The Installation of the Dirk Romeyn Chair of Metro-Urban Ministry

Please join us for the Installation of Janice McLean-Farrell, Ph.D. as the the Dirck Romeyn Chair of Metro-Urban Ministry!!

The Dirck Romeyn Chair of Metro-Urban Ministry was named in recognition of Dirck Romeyn’s historic contributions to RCA theological education, American higher education, the Americanization of the Dutch Reformed Church in North America, and the urban ministry of the First Reformed Church of Schenectady, New York, where he served faithfully as senior minister, 1784-1804. The Chair was previously held by Dr. Warren Dennis, Professor Emeritus and Dr. Lorena Parish.

New Brunswick Theological Seminary gratefully thanks the First Reformed Church of Schenectady, New York for their contributions toward endowing this chair.

Theodoric (Dirck) Romeyn was born on June 12, 1744 in Hackensack, New Jersey, and graduated from the College of New Jersey—now Princeton University—in 1765, a year before Queens College, now Rutgers, was founded, and was one of the ministers licensed and ordained by the American Coetus of the Dutch Reformed Classis of Amsterdam. Pastor of the Reformed congregations at Hackensack and Schraalenburg (now part of Dumont, NJ) from 1775 to 1784, he was “a warm and decided advocate of the cause of Independence, and became a mark for British and (T)ory hate and violence” (Centennial of the Theological Seminary of the Reformed Church in America, p. 424). His home was ransacked by the British twice, and he removed his family to Marbletown, New York, returning to his parish by stealth several times during the war. Afterward, he spent the final two decades of his life as pastor of First Reformed Church in Schenectady, New York, founding the Schenectady Academy, which would become Union College. Romeyn served as the fourth Professor of Theology of the Reformed Church, and regularly corresponded with Elias Westerlo, Jacob Hardenburgh (third president of Queens College), Hermanus Meyer (second Professor of Theology), and John Henry Livingston; these five are given credit by Livingston’s biographer, Alexander Gunn, with being principle architects of the Reformed Church in America.

Information here is taken from Centennial of the Theological Seminary of the Reformed Church in America, 1784-1884 (New York: Board of Publications of the Reformed Church in America, 1885); Alexander Gunn, Memoir of the Rev. Dr. John Henry Livingston (New York: Board of Publication of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, 1856); Edward Corwin, Manual of the Reformed Church in America, fourth edition (New York: Board of Publication of the Reformed Church in America, 1902); ad Russell Gasero, Historical Directory of the Reformed Church in America, 1628-2000 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001).

Janice McLean-Farrell, Ph.D. is the Dirck Romeyn Assistant Professor of Metro-Urban Ministry and the Director of the Center of Social Justice at New Brunswick Theological Seminary (NBTS). She teaches in the areas of urban ministry, research methods and community leadership and conducts research in the areas of religions in the African Diaspora, Christianity in the Caribbean, migration, urban immigrant youth and religion, immigrant churches in the Diaspora, marriage and sexuality among Black immigrant youth in NYC; and women and migration. McLean- Farrell is the author of numerous articles and West Indian Pentecostals: Living their Faith in New York and London (Bloomsbury, 2016). She is the co-editor of Understanding World Christianity: The Vision and Work of Andrew F. Walls (Orbis, 2011) and Engaging the World: Christian Communities in contemporary global Societies (Regnum, 2014). McLean-Farrell serves on various committees at NBTS as well as on the steering committee of the World Christianity unit of the American Academy of Religion, co-chair of the Religion and Education section of the Mid-Atlantic Region -American Academy of Religion and a member of theVital Worship Grant Advisory Board for the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship at Calvin College. McLean-Farrell has served as a commissioned pastor at New Song Community Church (CRC) and co-chair of the board for the New Song Community Corporation. She and her family are members of Madison Avenue Christian Reformed Church. She lives in Harlem with her husband and two children.