Founded in 1855, the Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS) is the oldest higher education institution in the City of Chicago and was established with two principal goals: first, to educate pastors who would minister to people living on the new western frontier of the United States and second, to train ministers who would advance the movement to abolish slavery. Originally started under the direction of the abolitionist Stephen Peet and the Congregational Church (now the United Church of Christ) by charter of the Illinois legislature, CTS has retained its forward-looking activist outlook throughout its history, graduating alumni who include civil rights activists Jesse Jackson Sr. and Howard Schomer, social reformer Graham Taylor, and anti-Apartheid activist John W. de Gruchy. It is one of six seminaries affiliated with the United Church of Christ and follows an ecumenical tradition that stresses cooperation between different Christian denominations as well as interfaith understanding. The seminary has counted many highly respected religious activists and theologians among its faculty and alumni, including G. Campbell Morgan, Anton Boisen, Stephen G. Ray Jr., Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, and Otis Moss III, among others. Chicago Theological enrolls a diverse student population representing more than 40 different faith traditions, perspectives and denominations, and houses the Center for the Study of Black Faith and Life (CSBFL) and the Interreligious Institute (IRI). CTS students hold academic reciprocity with member schools of the Association of Chicago Theological Schools consortium. Besides being a seminary of the United Church of Christ, CTS also offers students coursework necessary to be ordained by the Metropolitan Community Church denomination. The first in many fields, CTS remains the first theological school to introduce the field education experience into a seminary curriculum, the first to create a distinct Department of Christian Sociology in an American theological school, the first seminary to award a degree in divinity to a woman in the US (Florence Fensham, 1902), the first seminary in the US to award the Martin Luther King Jr. an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree for his activism in the civil rights movement, the first to elect an African American to lead a predominantly white theological school (C. Shelby Rooks, 1974–1984), and the first free-standing Protestant seminary to endow a chair in Jewish Studies. History Unintimidated by controversy, Chicago Theological Seminary has enjoyed a distinguished record of setting trends in American faith life and leadership for more than a century. In the 1850s