| Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School | |
| Image Alt: | Exterior of red brick bell tower and chapel with Gothic decorative elements |
| Other Name: | CRCDS |
| Former Names: | Hamilton Theological Institution, Colgate Theological Seminary, Rochester Theological Seminary, Colgate Rochester Divinity School, Baptist Missionary Training School, Crozer Theological Seminary |
| Type: | Seminary |
| Religious Affiliation: | American Baptist Churches USA |
| President: | Angela D. Sims |
| Faculty: | 8 |
| Students: | 67 |
| City: | Rochester |
| State: | New York |
| Country: | United States |
| Campus: | Urban |
| Footnotes: | |
Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School is a Baptist seminary in Rochester, New York. It is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA.
Four Baptist institutions merged over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries to form Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School (CRCDS) as it exists today. Its earliest roots are in the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution (later Colgate Theological Seminary), which began in Hamilton, New York, in the early 1820s under the auspices of the New York Baptist Union for Ministerial Education. Soap and candle magnate William Colgate, a devout Baptist, was an influential trustee in the Union for Ministerial Education and took an active role in financing and championing Hamilton Institution.[1] Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution later evolved in part into Colgate University.
The present-day seminary's second heritage institution, the Rochester Theological Seminary, was formed in 1850 at the founding of the University of Rochester by a group from Colgate Theological Seminary who sought a more urban educational setting. Women were accepted, enrolled, and graduated as regular students beginning in 1920.[2] The remainder of the Hamilton seminary had moved to Rochester by 1928, when the two seminaries merged to become Colgate Rochester Divinity School and moved to the 1100 South Goodman Street campus in Rochester.
In 1961, the school was joined by its third legacy institution, the Baptist Missionary Training School, a women's school in Chicago founded by the Women's Baptist Home Mission Society.
Persuaded by student advocacy and protest throughout 1968 and 1969—namely by the school's Black Student Caucus—Colgate Rochester Divinity School hired more African-American professors to join the school's overwhelmingly white faculty, increased course offerings in African-American religious and cultural studies, and formally established the Martin Luther King Jr. Program of Black Church Studies in 1969. It was one of the first such programs instituted at a predominantly white seminary or divinity school in the U.S.[3] [4]
The last significant institutional merger took place in 1970, when Crozer Theological Seminary moved from Upland, Pennsylvania to merge with Colgate Rochester Divinity School, and form Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York.
The Divinity School shared its South Goodman Street facilities with several organizations over the years. St. Bernard's School of Theology and Ministry, a Roman Catholic theological school, occupied the South Goodman Street campus from 1981 until 2003, when it relocated to another site in the area. The American Baptist Historical Society, serving the American Baptist Churches USA, also occupied the South Goodman Street campus in varying capacity from 1955 to 2008, when the Society's offices and archival collections were relocated to Mercer University in Atlanta.[5]
After selling its historic 90-year-old campus next to Highland Park in 2016,[6] Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School moved 2.2 miles north in 2019 to Village Gate Square[7] in Rochester's Neighborhood of the Arts, near the George Eastman Museum and Memorial Art Gallery.[8]
Graduates programs include:
Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School is accredited by the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada (ATS).[9] It is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA. [10]
Notable individuals who both graduated from and served on the faculty of the school: