Presidents’ Visions of Union"…believing that large cities furnish many peculiar facilities and advantages for conducting Theological education… the Founders of the Seminary design, that its students… shall have the opportunity of adding to solid learning and true piety, enlightened experience."
– Preamble to Union’s Constitution, 1836
 Serene Jones: 2008 - Present
From Inaugural "Sheltering Flames":
"A shelter is a home, a covering, a place of protection, safety form. Shelters are walls and roofs, beams and bodies, and laws. Flames they leap; they are hot; they express passion, brightness; they are of spirit and of wild power. An education at Union Theological Seminary at its best is an exercise in sheltering flames. You will go back and forth in your query about whether it is the flames that actually provide the shelter or whether it is the task to provide a shelter within which the flame burns."
View President Jones' Vision Paper
 Joseph C. Hough, Jr.: 1999-2008
From Inaugural "The Heritage and Hope of Theological Education at Union": "…This new ecumenism is not eclecticism. It is a Christian theology of other religions that moves beyond understanding and toleration. It points toward the affirmation of the universal and saving revelation of God that is made concrete in several great religious traditions." From Chris Hedges in The New York Times, 1/9/03: "[Hough] is fond of quoting the Rev. Otis Moss Jr., pastor of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland, who calls poverty 'the moral equivalent of slavery for the 21st Century.' And [Hough] says that the growing disparity between 'the very rich in this country and the rest of us should evoke moral outrage in Christians.'"
Mary McNamara: 1998-1999, Interim President
Holland Lee Hendrix: 1991-1998From "A Statement of Acceptance": "…These are times of trial in which Union’s commitment to its motto endures a severe test…. If we surrender to the temptation of looking only in the mirror without registering the view through the window, we shall fall far short of the mark this Seminary’s founders set.… Union espouses 'veritas, unitas, caritas' as that which we together pursue and embody.… It is the difficult, conflictual achievement of their pervasive interaction: truth that connects, unity that ennobles all, loving care that is without prejudice…."
 Donald W. Shriver, Jr.: 1975-1991
From Inaugural "The Heart’s Love Uttered with the Mind’s Conviction": "[T]he genius of Union Seminary in New York, at the symbolic and many other levels, has been the determination of its constituents to join what some others are inclined to put asunder…. What would the Christian advantage be for a school set down in the midst of a shrinking tax base, a declining capital concentration, cutbacks in services?… The relations of riches to poverty, power to weakness, injustice to justice – these are the very matrix of circumstances in which the faith of Jews and Christians had its conception, gestation, birth, and maturing.… We are in the right place, with some 'peculiar advantages' indeed.…"
Roger Lincoln Shinn: 1974-1975, Acting President
J. Brooke Mosley, Jr.: 1970-1974
 John Coleman Bennett: 1963-1970
From A History of Union Theological Seminary, by Robert T. Handy: "Observing that Union 'is always in danger of trying the patience of other institutions by making claims to uniqueness,'[Bennett]…was glad to recognize a resurgent activism at Union that reminded him of the depression decade, except that 'there is much more of a common mind among students, faculty and directors than there was in the 1930s.'"
 Henry Pitney Van Dusen: 1945-1963
From Inaugural "The Role of the Theological Seminary": "Unity is laid as an inescapable obligation upon the Protestant Churches because none of their greatest problems can be adequately met, none of their most clamant tasks can be effectively discharged by individual churches or separate Communions, but only by the … whole Church of Christ…."
 Henry Sloane Coffin: 1926-1945
From Inaugural "The Ideals of the Seminary": "First, it is a training school for Christian ministers, recognizing the varied ministries for which our time calls.… Second, it is a school of graduate study…[where trained ministers] may come for further education, and where scholars may prosecute special research…. Third, it carries on ... extension education in theology.... [This education] would offer training for workers in churches … conducting conferences for ministers and missionaries, and supplying … information and inspiration for the public."
 Arthur Cushman McGiffert: 1917-1926
From Inaugural Address in 1918, the last year of World War I: "More than ever it is necessary now to enlist all our resources, not material alone and not alone of flesh and blood, but moral and religious and intellectual as well, if a righteous victory is to be won and a lasting peace secured…. Enlightenment is the world’s chief need…[and our] sacred duty…to keep alive the fires of education…to train Christian ministers and to promote theological science …[to] do our utmost to maintain, and … to heighten, our scholarly standards."
 Francis Brown: 1908-1916
From Inaugural "Theology as the Servant of Religion": "The Seminary was “founded by religious men, with the religious purpose.… We contemplate … a full, scientific study of theology."
Charles Cuthbert Hall: 1897-1908From Inaugural "The Expansion of the Seminary – a Quadrilateral Expansion": "The academic line is for the most advanced study of Christian Ethics, Canon Law, Symbolics and Comparative Religion. The university extension line is to share with lay workers the resources of the seminary, with attention to practical application of Christianity to the religious and social problems of the time. The line of social service sees Union Settlement as 'an emanation from this Seminary.' The line of spiritual power pictures Chapel as “a place where those of all branches of the Church who desire to worship in the Spirit…may come together."
Thomas Samuel Hastings: 1887-1897
Roswell Dwight Hitchcock: 1880-1887
William Adams: 1873-1880
No President: 1842-1873
Joel Parker: 1840-1842
Thomas McAuley: 1836-1840
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