Union Theological College

Coordinates: 54°35′06″N 5°55′52″W / 54.585°N 5.931°W / 54.585; -5.931

Union Theological College

Established	1853 (Assembly's College)
Address	108 Botanic Avenue Belfast BT7 1JT, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Affiliations	QUB
Website	http://www.union.ac.uk

Union Theological College is the theological college for the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and is situated in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It was established in 1853 as Assembly's College. The building served as the location for the early Northern Ireland Parliaments.

The college offers a full range of courses in Theology. The college is associated with the Presbyterian Theological Faculty Ireland which was granted a Royal Charter in 1881 to confer academic degrees in theology similar to universities of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland at the time. These degrees are the Bachelor of Divinity, Master of Ministry and Doctor of Ministry. A full range of Degrees are also conferred by the Queen's University of Belfast, BTh, B.D., M.Div, M.Th., M.Phil and Ph.D. for certain programmes and the college is the largest in the Institute of Theology at the university.

History

The building, circa 1860-1880.

The college was founded in 1853 as Assembly's College. The college was designed by Charles Lanyon, the architect of the main building at Queen's.

From 1921 until 1932 the newly formed Parliament of Northern Ireland met in Assembly's College while Stormont was being built. The Commons met in the Gamble Library and the Senate in the Chapel.

Between 1941 and 1948 the city police used the college as its own headquarters were bombed in the Belfast blitz.

In 1976 theological teaching at Magee College in Derry, County Londonderry ceased and the two colleges amalgamated in 1978. The new college was named Union Theological College, often referred to as Union College.^[1]

On November 14, 2009, a fire was started, two firefighters were injured whilst fighting the blaze. The inferno was later extinguished, police are currently treating the incident as suspicious.^[2]

Culture & Community

Union College is the center for ministerial training in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, and is also an important hub for the provision of theological education generally. Union College has never been far from the critical discussions and, at times, controversies so prevalent in the context of changing social, historical and cultural circumstances in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland;one of the college professors J. Ernest Davey was the subject of a heresy trial in 1927 because of his teaching in the College. Although cleared by the Church's courts a small number of Presbyterians broke away unhappy with the decision and founded what later became the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

References

Further reading

• Presbyterian College Celebrates 150 Years, 2003 press release describing the college and its history.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Union Theological College, Belfast.

• Official website
• Queens University Belfast Theology Official site

Universities in the United Kingdom
England	East Anglia Anglia Ruskin BPP Cambridge East Anglia Norwich University of the Arts Suffolk London University of London Birkbeck City Courtauld Goldsmiths Heythrop Institute of Cancer Research KCL London Business School LSE LSHTM Queen Mary Royal Academy of Music RCSSD Royal Holloway Royal Veterinary College St George's SOAS UCL Other BPP Brunel East London Greenwich Imperial Kingston Law London Met London South Bank Middlesex Regent's University London Richmond, The American International University in London Royal College of Art Royal College of Music Roehampton St Mary's University of the Arts London Westminster West London Midlands Aston BPP Birmingham Birmingham City Bishop Grosseteste Coventry De Montfort Derby Harper Adams Keele Law Leicester Lincoln Loughborough Newman Northampton Nottingham Nottingham Trent Staffordshire University College Birmingham Warwick Wolverhampton Worcester North Bolton BPP Bradford Central Lancashire Chester Cumbria Durham Edge Hill Huddersfield Hull Lancaster Law Leeds Leeds Beckett Leeds Trinity Liverpool Liverpool Hope Liverpool John Moores Manchester Manchester Metropolitan Newcastle Northumbria Salford Sheffield Sheffield Hallam Sunderland Teesside York York St. John South Arts Bournemouth Ashridge Bath Bath Spa Bedfordshire Bournemouth BPP Brighton Bristol Buckingham Buckinghamshire New Canterbury Christ Church Chichester Cranfield Creative Arts Essex Exeter Falmouth Gloucestershire Hertfordshire Kent Law Oxford Oxford Brookes Plymouth Portsmouth Reading Royal Agricultural University St Mark & St John Southampton Southampton Solent Surrey Sussex UWE Winchester
Northern Ireland	Queen's Ulster
Scotland	Aberdeen Abertay Dundee Dundee Edinburgh Edinburgh Napier Glasgow Glasgow Caledonian Heriot-Watt Highlands and Islands Queen Margaret Robert Gordon Royal Conservatoire of Scotland St Andrews Stirling Strathclyde West of Scotland
Wales	Aberystwyth Bangor Cardiff Cardiff Metropolitan South Wales Swansea Swansea Metropolitan UW Trinity Saint David Wrexham Glyndŵr
Overseas territories	American University of the Caribbean Bermuda College Cayman Islands Law School International College of the Cayman Islands Saint James School of Medicine St. Matthew's University University of Gibraltar University College of the Cayman Islands University of Science, Arts and Technology University of the West Indies
Crown dependencies	University of the Channel Islands in Guernsey
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Presbyterian Church in Ireland
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