New Seminary President Kent Ulery '72 Talks with Hometown Newspaper

February 11, 2009

February 11, 2009, Greencastle, Ind. — "Becoming a seminary president was never a career goal," the Rev. Kent Ulery, the tenth president of Bangor Theological Seminary and 1972 graduate of DePauw University, tells Indiana's Wabash Plain Dealer. Ulery grew up in Wabash. He was formally installed as the leader of the seminary in Maine on January 27.

"How can one not be optimistic when one believes with God nothing is impossible?" Dr. Ulery tells the newspaper. "There is always reason for hope." However, he adds, "I am concerned about a church which has become too closely aligned with the culture; that is to say, with a church which has become so focused on itself that it forgets what Reinhold Niebuhr called ‘the weightier matters of the law,' namely justice and mercy. In too many instances the church has blessed an America which actually embraces the values of an empire rather than those of God."

The seminary president continues, "The church needs to reclaim its prophetic voice in the public square, confronting such evils as violence and warfare, the oppression of poverty, and discrimination against persons of differing race, ethnicity, religion, sex, and sexual orientation. The Christian faith is not a spiritual escape from the world; it is a force to transform the world into something closer to the realm of God."

Access the story at the Plain Dealer's Web site.

Learn more about Kent Ulery in this recent article.

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