As we launch our new website, celebrating our new name – St Augustine’s College of Theology – we look to our past as well as our future. Since the foundation of the Southwark Ordination Course in 1959, and through 20 years as SEITE, we have offered an education that is distinctive, thorough, and utterly necessary for the mission of the Church. As St Augustine’s College of Theology, we are maintaining and developing the vision of embedded, contextual formation. What was innovative in 1959 is now familiar, and today non-residential colleges take their place alongside their residential counterparts.
When selecting our new name, we chose to adopt the missionary saint of Southern England, St Augustine, who landed on the Isle of Thanet in 597, and became the first Archbishop of Canterbury. His careful attention, under the guidance of Pope Gregory the Great, to what we would now call missional respect for cultural context, is a very worthy inspiration.
In the coming weeks, along with our new name, we will be opening new doors, as we begin the process of moving our adminstrative offices and much of our teaching to our new centre at Malling Abbey. We look forward to welcoming back our continuing students, and getting to know a new intake of students just beginning their experience with us. We would, of course, be delighted also to welcome alumni and other visitors, and will be keeping you updated as to our progress.
God bless.
Rev. Dr. Alan Gregory, Principal
