Serene Jones and Katharine Henderson
Union Theological Seminary and Auburn Seminary
Healers of Our Time—who embodies this title more than Rev. Dr. Serene Jones and Rev. Dr. Katharine Henderson? These women have recently assumed the presidencies of Union Theological Seminary and Auburn Seminary, respectively. The Sister Fund met with Serene and Katharine to discuss God, women, money and being a new seminary president.
What led you to become a seminary president?
Katharine Henderson: The fact that I’m here is an enormous surprise to a lot of people. Having grown up the child of a seminary professor and a minister, I did what a lot of PKs (pastor’s kids) do: I vowed never to become a minister or to marry one. And I have done both. I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and had parents who were very involved with the Civil Rights movement. I learned early-on that being a person of faith was not just a matter of sitting in a pew on Sunday morning but really taking to the streets—literally. Which was part of my early upbringing—marching in the Civil Rights movement and ending up in church singing hymns. I learned about being the “other” - in that case, being one of the few white people in groups predominantly made up of African Americans. And I think that those early experiences were very defining for me.
What was your spiritual life like during the years in which you committed yourself to never becoming, or marrying, a minister?
KH: I was a great atheist, a fervent atheist, a devout atheist. And the greatest comfort for me, from maybe 16 to 20, was that nothing mattered. I was headed for medicine. That was the road I was on from age 13 into my early college years. I came back to my faith in a Catholic church in Germany during a Vespers Service. I asked the priest if I could take communion, since I wasn’t Catholic. And I wanted him to say ‘no.’ But he didn’t. He said ‘yes’. (She laughs). And his opening the door to that experience was a real return, for me, to the church.
Serene, would anyone from your past be shocked to hear that you are seminary president?
Serene Jones: I’m shocked. (She laughs.) But I don’t think others are shocked. I think the people who would be shocked would be shocked that a 49 year-old woman would be the president of major seminary. That would shock them. But not that that woman is me. In high school I was a total math nerd. I was president of the math club and I did math all the way through college. Then I went to Divinity school and did my PhD in theology. I was involved in conceptual logarithms, but not real math. I was on the faculty at Yale for eighteen years in completely non-administrative roles. Only near the end was I administering women’s studies. One of the joys for me has been coming into this job and having to learn, not just accounting, but investment. Union is the one place in the world that I, in making a step into administration, believed that I could finally get a chance to exercise my math nerd skills without having to cut back on the activist, poet and scholar side of my interests, because it is a school that is so committed to social justice and to high levels of scholarship.
What have been people’s reactions to your being a woman president?
KH: Auburn had already had a female president, so it wasn’t a shock to our constituency. And yet, as I’ve traveled more broadly around the country and the world, it’s clear that in some ways we live in a bubble in New York City around gender issues. I think that we encounter gender issues differently around the country and around the world than we do here.
SJ: Historically Union has been a progressive place—the birthplace of feminist theology—but there are subterranean gender dynamics at play. There are studies, particularly around the recent market crash, about how women and men approach financial leadership differently. Debora Spar, the president of Barnard, argues that a higher level of testosterone leads to more high risk behavior and that the hedge funds that made the most problematic decisions were high testosterone environments. Women tend to manage money and to manage people in a much more risk-adverse manner. I see myself in these studies’ findings.
KH: Auburn used to convene the CEOs of major corporations and host discussions around moral economic policy. The program waned over the years, but with the onset of the financial crisis, we brought it back by popular demand. One thing I’ve noticed in restarting this program is that, more than ever before, CEOs are responding to, and are in fact craving, traditionally “religious” terminology—words like “morality”—and they are also craving women’s voices, because they know that those corporations with more women at the top level fared better in the market crash. Because I spend a lot of time fundraising for Auburn, I think a lot about women and philanthropy and the power that women can have to use their resources strategically to make a difference in the world. Women own over half the wealth in this country, so the power of women to make a difference around social issues and issues that they care about is enormous if we can get people educated about their capacity, their potential. Women make great fundraisers.
Do you feel you are able to bring your whole spiritual self to your job?
SJ: This past year as the president of Union Seminary has been the most spiritually exuberant year of my life. Being in the midst of our students’ potential is a powerful spiritual experience. Sometimes when I walk through the courtyard, I feel as though I am walking through a cloud, through the Spirit.
KH: I have delighted in my work. And I do not say that lightly. This word “delight,” like the word “joy,” is a word of depth and breath and experience. The day my job does not bring me this delight, I’ll know that something is wrong, either with me or with someone else. But until that day, I will continue to delight in what I do every day, knowing it is what I should be doing. Although I am deeply rooted in the Presbyterian religion—I am a Presbyterian minister and my faith is deeply rooted in the Presbyterian faith—because I work in a multi-faith environment, my language for expressing that faith has been widened. I have more ways to express it than I otherwise would.
What do you hope will mark your term as president?
KH: I am interested in furthering our multifaith work, our women’s leadership work and our work with religion and public life, which helps answer the “so what?” question around what we do.
SJ: I hope my term will be marked by financial abundance. Union is not financially comfortable and I hope to change that through my own active fund-raising. What the faculty at Union offers is imperative and must continue. The mainline church is in trouble, and seminaries are in trouble as a result. In ten years, seminaries will look very different than they do today. So both Katharine and I will be actively thinking through how we, as prominent seminary presidents, can play a leadership role in helping to determine just what seminaries will look like in ten years.
KH: Fifteen years ago, when I first came to Auburn Seminary, I was talking with one of our donors. He said, “Don’t be afraid to pray aloud.” By which he meant, “Don’t be afraid to ask for money.” But he also meant, “Don’t be afraid to put your dreams out there. Don’t be afraid to put your vision out there.”
First published in The Sister Fund’s 2010 Newsletter.
