that it would sell its campus and relocate toYale Divinity School, after a presence of 190 years on that site.[4]
Prior to the founding of Andover and Newton, the model for the training of clergy was based on an undergraduate degree (actually the basis for the founding of most of the early colleges in the United States). The graduate model and the three year curriculum with a resident student body and resident faculty pioneered at Andover and Newton has become the standard for almost all of the 140 Protestant theological schools in the country.
Reflecting that zeal, the modern missionary movement began in this country through a group of Andover students known as the Brethren. Both Andover and Newton quickly assumed leadership in the modern mission movement, drawing the two schools into close association of people and ideas. Graduates such as Luther Rice andHiram Bingham pioneered in Christian missions around the world.Adoniram Judson, an 1810 Andover alumnus, is best known for his work in Burma, where he translated the Bible into Burmese and produced the first Burmese-English dictionary.
Asher Wright, class of 1831, missionary to theSeneca people, and a linguist who developed a Seneca alphabet and translated large portions of the bible and other texts.
William Jewett Tucker, class of 1866, Andover Theological Seminary faculty, 1879-1893; editor ofAndover Review; founder of Andover House; president ofDartmouth College.
George Trumbull Ladd (1842 – 1921), class of 1869, was an American philosopher, educator and psychologist. He was the first foreigner to receive the Second (conferred in 1907) and Third (conferred in 1899)Orders of the Rising Sun.
^Osborne, James Insley; Theodore Gregory Gronert (1932).Wabash College: The First Hundred Years, 1832-1932.Crawfordsville, Indiana: R. E. Banta. p. 31.
