Fuller Seminary--Microcosm of Evangelical Trends : Education: Pasadena school cleaves to the Gospels while remaining receptive to the full range of Christianity.

Richard J. Mouw, the newly appointed president of Fuller Theological Seminary, has a tough balancing act to perform.

The 45-year-old seminary in Pasadena is the largest nondenominational evangelical theology school in the world. Throughout its history, and particularly in the past two decades, it has been a microcosm of the evangelical movement in trying to preserve a distinct theological identity while being open to the wider Christian world.

“Fuller Seminary is exploring on behalf of the whole evangelical movement what it means to have grown up as a movement,” Mouw said in a recent interview.

Mouw, who will succeed the Rev. David Allan Hubbard as president in July of next year, is a member of the Christian Reformed Church. He was professor of philosophy at that denomination’s Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., for 17 years before joining the Fuller faculty as professor of Christian philosophy and ethics in 1985. He has been provost and senior vice president since 1989.

Commenting on Fuller’s evangelical identity, Mouw noted that the seminary stresses distinctions that are discussed infrequently in many parts of the Protestant world. He said the school’s theological focus is the message of the Gospels, a message “centered on Jesus Christ, who is the only savior, the only one who can bring us to God.”

Fuller takes “a very high view of the Scriptures as God’s word to us, the utterly reliable and authoritative Word of God,” he said.

For American evangelicals, the focus on Jesus and the Bible is expected and familiar. But Mouw said Fuller is committed to addressing problems within American evangelicalism as well. In particular, he said, the movement “has often been very anti-intellectual” and has avoided “careful scholarly reflection on the issues of human life and the Christian life in particular.”

In response to this, Mouw said, “Fuller has, from its early days, had a major emphasis on responsibility for culture, for the arts, economics, social justice issues. In that sense, our allies have often been more from the mainline and from Roman Catholicism than they have been from our own evangelical ranks.”

Mouw says he wants to continue the seminary’s traditions while reaching into some new areas.

“If I have a pet project, it’s trying to take more seriously than we have the fact that we’re a seminary that’s right in the midst of the entertainment-producing capital of the world,” Mouw said. Reflecting on the school’s proximity to Hollywood, he said: “I would very much like to see Fuller in closer dialogue with Christians in the entertainment industry.”

When Mouw takes the reins, he will owe a lot to his predecessor Hubbard, who is credited with helping the seminary broaden its student base and learn to cope with its growing diversity. Hubbard, an American Baptist minister, will have been president for 30 years when he steps down next year.

“We have 120 denominations on campus, when a lot of seminaries don’t even have 120 students,” Mouw said. More than 450 students were in the class that graduated June 13, and the student population averages about 3,700 a year. Nearly 40% of the students come from other countries or are ethnic minorities.

Hubbard said he believes Fuller may have a broader constituency than any other seminary in the world, with a student body that encompasses evangelical and mainline Protestants as well as Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians.

Under the influence of Hubbard, the seminary has also added schools of psychology and world mission, programs that make Fuller unique in the world of theological education. That diversification, Hubbard said, had been a source of enrichment, providing “more flexibility in ministry and a more varied faculty, a more nutritious curriculum.”

In a 1987 book about the history of Fuller titled “Reforming Fundamentalism,” evangelical historian George M. Marsden wrote of Hubbard: “One could not overestimate the importance of his masterful leadership in holding so many strands of the evangelical coalition and in distinguishing the essential from the nonessential.”

The challenge, Hubbard said, has been “to do this intentionally, not drift into it but to believe that it’s possible to do, to have a both-and, rather than an either-or approach.” As evidence that the seminary has succeeded at its balancing act, Hubbard said: “We don’t get confused too much with institutions that are either far right or far left.”