For nearly a century, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School sat like a sentinel above the city, perched on the hill at 1100 South Goodman St., its Gothic towers peering over Highland Park. Designed by James Gamble Rogers, the same architect who left his mark on Yale and Columbia, the campus radi ated a stately stillness that seemed immune to time. But time caught up. Declining enrollment, costly maintenance and shifting patterns in theological education pushed the seminary to leave its iconic perch in 2018 for the Village Gate complex. The move offered flexibility and lower overhead, but the school’s visibility faded. “Is it still around?” became a common question. Now, in a move as symbolic as it is strategic, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School (CRCDS) has returned downtown, moving into the historic Sibley Triangle Building a few steps from Parcel 5, Eastman School of Music and the heartbeat of Rochester’s rebirth. “This is a full-circle moment,” said Dr. Angela D. Sims, the school’s thirteenth (and first female) president. “We’re honoring our past while being fully present where the city’s energy, creativity and need intersect. We have always taken seriously the mandate of prophetic biblical teachings to pursue peace and justice. Now we are truly a seminary of the community and for the community.”  Dr. Angela D. Sims, president of CRCDS. PHOTO BY ROBERTO FELIPE LAGARES. The move is more homecoming than relocation. CRCDS traces its lineage to Rochester Theological Seminary, founded downtown in 1850; Hamilton Seminary, which merged with it in 1928; and Crozer Theological Seminary of Pennsylvania, whose most famous student, Martin Luther King Jr., refined his theology of nonviolence there in the late 1940s. The 1970 merger that brought Crozer into the fold made King part of CRCDS’s intellectual DNA. CRCDS also absorbed the Baptist Missionary Training School, a pioneering women’s seminary from Chicago whose alumni remain among its most passionate advocates. Those legacies — abolitionist, feminist, prophetic — are the backbone of CRCDS today. For alumni like Rev. Michael Ford, a governing trustee, the school’s relocation isn’t about nostalgia, it’s about visibility and vocation. “I think CRCDS has a deeply embedded history in Rochester and an impact across the country and world from people who have gone through its halls,” Ford said. “Rochester is a hotbed for education, political and social movements, perhaps even more so as the world becomes more interconnected. It needs a shared place.” That shared place, he added, must also be visible. “For so long, CRCDS was deeply connected to a place. By relocating into the hub of the city, CRCDS is going to the people instead of asking people to come to it.” Ford said. “We are now a voice, an active part of the conversation. We can’t simply place ourselves in a building. The same is true of churches. We can’t keep ourselves inside the walls. The Church is for building — it is not a building.” A letter from CRCDS alum Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. PHOTO BY ROBERTO FELIPE LAGARES. From its downtown vantage, the divinity school hopes to partner with the downtown campuses of Eastman School of Music, Rochester Institute of Technology and Monroe Community College as well as local nonprofits to cultivate a theology of presence where faith, scholarship and social impact converge. “Rochester has always been a crucible for reform and innovation,” Ford said. “We’re reclaiming that spirit. This is where conversations about justice, equity and spirituality belong; out in the open.” CRCDS has long blurred the line between pulpit and public life. Its roots in the Social Gospel movement link it to theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, whose writings helped inspire 20th-century social reform. King himself credited Crozer’s faculty with deepening his belief that theology must be lived, not just taught. At the new campus, that lineage continues. Rev. Dr. J.J. Warren, assistant professor of (queer) theology and lead of the gender, sexuality and racial justice program, sees this as not just theological reflection, but a form of democratic resistance — a way to think critically about power, identity and the moral foundations of public life. “Especially in a time such as this, progressive theological education is necessary for combating the rise of Christian nationalism, because it demands we ask that series of critical questions,” Warren said. “If our theology is to be academically rigorous, it must be forged in the fires of social movements. And if the church seeks to respond to the pressing needs of our time, then it must have a theology that takes seriously a critical reflection on its own method and asks whose voices have been unintentionally neglected or explicitly excluded, and why.” That urgency resonates with many students. CRCDS’s 79 enrollees come from a range of denominations — African methodist episcopal, baptist, pentecostal, quaker, catholic, and nondenominational — each drawn by the school’s openness and its $300 monthly tuition model that makes graduate theological education financially accessible. For alumna RAin Christi, a social worker and self-described mystic, the seminary offered something no tuition plan could quantify: freedom. “I was raised in a violent home,” she said. “At CRCDS, I found a place that let me heal and believe in the divinity within all of us. It set me free.” Her advice to incoming students at the downtown campus is simple. “Leave your dogma at the door. Lay down what you don’t understand,” she said. “We’re in a spiritual crisis, and the revolution has to start inside your own heart.” The front entrance of the new downtown CRCDS location. PHOTO BY ROBERTO FELIPE LAGARES. The seminary’s return also speaks to Rochester’s broader story: a city defined by reformers, thinkers and dreamers who challenged their times. From Susan B. Anthony to Frederick Douglass, Rochester has been a place where faith and social conscience intersected. Now, in a building once home to commerce and innovation, CRCDS is staking out a new kind of marketplace for ideas, ethics and hope. Many still recall the old hilltop campus fondly. For Rev. Jill Bradway, an alumna, her time in those buildings shaped the heart of her seminary experience. “Strong Hall, with all of its nooks and spaces to read, converse and commune — it was priceless,” she said. “I have visited the new campus. It’s lovely, but it doesn’t feel the same. The buildings on the former campus housed the memories of every great professor and student who walked those hallowed halls.” Today, downtown Rochester hums with energy: murals, markets, new apartments, students biking between campuses and activists organizing on Main Street. Into that rhythm steps a 205-year-old seminary that has produced generations of pastors, scholars and organizers. “The essence of the school was never about the location — it’s the people, the conversations, the call for social justice and that doesn’t stay in one place,” Bradway said. “My time at CRCDS helped me to understand that God is so much bigger than I ever imagined.” The post Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School relocates from the hill to the heart of downtown appeared first on CITY Magazine. Arts. Music. Culture.. ...read more read less