A planet challenged by violence and disparity needs more than spiritual platitudes and status quo complacencies, says YDS alum Javier Viera ‘00 S.T.M., new dean of the Theological School of Drew University, located in Madison, NJ.
Such a world is ready to hear from Christians who can bring healing, intellectual rigor, interfaith empathy, self-discipline, and social transformation—a vision of “new creation” for unpredictable times, not another round of gloomy talk of church decline and self-absorption, he says.
“The ground is shifting beneath our feet, and we have to discover how to navigate the new terrain that is before us,” says Viera, a former YDS Alumni Board member.
“I find the uncertainty of our religious future thrilling, for that uncertainty is forcing a reexamination that our prior cultural dominance could never provoke.”
A more interesting identity
Viera was named last spring as dean of Drew’s Theological School, which is known for its ecumenical scholarship, student diversity, and social activism. With an enrollment of some 460 students, the school has United Methodist roots, but no one denominational, ethnic, or cultural group can claim a majority.
“Like YDS, Drew exists in the shadow of New York City, and we see the world changing right in our own backyard, changing faster than we can fully understand. Our diversity forces us to remain connected to a wide variety of perspectives. That’s exciting. It allows for the emergence of a more interesting identity that’s not tied to any one regional or theological position, and that’s what we’re trying to discover. Whether our students come from traditional churches or come here completely unformed theologically, they see Christianity as an engine of change.”
Viera is busy working with Drew faculty and staff to hammer out a new mission that reflects the realities of the new century—its potential, pluralism, financial stresses, and brokenness. He says he has been borrowing a phrase from YDS Dean Gregory Sterling—the idea that seminary education should be unapologetically Christian but not narrowly so.
“I love that phrase,” Viera says. “In a dramatically shifting religious landscape, we are grounded in Christian experience but with an interfaith focus.”
“Constantly reinterpreting our tradition”
Viera was born in Puerto Rico, raised in Florida, received a B.A. from Florida Southern College, and an M.Div. from Duke University, as well as a YDS Master of Sacred Theology degree. He finished a doctorate in adult learning and leadership at Columbia University in 2012.
Touchstones during his YDS days include two alumnae theologians who were on the faculty at the time—Margaret Farley and Serene Jones.
“Margaret Farley was incredibly important to me,” he recalls. “I was a student at the time she was writing Just Love, and we were using her initial drafts in class. She taught me the importance of holding opposable claims to truth in healthy tension and dialogue. From Serene Jones, I learned to read Calvin and Barth, not just their systematic ideas but in the context of the tumult of their times. They were writing in periods of great upheaval and I came to appreciate the sacrifices they made to live faithfully for their convictions in a time of danger.”
Before coming to Drew, Viera was executive minister at Christ Church (United Methodist) in Manhattan. It proved to be a strong training ground for forging principles of theological education, conviction, and leadership.
“It’s a place where as a pastor I couldn’t take anything for granted anymore, a place where we were constantly reinterpreting our tradition for the present moment,” he says. “That really shaped me. And it’s in a city where economic inequality is so prominent and visible. I tried to build bridges between those two worlds of prosperity and struggle. I’m grateful for how the church is deeply committed to social justice.”
Viera has been giving much thought to the foundations of a vital contemporary faith. (See, for instance, his essay in the Spring 2014 issue of Reflections.)
Beyond decline
During his installation address in October, he argued that Christianity should reclaim the wisdom of some of its previous faith movements, notably the early Methodists, Pietists, and Jesuits. They had certain qualities in common. They were intellectually nuanced, welcoming to others, confident about sharing the faith without imposing it, and committed to social transformation and hope for marginalized people. It will take that sort of infusion of vigor to move the church off-center and into the future.
In his address he declared: “For decades now, religious movements in this country, and Europe before us, have been obsessed with their imminent decline, and yet for all that obsession their institutional religious life and practice looks much the same today as it did a generation ago. Theological education, more specifically, roughly resembles what it was almost a century ago. In spite of the evidence before us, in spite of the countless initiatives to try to counter the demise of religious life and institutions, the landscape is essentially unchanged.”
He added: “We need to recover the desire to share the faith, not impose it; to welcome others into the community of Jesus, not to demand it; to call others into a deeper experience of God in Christ, not to dictate it. The wisdom of our Jesuit, Pietist, and Methodist forebears in this regard was to a great degree the secret of their success. … Sophisticated, sensitive spiritual extroversion, they taught us, is exceedingly more loving and effective than imposing an ideology masked as a gift.”
So stands the church in the 21st century—in need of leaders who can deftly navigate pluralistic complexity and uncertainty, says Javier Viera. A crowded, uncertain, and at times dangerous world requires people of faith to face and reach out to the stranger in more committed, imaginative ways. The healing of the world is at stake.
“We have to move beyond tolerance,” he says. “As philosopher Alastair MacIntyre has argued, we have to learn the traditions of others not as a second language but as a ‘second first language,’ and that’s hard work! Yet you don’t have to lose your own identity—not at all. Your first language will always be your first language. That won’t change. But it’s a matter of commitment to learn that new language too, the viewpoint of someone else, in this 21st-century world.”