Union Seminary

About this property

Union Presbyterian Seminary is a Presbyterian seminary in Richmond, Virginia, and Charlotte, North Carolina, offering graduate theological education in multiple modalities: in-person, hybrid, and online. As a result of efforts undertaken together by the Synod of Virginia and the Synod of North Carolina, Union Theological Seminary was founded in 1812 as the theological department of Hampden–Sydney College, located near Farmville, Virginia, and housed in what is now named Venable Hall. In 1895, Lewis Ginter, a financier and philanthropist in Richmond, donated eleven acres of land to the school, which was relocated to its current campus location on the north side of Richmond in 1898. The General Assembly's Training School (ATS) for Lay Workers was founded in Richmond in 1914 as a complementary institution intended to train "workers outside of the regular ordained ministry." In 1959 ATS was renamed the Presbyterian School of Christian Education (PSCE). PSCE offered a master's degree in Christian Education, and operated across the street from Union Seminary until 1997, when Union and PSCE were joined in federation, becoming Union-PSCE. In 2002, a commuter campus in Charlotte, North Carolina, began on the campus of Queens University of Charlotte, offering both M.Div. and M.A.C.E. degrees to part-time students. The Charlotte campus for Union Presbyterian was relocated to its new facility on 5141 Sharon Road in 2012. In 2009, Union's board of trustees voted to change the name of the institution to Union Presbyterian Seminary, partially as a means of distinguishing it from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. In his address announcing the new name, seminary president Brian Blount emphasized the school's unique heritage of several "unions", as well as the school's Presbyterian identity. For many years, the seminary operated WRFK, an FM radio station at 106.5 MHz. WRFK was sold to commercial interests in 1988. Union has a faculty of scholars in the fields of Bible, Christian education, theology, ethics, preaching, worship, church history, Christian leadership, and pastoral care. Faculty come from a range of denominational backgrounds beyond Presbyterianism, including Baptist, Lutheran, Episcopal, and Methodist scholars. Notable retired faculty include Bible scholars James L. Mays, Frances Taylor Gench and Brian Blount. Union's student body is made up of about 180 students, with 90 students at the Richmond campus and 84 more students at the Charlotte campus. The majority of Union's students come from the Presbyterian tradition, but the seminary draws students from more than 20 Christian denominations, including Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, and Reformed. There are a number of international students, from Ghana, South Korea, Switzerland, and other nations.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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