Don’t be surprised if Theo School people appear bereft these days. They’re losing Maxine Beach, their warm and graceful guru, to retirement.
By Bruce Wallace
On a bright, sunny day between patches of early February snowfall, a crowd of students, faculty, friends and family filled Seminary Hall’s Craig Chapel to welcome 12 new Theological School students. Before they lined up to sign their names in the heavy matriculation book—the same one that recorded the names of Drew’s first class in 1867—Dean Maxine Beach described how she thinks the school should prepare students. She read a passage she’d often read in the past, quipping that since this was her last matriculation, “I can do whatever I want.”
The passage describes the difference between enabling students and molding them: “If a young man comes here with the lion in him, do not begin to pare his nails, or trim his mane, or tone his voice, or tame his spirit, but let his claws grow, let his mane lengthen, let his eye brighten.” Looking toward the students, Beach then recast the idea: “Don’t stop being who you are, but get better at it.” These words could also well describe how the school has changed under her leadership.
An Emphasis on Community
Beach grew up in a family she describes as “pretty heathen” and was introduced to Methodism by a high school friend. She began graduate studies in religion when she was in her late 30s, getting a master’s and a doctoral degree, and was the first woman to head Drew’s Theo School, a post she calls “a dream job.”
Beach talks about her “sense of amazement” at the level of scholarship and teaching at the school when she arrived in 2000, but says she felt a lack of cohesion. “I think together we grew into an identity,” she says. Catherine Keller, professor of constructive theology, agrees. “She just tuned in to where we were as a collective and where we wanted to head. She’s someone who is very gifted in tuning into a vision if she feels the integrity of it, and then works to actualize it.”
Part of finding cohesion meant reveling in difference. She continued to diversify the school’s student body and faculty—today both are around 40 percent nonwhite. She also created an atmosphere where people could say what they thought. “We became increasingly able as a faculty to be ourselves,” says Otto Maduro, a professor at the school since 1992.
“She speaks her mind, very often saying things some of us think but don’t dare say out loud,” explains Maduro. “And the fact that she does it makes us realize that there is license to say things that we would have felt either uncomfortable or even scared of saying 15 or 20 years ago. For example, we don’t just talk politely about race and racism. We have heard her talking about this being a white institution and needing change. You seldom hear a white leader saying that.”
Beach sees this atmosphere of honesty permeating the school’s approach to study and scholarship. “It’s a place that educates people and asks hard questions of them,” she says. “It wants them to go deep and wants them to go wide; wants them to understand the traditions and argue with the traditions and critique what’s happened and where we are.”
Faculty are also quick to mention Beach’s regular dinner parties at her home as an important part of the supportive, collegial atmosphere she’s nurtured. She does all the cooking, trying out new recipes, and she also makes sure there’s plenty of wine. “You’re real with people when you’re sharing a glass of wine and some food with them. I lived in Kenya, and you would never get down to business without having eaten and shared time together,” Beach says.
What She Leaves Behind
The increased space in Beach’s Seminary Hall renovation has strengthened the community.
Beach laughs at the thought of a long-planned renovation and expansion at Seminary Hall being remembered as a major legacy—“You get a Ph.D. so you can mess around in theological education, and you end up running a building project.” But she points out that the increased space, unveiled in 2005, also strengthened the community: More faculty moved their offices into Seminary Hall, and much of the new space provides common areas where students and teachers can meet and discuss and, of course, eat together.
She has also supported and found money for new conferences and scholarship: the Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquium, God- Talk with Black Thinkers and the Center for Christianities in Global Contexts among them. And she successfully engineered the Graduate Division of Religion’s administrative move from the Caspersen School of Graduate Studies to the Theological School.
Faculty members give every impression that Beach will be sorely missed. “I think it’s a fairly unusual thing to make a transition to a new dean from such a position of strength,” says Morris L. Davis, associate professor of the history of Christianity and one of 10 faculty members hired during Beach’s time as dean. “It’s difficult to think of what’s urgent. We mostly think about what we don’t want to lose.”
Beach always planned on being at Drew for 10 years. “Schools need new visions, new eyes—new energies,” she says. She and her husband, a recently retired Methodist minister, are moving down to Florida—“It’s a cliché!” she laughs—to a house on the Gulf Coast. Adds Beach, “I don’t want 6 a.m. sunrises or winter anymore.”