Serene Jones

Serene Jones is the president of Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. She was formerly the Titus Street Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and chair of Gender, Woman, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University.

Biography

After graduating with a B.A. from the University of Oklahoma, Jones earned a M.Div. from Yale Divinity School in 1985 and a Ph.D. in theology from Yale University in 1991. She is an ordained minister in both the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ. She taught at Yale University for 17 years. On July 1, 2008, Jones succeeded Joseph Hough as President of Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York.

Jones is the 16th president of the historic Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. The first woman to head the 179-year-old interdenominational seminary, she occupies the Johnston Family Chair for Religion and Democracy and has formed Union’s Institute for Women, Religion and Globalization as well as the Institute for Art, Religion and Social Justice. Jones came to Union after seventeen years at Yale University, where she was the Titus Street Professor of Theology at the Divinity School and chair of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She is the president of the American Academy of Religion for 2016.

In 2015, Jones became embroiled in controversy after announcing the sale of Union Theological Seminary's air rights to L&M Development, which would allow the construction of luxury condominiums on the quad at UTS. In November 2015, faculty and students presented an open letter to Jones in which they protested the fact that the deal was carried out behind closed doors, and argued that the proposed sale and construction run counter to the legacy of justice at UTS, given L&M's use of non-unionized labor and the potential for exacerbating the gentrification of Harlem. Jones argued for "Christian realism" in defense of the project, saying, "You never make decisions in a morally pure world" and "We live in a morally complex environment."

Publications

• Jones has published 37 articles and book chapters since 1991.

• Her work has appeared in Time (magazine).

• In May 2014 she was interviewed by Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs.

• She has written and co-written over 10 articles for the Huffington Post.

Works

• Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety, Westminster John Knox Press, 1995, ISBN 9780664220709

She has also co-edited several volumes, including:

• Feminist and Womanist Essays in Reformed Dogmatics (2006)
• Constructive Theology: A Contemporary Engagement with Classical Themes (2005)
• Setting the Table: Women in Theological Conversation (1995)

External links

• Profile on the Union Theological Seminary website