Source: www.latimes.com
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, June 9, 2010: In a bow to the growing diversity of America’s religious landscape, the Claremont School of Theology, a Christian institution with long ties to the Methodist Church, will add clerical training for Muslims and Jews to its curriculum this fall, to become, in a sense, the first truly multi-faith American seminary. Eventually, Claremont hopes to add clerical programs for Buddhists and Hindus.
The transition, which is being formally announced Wednesday, upends centuries of tradition in which seminaries have hewn not just to single faiths but often to single denominations within those faiths. Claremont is believed to be the first accredited institution that will train students of multiple faiths for careers as clerics.