About the Seminary
Ocean Seminary College opened its virtual doors in March 2005 under the framework that seminary education needed to meet the needs of a rapidly changing world. As our world is shrinking culturally and as our ecological stability is diminishing, seminarians and theologians play a crucial role in fostering peace, compassion, openness, and understanding between cultures and between humans and Nature. OSC seeks to support students in their spiritual and religious journeys to become key touchstones for the public to understand the divine and manifest this in their day-to-day lives and the larger political and social realities of nations. As such, OSC was founded on the notion that a spiritual integration of ecological awareness and a felt-connection to Nature coupled with respectful grounding in faiths different from one's own primary faith are critical for a seminarian and theologian in order to meet the challenges of the 21st Century.
OSC meets these challenges in two specific ways. First it is the only seminary in the US that provides a fully diverse program of study, where all faiths are represented and encouraged. Students may elect to focus on their religion of calling or to explore other faiths-yet all students are required to engage in shared dialogue and to grow in appreciation for the multiplicity of the Divine. OSC does not foster exclusionary beliefs that only one path reflects ultimate truth, but rather fosters not only tolerance but joyfulness in exploring the many revelations of the Divine.
In addition to creating an active spiritual and scholarly climate of diversity, OSC is also grounded upon the notion that Nature is central to any spirituality that seeks to reveal and embody the presence of the Divine. As such, all students are required to participate in coursework that grounds them in: (a) the latest scientific theories emerging in ecology, (b) ecologically minded ethics and theological frameworks revealing the Divine within Nature, and (c)self-exploration to identify how their own unique spiritual paths can facilitate ecologically responsible behavior.
