In January, the Claremont School of Theology (CST) received a $10 million gift from Board of Trustees member David Lincoln and his wife, Joan.
The gift will be used to start the Claremont University Project, which CST President Jerry Campbell said is “a project intended to create a small consortium of schools of theology representing different [religious] disciplines.”
According to the CST website, the goal of the project is to transform the means by which religious leaders are trained in contemporary American society.
“Since theology is usually segregated, we wanted to change this pattern, hoping that graduates in years to come will be able to collaborate with a background in many beliefs,” Campbell said.
He also said the project was inspired by the Claremont University Consortium.
The generous gift from the Lincolns will help CST get off its feet in this endeavor and “do concrete things,” Campbell said. He said one of the first steps in developing the program is to find other institutions willing to participate.
“The School of Theology is Christian, so now we need partners who represent different traditions and are willing to join us in this effort,” he said.
They will also start looking for new faculty members.
Ideally, the Claremont University Project will create a multi-religious curriculum that “would be an option for any and all students to demystify other beliefs.”
The Lincolns are prominent Methodists who reside in Arizona. Recently, they also made a gift to Scripps College and Claremont Graduate University to fund the expansion of the schools’ ceramics programs. A member of the Board of Trustees since 2003, Lincoln has been an avid supporter of the Claremont University Project.
“We’ve got great hopes that [the project] will do some good in the world,” Campbell said.