NBTS Faculty offer a public statement responsive to pressing political and social concerns
February 13, 2025
The faculty of New Brunswick Theological Seminary offer the following statement, confessing pillars of our faith that are consistent with our tradition and mission to educate leaders for the church and world. We do so at this moment responsive to enacted and attempted changes to public policy under the new U.S. Presidential administration, yet we offer no partisan endorsement or blanket approval of preceding policies. More broadly, the following convictions undergird our unflinching analysis of and dissent to habits of colonialism, imperialism, racial inequality, nativism, and economic injustices that feature prominently in the governing of the United States and the actions of U.S. Presidents.
We speak from our own particular religious traditions, guided by scripture, Reformed and ecumenical confessions, and the lessons taught by more than two thousand years of the Christian faith. An honest appraisal of our traditions and a critical-thinking Christian faith inform our sense of the necessity for interfaith partnerships and pluralism in society that makes room for all and strives together toward the common good.
We are accountable to the local and global locations where we practice our vocations, in New Jersey, the New York and New Jersey metropolitan area, throughout the nation, and around the world. The diversity of our faculty, students, alumni, and community partners is a gift and resource we leverage in our continuing work of anti-racism and inclusion.
We remember that the Christian story centers around a vulnerable child born outside Bethlehem, to a family of displaced people. We affirm God’s most radical love for the poor, marginalized, and displaced, as Jesus proclaims and is witnessed to us in scriptures such as Isaiah 61:1-2 and Luke 4:18. We claim the tradition of speaking truth to power that is found in ancient Hebrew narratives, prophetic critiques of Kings, Psalms and laments composed in exile, and the rejoicings of biblical women at God’s reversals of power. What our tradition calls good news has always scandalized the powerful. The hope of promised justice makes tyrants tremble and unnerves abusive religious and civic authorities alike.
We repent that we have been too slow and silent to condemn the dehumanization and attempted genocide or displacement of Palestinians, and the US government’s complicity in arming those who would achieve these ends. We say this even as we denounce the violence of October 7, 2023, and commit to calling out and rejecting the subsequent rising tide of antisemitism. We abhor these violences and have cultivated critique but have offered little institutional voice in the public square. We condemn the actions of the former administration that sent arms in service to the designs of an Israeli President indicted for crimes against humanity and that never secured humanitarian relief for Palestinians in Gaza. We sound alarm at the current administration’s stated desire to “clean” Gaza and proposals for the forced removal or eradication of the Palestinian people from their homeland. We reject any Christian Zionist interpretations of scripture that suggest or allege a mandate for genocide.
We are obligated to take the present administration to task precisely for the ways it has claimed sanction and warrant in the Christian tradition. This coopts faith in service to a partisan idolatry and cult of personality, which we must renounce. We condemn the effort to justify exclusionary foreign policy on the most truncated, white supremacist, colonialist perversion of the Christian faith. These violent manifestations are not new, and have fueled intra-Christian warfare, persistent antisemitism inclusive of the Holocaust, anti-Muslim crusades, genocide, settler colonial violence against Indigenous Peoples, imperialism, slavery, anti-Asian and Pacific Islander hatred, and anti-Black racism. The rhetoric of Christian religious warrant for policies of hate requires those of us who claim that tradition to speak and speak loudly.
We renounce efforts to silence critics, stifle the protest of students, manipulate the exercise of the free press and media platforms, and limit the means of civic dissent. We renounce the rising power of oligarchs, and their pledged obeisance to an authoritarian administration.
We condemn the dehumanization and mass deportation of those from other countries who seek sanctuary and safety in the United States or other countries. We reject any ethical compulsion to follow the cease-and-desist orders given to Human Services organizations who care for the most basic needs of our unhoused neighbors, asylum seekers, the poor, and all who seek refuge and basic human rights. We pledge principled non-cooperation with any of these measures that demean, degrade, and refuse welcome to our fellow human beings and support the argument that such measures of civil disobedience by individuals or organizations are faithful expressions of the Christian religious tradition.
We affirm that all people are created in God’s image and seek to embrace the equality of humanity irrespective of national origin, economic status, ability, gender, sexuality, and race. We renounce policies that seek to reject or undo the equal protection of the law and the fair administration of laws for our LGBTQAI+ siblings. We reject any measures that would propose to erase trans people from society or strip them of their identities and, very practically, ban them from public and governmental service and deny their health care and other human rights.
Our convictions born of faith seeking understanding are products of open minds and generous hearts. We will continue to protect them in the framework of the exercise of religion in this country. We will articulate them in our classrooms as consistent with our mission. We will share them in our scholarship on the basis of academic freedom. We will discuss and contest them in our public work and in the faith communities we serve. We will continue to share them with our students, alumni, constituent partners, and not-for-profit neighboring and collaborating organizations as we seek to support each other and stand firm against hate and violence. Even as we pray for transformation in the hearts and policies of those who would rule guided by fear, hate, and violence, we must speak, act, and protect the most vulnerable among us. In the words of Amos 5:24, “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
Affirmed by the undersigned faculty of New Brunswick Theological Seminary, February 6, 2025:
Rev. Nathan Jérémie-Brink, Ph.D.
L. Russell Feakes Assistant Professor of the History of Global Christianity
Rev. Terry Ann Smith, Ph.D.
Associate Dean of Certificate Studies/Associate Professor of Biblical Studies
Rev. Charles M. Rix, Ph.D.
Interim Dean and Vice President of Academics
Professor of Biblical Studies
Rev. Suzanne Wenonah Duchesne, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Worship and Preaching
Director of Mast Chapel at NBTS
Rev. Faye Banks Taylor, D.Min.
Assistant Professor of Spiritual Formation and Field Education
Rev. James Hart Brumm, D.Min.
Assistant Professor of RCA Studies/Director of the Reformed Church Center/Director of the Theological Writing Center
Rev. Beth LaNeel Tanner, Ph.D.
The Mary and Norman Kansfield Chair of Old Testament
Rev. Raynard D. Smith, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Pastoral Care/Pastoral Theology
Rev. Micah L. McCreary, Ph.D., LCP
President of New Brunswick Theological Seminary
Reformed Church in America Professor of Theology
John Henry Livingston Professor of Theology
Rev. Jaeseung Cha, Ph.D.
Professor of Foundational and Constructive Theology
T. Patrick Milas, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Theological Bibliography and Research
Director of the Gardner A. Sage Library
James Jinhong Kim, Ph.D.
Horace G. Underwood Chair in Global Christianity
Associate Professor of Missiology and Global Christianity
Jeff Pettis, Ph.D.
Visiting Associate Professor of New Testament
Janice A. McLean-Farrell, Ph.D.
Dirk Romeyn Associate Professor of Metro-Urban Ministry & Associate Dean of Doctoral Studies