Both Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich taught at the seminary. Niebuhr joined the faculty in 1929 and retired in 1952. Tillich was recruited by Niebuhr to UTS following his dismissal from the University of Frankfurt. Nazi officials terminated Tillich from the University of Frankfurt and placed him on their list of "undesirables". Tillich subsequently narrowly escaped arrest by the Gestapo in October 1933 and made his way out of Germany joining UTS in December 1933. In 1930,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Postgraduate Teaching Fellow at the seminary. He later returned in 1939 to be a member of the faculty and to escape Nazi harassment in Germany. Writing of his experience there in his book
Barcelona, Berlin, New York, Bonhoeffer was dismayed by the liberalism of the seminary and its students, noting, "The students are completely clueless with respect to what dogmatics is really about. They are not familiar with even the most basic questions. They become intoxicated with liberal and humanistic phrases, are amused at the fundamentalists, and yet basically are not even up to their level...." Referring to Union Seminary, Bonhoeffer noted: "A seminary in which numerous students openly laugh during a public lecture because they find it amusing when a passage on sin and forgiveness ...is cited has obviously, despite its many advantages, forgotten what Christian theology in its very essence stands for" (pp. 309–10). He soon regretted his decision and decided that he had to return to Germany to resist the Nazis. He took the last ship from New York to Germany in late August 1939. Due to his secret involvement with the
20 July plot on Hitler's life, he was executed at the
Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 8, 1945, only 15 days before the United States Army liberated the camp. American theologian,
James Hal Cone, one of the founders of
liberation theology and influential in the development of
Black theology, began teaching at Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1970, holding the distinguished Charles A. Briggs Chair in systematic theology from 1977 until his death in 2018. Serene Jones, the seminary's first female president, was inaugurated in November 2008. Civil rights activist Cornel West joined the faculty in July 2012, and rejoined in 2021.
Notable current faculty •
Mary C. Boys – Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology •
David M. Carr – Professor of
Old Testament; contributed to
Genesis in the
New Oxford Annotated Bible (
New Revised Standard Version) •
Euan Cameron – Henry Luce, III Professor of Reformation Church History •
Alan Cooper – Appointed Professor of Bible in 1998, becoming the first person to hold a joint professorship at both Union and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. His dual appointment has been described as a major step in strengthening ties between the two seminaries. •
Pamela Cooper-White – Christiane Brooks Johnson Professor of Psychology and Religion •
Kelly Brown Douglas – Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary as well as the Canon Theologian at the
Washington National Cathedral. •
Gary Dorrien – American social ethicist and
theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics •
Roger Haight – Visiting professor of Theology •
Chung Hyun Kyung – Associate Professor of Ecumenical Theology •
Cornel West – Professor of Religious Philosophy and Christian Practice
Notable former faculty •
Michelle Alexander – writer, civil rights advocate, author of
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, opinion columnist for
The New York Times. Visiting professor from 2016 to 2021. •
Charles Augustus Briggs – Professor of Hebrew and Cognate Languages (1874–1891) and of Biblical Theology (1891–1904); an important early leader of the
Modernist movement •
Raymond E. Brown (1928–1998) – Professor of New Testament (1971–1990), member of the
Pontifical Bible Commission, and the first Catholic to gain tenure •
Charles Butler (1802–1897) – founder •
Henry Sloane Coffin – President of Union and a leading theological liberal. Coffin also obtained his Bachelor of Divinity from the Union Theological Seminary in 1900. He declined an offer to become president of Union Theological Seminary in 1916. In 1926, offered the presidency (a second time), he accepted and retained the post until 1945. •
James Cone (1936–2018) – a founder of Black theology, he was Charles Augustus Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology until his death •
W. D. Davies, (1911–2001), Welsh-born Edward Robinson Professor of Biblical Theology, noted New Testament scholar and Congregationalist Minister. •
Harrison S. Elliot (1882–1951) – author and leader in the
Y.M.C.A., Religious Education Association, and Union Theological Seminary. •
James A. Forbes, Joe R. Engle Professor of Preaching before becoming senior pastor of Riverside Church, after which he continued to serve as an adjunct professor. •
Harry Emerson Fosdick – First minister of
Riverside Church and professor of homiletics •
Beverly Wildung Harrison - a Christian feminist ethicist, she taught for 34 years at Union and was the Caroline Williams Beaird Professor of Ethics. She was the first woman president of the North American Society of Christian Ethics. •
Paul F. Knitter – Paul Tillich Professor of Theology •
John Macquarrie – Professor of Systematic Theology (1962–70), afterwards Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in the
University of Oxford and Canon Residentiary of
Christ Church, Oxford (1970–1986) •
John Anthony McGuckin – Nielsen Professor of Early and Byzantine Church History, President of the Sophia Institute, Archpriest of the Orthodox Church •
Christopher Morse – Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor of Theology & Ethics •
J. Brooke Mosley, president •
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) – Professor of Applied Christianity – Christian social ethics, author of the influential
The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941), and the
Serenity Prayer (popularized through the
Twelve-step program) •
Peter C. Phan – the inaugural holder of the Ellacuria Chair of Catholic Social Thought at
Georgetown University •
Robert Pollack – professor of Science and Religion •
Edward Robinson – Biblical scholar and discoverer of
Robinson's Arch and
Hezekiah's Tunnel in Jerusalem •
Philip Schaff (1819–1893) – Theologian and ecclesiastical historian who served as chair of theological encyclopedia and Christian symbolism, then as chair of Hebrew and the cognate languages, followed by chair of sacred literature, and finally chair of church history until his death in 1893. •
William Greenough Thayer Shedd — Professor of Sacred Literature (1863–1874) and of Systematic Theology (1874–1890) •
Dorothee Soelle – Socially engaged German theologian •
Paul Tillich (1886–1965) – German-American theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher •
Phyllis Trible (b. 1932) – Ph.D. from Union 1963; Baldwin Professor of Sacred Literature, 1980–1998; served as a visiting professor of Old Testament after retirement; donated papers to Burke Library. •
Ann Belford Ulanov –
Christiane Brooks Johnson Memorial Professor of Psychiatry and Religion •
Harry F. Ward – chairman of the ACLU and Professor of Ethics •
Delores S. Williams earned her PhD from Union Theological Seminary, and later became the Paul Tillich Professor of Feminist Theology at Union Theological Seminary Her title was later changed to the Paul Tillich Professor of Theology and Culture. Following retirement, she became professor emerita. •
Walter Wink – Biblical scholar and activist ==Notable alumni==