Mission, Core Values, and Open Welcoming and Affirming Statement

Andover Newton Seminary remains committed to our ongoing Mission and Core Values:

Mission Statement:

Deeply rooted in Christian faith and radically open to what God is doing now, Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School educates inspiring leaders for faith communities.

Core Values:

Leading with love, which binds all things together in harmony (Col 3:14), we affirm these core values:
 
To be pastoral in our emphasis on the holistic care of souls in scholarship, pedagogy, and the culture we foster inside and beyond our campus (Jeremiah 3:15; Mark 10:42–45), and
 
congregational in our commitment to the free church tradition and nurturing of egalitarian relationships under the Spirit’s leadership among members of our community (Exodus 19:6; Acts 2:46–47);
 
contrite through an honest reckoning with our mixed history of Puritan privilege and missionary zeal without wavering—as our forebears intended, by their lights—to participate in the mending of creation (Psalm 51:10–13, 17; Isaiah 58:12; 2 Cor 5:18), and
 
aspirational in our commitments to the highest standards of integrity and excellence, the legacy of innovation that has distinguished our school for more than two centuries, and to the practice of biblically-centered justice and compassion (Micah 6:6–8; Matt 25:34–40).

Open, Welcoming, and Affirming Statement:

We declare ourselves to be an Open, Welcoming and Affirming seminary, welcoming into the full academic, business and community life of our school persons of every race, culture, age, gender, sexual orientation, ability, economic status, and faith tradition. We are committed to modeling Christian faith that works toward openness and understanding, offering justice, healing, and wholeness for all people. We believe that through our embrace of diversity and meaningful engagement of the other we can all grow in our self-understanding as children of God. From this place, we believe we will be better able to practice our faith and fulfill our mission to empower church leaders as transformative witnesses of God’s abundant grace and love for a broken world.