At the bottom of a stairwell at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., a large oil painting leans against what appears to be a broken shopping cart. The portrait is filthy and badly scratched, its gilt frame smashed at the edges. Wipe the dust away and it is still possible to read the name inscribed on the brass plaque beneath: Robert Treat Paine, President of the Board, 1898-1910. Paine’s portrait sits next to that of his contemporary, George Zabriskie Gray, who was dean of the seminary until he died in 1889. Both men were once well known and highly regarded in the Episcopal Church as scholars, theologians, and preachers. It has been a long time since the portrait of either one graced the walls of the Episcopal Divinity School.

It’s probably just as well: One suspects that neither man would know what to make of the school these days. How would Robert Paine, famous during his lifetime for such works as “How to Repress Pauperism and Street Begging” and ” The Importance of Stopping Outdoor Relief to Chronic or Hereditary Beggars,” have responded to the new EDS curriculum, with courses like “Critical Issues in Feminist Liberation Theology” and its subsection, “Readings in Queer Theology”? What would George Gray, who regularly railed against “departure from the Church’s teaching, or any other perversion,” have thought of the school’s latest internal phone directory, which proudly contains the photographs of the gay partners of faculty and students along with their addresses in campus housing?