As the new dean and president of Episcopal Divinity School, the Very Rev. Lydia Bucklin now sits at the helm of an institution pondering fundamental, existential questions.
An unaccredited seminary with neither buildings nor faculty — yet buttressed by a robust endowment — EDS is determining what particular offering it will bring to the church in its current iteration.
In the spring of 2023, EDS parted ways with Union Theological Seminary, through which it offered a residential, degree-awarding program. At the time of the announcement, the Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, the former dean, said the disaffiliation positioned the school to offer the kinds of “flexible formats, creative pedagogies, and innovative credentialing opportunities” students now seek.
A year and a half later, many questions remain as the school emerges from 12 months of strategic planning: Should the school seek reaccreditation? Does it need a faculty? What academic programs, if any, might it offer?
“We’re kind of flying the plane as we’re building it,” said Bucklin, who began in her role August 1.
Being unburdened by overhead costs gives EDS time to consider those questions and find the gaps in current theological education offerings, Bucklin said.
A 2015 EDS graduate, Bucklin succeeds Douglas, who served as dean from 2017 to 2023 and then as interim president until June of this year. Bucklin has served since 2018 as canon to the ordinary in the Diocese of Northern Michigan in Marquette. She plans to keep working from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula as dean of EDS.
As the daughter of the late Rt. Rev. James Kelsey, former Bishop of Northern Michigan, Bucklin grew up in a ministry family and was formed by the church. Kelsey’s tragic death in 2007 prompted Bucklin, who has a Master of Social Work from the University of Michigan, to reconsider her professional calling.
“It was one of those moments where life is just flipped upside down and you reevaluate everything,” she said.
She joined the staff of the Diocese of Iowa as a lay leader of children and youth ministry. In 11 years with the diocese, she oversaw young adult ministry, communications, congregational development, church planting, and lifelong formation.
She didn’t have ordination in mind when she enrolled at EDS.
“I really just wanted some good theological formation that would kind of put me at the same level as my clergy colleagues,” she said. “And then, part way through my education at EDS, I planted a little church and started needing those sacramental tools in order to live into my vocation. And, so, by the time I graduated I was on the ordination track.”
She was initially hesitant to pursue orders. Her father and other mentors had always affirmed the role of lay leaders, and that’s how Bucklin had envisioned herself living her calling.
“I didn’t want to change who I was, and I had seen that happen with others where they got ordained and all of a sudden, they [felt] they had to live into what felt intimidating in terms of the ‘mother knows best’ or ‘father knows best’ model,” she said. “And what I found was that I could still be Lydia while I was ordained. I could still be called into a ministry of reconciliation and healing, just in different ways as an ordained person.”
Since graduation, Bucklin has remained connected to her alma mater. In the past year, Bucklin has convened listening sessions seeking feedback from among the school’s 1,650 living alumni on what they found valuable about their formation at EDS, and the needs they have in their current ministries.
Bucklin said those conversations revealed gaps in the traditional theological education landscape, which is designed to equip clergy to serve in a different context than where many find themselves. In particular, Bucklin said there is a need in the church for training related to “community engagement in an intercultural context.”
“This model of one priest per congregation is no longer the norm for most places in the Episcopal Church,” she said. “… What we found is that there are a lot of needs that are really different for the church right now that the seminaries haven’t been able to keep up with, just because of the fast pace of the changing church.”
How EDS plans to meet those needs remains to be determined. Bucklin said it could look like offering certificate-granting continuing education programs. Another opportunity is in Clinical Pastoral Education, especially for students living in rural areas where the long distance to CPE placements are prohibitive, she said.
“EDS could partner with a diocese or with another school to offer a hybrid-remote CPE experience, where someone could find a local hospital or prison or chaplaincy location and then we would hold the online cohort to do the formation piece of it,” she said.
She also would like EDS to offer writing labs for up-and-coming scholars.
“It’s a hard time to be a scholar and theologian, especially for emerging scholars and theologians. I would love to find ways that we can support the writing and advancement of theological thought in fresh ways for those folks who are called into that ministry,” she said.
The school does not plan to resume a Master of Divinity program, the standard offering of a seminary.
EDS traces its origins to the 1974 merger of Philadelphia Divinity School and Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, both of which were founded in the mid-19th century. Facing declining enrollment and a deficit, the EDS board of trustees voted in 2016 to stop granting degrees at the end of the academic year.
The school sold its Cambridge campus and affiliated with Union Theological Seminary in New York City, allowing Episcopal seminarians to enroll in EDS’s Anglican studies program at UTS. The partners announced their disaffiliation in March 2023, halfway into the decade-long term of their agreement.
In its next chapter, EDS is well-positioned to host online learning groups, as the school was an early adopter of distributed learning, said Bucklin, who completed her M.Div. through the school’s hybrid program.
“In a lot of ways, that cutting-edge, different way of doing theological education has been part of the EDS story, she said. “Now we’re seeing more seminaries that are doing that, but that’s definitely part of my hope for what we continue to do, is that we make theological education accessible to people.
“I think there will always be a place for the residential seminaries and that standard three-year program, and I think it’s a ‘both/and,’” she added. “I wonder where those gaps are that EDS can, in a noncompetitive collaborative way, work together with other seminaries and formation programs in diocese and supplement what’s already out there.”
At a time of decline in the church and among seminaries, Bucklin’s outlook on theological education is expansive. As many schools are downsizing or eliminating programs, EDS has resources to share, she said.
“I take that responsibility really seriously in terms of how we can be generous and, in hospitality with the other seminaries, how we can share resources,” Bucklin said of her school’s $80 million endowment.
Similarly, as parishes are increasingly unable to sustain a full-time priest, Bucklin said it’s time to equip more laypeople for the work of the church.
“What this shift in the church has resulted in is the need for not just ordained folks to talk about theology and to use their gifts for ministry, but really … for everybody digging in to use our baptized gifts for collaborative shared ministry.”
Without buildings to maintain or faculty to support, administrative costs at EDS are low. The school’s sole footprint is the office space it leases at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City. In addition to Bucklin, the staff includes a director of programming and operations, a director of strategy and operations, and a part-time office assistant. The school is seeking a communications manager. The next high-priority hire, Bucklin said, is to bring on someone to oversee theological formation and develop curriculum.
