Alas, no.

Instead the change is a new and improved repetition of the same -- now moving to the end of its logic. The "change" the Claremont School of Religion is to move into a post-Christian type of graduate school of Religion. "Claremont School of Theology is transitioning into a multi-religious graduate university, to bring people of all perspectives together to teach and learn about religions, theologies, and cultures." It has become formally what it has been in function -- a type of Protestant liberalism that ideologically masks its hegemony behind a rhetoric of pluralism. Now, however, it seeks to separate its central mission from the church, leaving the church as one prong within the commodity of religion and spiritual care. Who needs God when you can study "theologies" for your own, individualized, customized self-expression?

A few years ago CST lost its accreditation due to financial issues. My guess, and it is strictly a guess, is that the institutional weakness of its liberal protestant church constituencies has weakened the financial patronage there, and that these elite are seeking patronage elsewhere. My guess is that the "for-profit and not-for-profit chaplaincy" is the new market for their students -- kind of like how Vitas Hospice, the leading for profit hospice care company, hires chaplains as part of the "end-of-life" care package to provide therapeutic relief for its customers -- and thus was bought out by Roto-Rootor. Gives new meaning to "chase your troubles down the drain, ro, ro rooter."

On the other hand, here is the academic institutional end of liberal Protestantism, as seen over and over again -- but now, at its graduate level, not merely undergraduate level. It is part of the institutional death wish of Protestant liberalism, documented by sociologists and at work for almost 2 centuries. Their cultural victory means their ecclesial defeat -- which, of course, is what they always really hoped for in making the church a means to a greater end for the liberal nation-state -- and the world. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. And the joke is how well intentioned the move is. Not to mention the money spent in marketing with such a high-quality paper and pictures. I'm sure the marketing consultants were paid well too.

Yves Congar wrote in Divided Christendom (1938) about similar processes at work in Protestantism. He didn't see much an ecumenical future in the Protestantism he saw dominated by Protestant modernism:

"Vast changes are necessary before they can think of any movement towards reunion. Protestantism presents two outstanding features - particular objects of belief and a particular way of approaching and interpreting religious reality. We believe that the latter of these is always inimical to the former; that the specifically Protestant mind is gradually destructive of the objects of its own belief, and of what survives of the heritage of historic Christianity. . . . . (pp. 273-4).

Congar sees the problem, not in the Reformers themselves, but in the historical processes and movements and convictions of their heirs:

"Reunion will only become possible when Protestantism has got rid of these fundamental oppositions, which, with the intention of doing Him honour, belittle and defame the creative operations of God. One way alone seems open, though it is impossible to foresee where it may lead. In spite of everything the Reformers handed down many articles of the Christian Faith, In so far as Protestantism endeavours to live by the positive content of its belief, even while remaining what it is, caring rather to be Christian than Protestant, and is less concerned to develop what is really only a philosophys of religion, it will to that extent be living in the atmosphere of Christin unity and on the way to reuninon. One in particular among objects of its belief is fitted for that interior work of Christian wholeness -faith in the Incarnation. . . . The Incarnatin is the key to the whole mystery of the Church and the sacraments. In the degree to which Protestantism can school itself in profound and realist contempolation of the mystery of the Incarnation will it return to the sphere of apostolic Chrisinaity and prepare itself for reunion in the Church. The insurmountable obstacle of its present attitude would be in some degree obviated by the real and objective content of a belief where so much is common to us both, and a closer approach would beome possible. (pp. 274-5).

Several quick notes: Claremont's PhD in relgion no longer has theology, but it does include a degree in "process studies" -- how could Congar have seen? There is absolutely no concern with 'apostolic Christianity". With Elvis, it has left the building.

A final quote from Congar:

A more or less general movement of reunion with the Catholic Church might become a real possibility for a Protestantism converted from its false dialectic of dualisms and disjunctions to an objective adherence to the positive Christian faith, in whatever form it has been received. We have, after all, already seen Christain communities taking fresh cognisance of the true apostolic inheritance. (p. 275).

The irony is that Congar was read as being a "liberal" in his day by conservatives. You can bet that he made no friends among liberal Protestants. Has this same Hegelian dialectic between left and right going on for that long, in North America and Europe.

Before a final word from the Claremont poster, why don't you, as the 60s song said, 'put a little love in your heart":

"You study religion for a reason. Maybe you're religious, and maybe you're not. But you want to make the world a better place. And so does Clarement."

The white man's burden lives on; Claremont wants to make the whole world like Claremont and call it pluralism.