Maverick theologian Matthew Fox quits Holy Names College, strikes out on own

c. 1996 Religion News Service OAKLAND, Calif. (RNS)-Breaking his last formal tie with Roman Catholicism, maverick theologian Matthew Fox will leave Oakland’s College of the Holy Names in May to establish a new, independent educational institution, the”University of Creation Spirituality.” Holy Names, a small Catholic college, has been home to Fox’s Institute in Culture and […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

OAKLAND, Calif. (RNS)-Breaking his last formal tie with Roman Catholicism, maverick theologian Matthew Fox will leave Oakland’s College of the Holy Names in May to establish a new, independent educational institution, the”University of Creation Spirituality.” Holy Names, a small Catholic college, has been home to Fox’s Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality (ICCS) since 1984.

The institute gained notoriety for its cutting-edge approach to theological education-a post-modern ecumenical mix of world religions, the arts and New Age spiritualities.


Fox’s theology retains many of the tenets of Christianity but downplays traditional notions of humanity’s sinfulness and seeks to foster a spirituality based on ancient Christian mysticism.

The ICCS program survived 12 years of Vatican attacks on Fox, a former Catholic priest who was criticized for favoring the ordination of women, hiring a practitioner of the Wiccan religion onto his faculty, and allegedly denying the doctrine of original sin.

The author of 16 books on creation spirituality, Fox was expelled from the Dominican Order in 1993. In December 1994, he became an Episcopal priest.

On Monday night, Fox told administrators, faculty and students he was leaving Holy Names because he wanted to take his”post-denominational”vision of Christianity further than he could at the otherwise liberal Catholic college.”We were always ecumenical,”Fox said of his relationship with Holy Names.”What school in the country has witches and physicists and Buddhists and Sufis and Christians on the faculty?” However, Fox criticized efforts by Holy Names to”institutionalize”the ICCS program with more stringent reviews of curricula. He also said the school resisted his efforts to establish a high-tech ritual center and to accredit coursework in”rave”spirituality.”My basic attitude toward Holy Names is gratitude and pride,”Fox said.”We did positive things for 12 years-enough to get the Vatican’s negative energy down on us.” However, he added:”I’m not sure that they’re not still under the gun of the Vatican since I became an Episcopal priest.” Holy Names president Mary Alice Muellerleile denied church pressures affected the school’s relationship with Fox. On the contrary, she said, Holy Names would have been happy to keep Fox on its faculty-and was prepared to renew his annual teaching contract.”It’s a loss to us because Matthew Fox has an international reputation,”Muellerleile said.”So there’s some sadness. On the other hand … I’m not sure that some of his current interests would have been incorporated into the college’s program.” She said a creation spirituality program will continue to be”a vital part of Holy Names College”-albeit under a different name, the”Program in Culture and Creation Spirituality,”and under different leadership.

Muellerleile said Fox was frustrated because he was unable to launch a doctoral program in creation spirituality through his institute. She also said Holy Names was reluctant to support Fox’s attempts to develop curriculum on”rave”liturgy.

The rave mass-like the”Planetary Mass”Fox and a group of Anglicans from Sheffield, England, produced at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral in 1993-is a Eucharist-centered liturgy in which congregants dance to hip-hop and rap music in a room studded with television monitors that pulse with psychedelic video imagery.

Muellerleile said the cost of electronic equipment for a rave ritual center would have been too great for the college to bear.


But even if it had the money, rave spirituality would fit awkwardly into Holy Names’ educational mission.”To have the college be the site of these rave rituals, that was an area of concern,”Muellerleile said, especially if”that was the ritual that we were known for.” Fox will be free of such constraints if, as planned, he opens his”University of Creation Spirituality”this September in two ramshackle office buildings in downtown Oakland.

Fox said he’ll admit no more than 100 students who would pay $7,500 in annual tuition-considerably less than the $11,600 Holy Names charges. The school would offer master of arts (M.A.) and doctor of ministry (D.Min.) degrees, but would have no formal accreditation, unlike Holy Names.

Fox said he plans to invite a distinguished roster of scholars and experts to teach at the new school. Among those he said he plans to invite are physicists Brian Swimme and Rupert Sheldrake, former California Gov. Jerry Brown, and Anita Roddick, who founded a worldwide natural cosmetics company.

Besides courses applying studies in spirituality to real-world problems in business or law, Fox said he plans to offer”rave”courses in”Urban Shamanism”and”Liturgical DJ’ing.”The”university”would also feature a laboratory for rave masses, called the”R&D Ritual Center.”(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)

But Fox faces serious challenges in making his new school a success. He launches his fledgling institution with a dearth of funding. He has borrowed $85,000 from the Episcopal Diocese of California and an undisclosed sum from a Dutch businessman whom he declined to name.

Fox said his new university can break even if it maintains the same enrollment levels as the ICCS program at Holy Names. That could prove problematic, however, since Fox will be competing with Holy Names for a limited pool of students.


But Fox said he expects to attract the lion’s share of ICCS faculty and students from Holy Names to sustain his program.

(END OPTIONAL TRIM)”This whole thing is a critique of academia,”Fox said.”The model for this is the cathedral school of the Middle Ages,”in which students paid teachers directly.”There was no board of trustees, none of those middle people. I want to get back essentially to that spirit.”Modern academia is unredeemable. It’s corrupt. We have to go back to other models-but then do it in a 21st century way, which is self-sustaining.”

MJP END AQUINO

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