How Can You Resign and Not Know It?

In an unprecedented move, the Dean and President of New York’s General Theological Seminary (GTS), the Rev. Kurt Dunkle, has either accepted the resignations of eight members of the Episcopal seminary’s faculty or flat-out fired them.

Which is it? Depends on which narrative of events you read. What is very clear however, is that several tenured and untenured faculty members at the Episcopal Church’s flagship seminary have been let go, in part because they wanted to meet with the trustees and board about difficulties with working with Dean and President Dunkle.

Dunkle, a lawyer and litigator who went back to seminary at General himself to become a priest, has had a very rocky tenure since becoming Dean and President. The problems that the faculty have had with the dean include the following excerpt of a letter to the board of trustees (posted at safeseminary.org).

Oh Episcopalians…  your house is truly and well ruined.  Apparently becoming the ‘inclusive’ Church you thought would win the world to you didn’t work out…