After a January 18 protest and ongoing demands Samuel Miller’s name be removed from a campus chapel, the Association of Black Seminarians at the Princeton Theological Seminary (PTS) convinced the seminary’s board to act.
According to The Princeton Seminary Slavery Audit Report, Miller owned slaves during his early life and used slaves as laborers while at Princeton.
“On Jan. 25, the Board of Trustees unanimously voted to disassociate the name of Samuel Miller from the chapel. The Seminary’s place of worship will now be known as the Seminary Chapel,” M. Craig Barnes, Princeton Theological Seminary president, said in a statement. “The Board joins me in being grateful for the prophetic voices of our students, especially the leadership of the Association of Black Seminarians (ABS). It has been a moving testimony of covenant community to see how diverse students united to lament the pain of having to worship in a chapel named for a slaveholder, opponent of abolitionism, and advocate for the American Colonization Society, which sought to send freed Blacks to Africa.”
In a petition delivered to the board Jan. 18, the ABS stated, “The Seminary is a covenant community, aimed to be sacred and uplifting, with our chapel at the spiritual epicenter. Some members of our community refuse to attend chapel service because of their deep conviction of spiritual integrity that does not allow them to worship in a place bearing the name of a slaveholder. Our entire community should be able to worship each day without the reminder of the sins of the Seminary that continue to enforce the psychological chains of slavery.”
Barnes said, “we are not trying to remove (Miller, a founder of this institution) from our history. Yet the Board chose to disassociate his name from a place of tribute in the chapel, where the community gathers into the one body of Jesus Christ. As part of the historical audit, we want to ensure future generations will always know Samuel Miller’s story and the reasons why this generation believed that it was no longer appropriate to have his name synonymous with community worship.”