The History of the Collegeville Institute

The Collegeville Institute’s history is rooted in the rich ecumenical heritage of Saint John’s Abbey and University, a place shaped by the Benedictine tradition of worship and work that predates divisions of the Christian church. More than 200 monks call Saint John’s Abbey home. For a millennium and a half the Benedictine tradition has placed a strong emphasis on community and hospitality, with common prayer at the heart of the day.

In the late 1950s Saint John’s University added a course in Protestant theology to its curriculum. In a move unusual for that time, the Abbey sent a monk, Kilian McDonnell, to Germany to study at a number of ecumenical institutes and universities, including Trier, Tubingen, Munster, and Heidelberg. Father Kilian’s trip also included research in Paderborn, Geneva, Paris, Oxford, and Edinburgh. Upon his return in the mid-1960s, he developed a vision for an American center of scholarly research to nurture the best of Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox theology. This center would be grounded in the Benedictine rhythm of worship and work in community.

Kilian McDonnell was supported in his studies and later plans by businessman/philanthropist Patrick Butler and his wife, Aimee, of Saint Paul. This relationship was the beginning of a tradition of collaboration between ordained and lay Christians that characterizes the Collegeville Institute’s board of directors to this day.

Another defining feature of the Collegeville Institute’s life has been a “sense of place,” a holistic ethos and atmosphere inherited from the Abbey. When the monks of Saint John’s set out to build the ecumenical center that Father Kilian envisioned and the Butlers made possible, they located it on the shores of Stumpf Lake. The cry of loons was considered a fitting, even necessary, backdrop to the work to be done. The monks insisted on the graceful architecture of Marcel Breuer, who conceived of apartments walled with windows to maximize the sense of place, in the midst of natural beauty.

The Collegeville Institute was chartered in 1967 and the first scholars arrived in 1968. In 1973 Father Kilian became president of the Collegeville Institute, a title he still holds. Dr. Robert S. Bilheimer, who arrived as executive director in 1974, consolidated the resident scholars program and created a new program of summer consultations. Beginning with the inaugural consultation, Bilheimer and the consultation co-chairs, Father Thomas Stransky, CSP, and Patrick Henry, pioneered a first-person method of discourse that has become the Collegeville Institute’s hallmark contribution to the ecumenical movement. Henry, who had twice been a resident scholar, was named executive director when Bilheimer retired in 1984.

Donald Ottenhoff served as executive director from 2004 – 2021. In addition to the resident scholars program the Collegeville Institute began offering short-term residencies in 2004. In 2008, the Collegeville Institute began hosting summer writing workshops for pastors, ministers, academics, and laypersons designed to encourage the writing and disciplined reading of serious literature that engages matters of the spirit.  In 2009, the Collegeville Institute Seminars program, an interdisciplinary, ecumenical, collaborative initiative designed to gather scholars and ministers to explore issues of importance for today’s Christian communities, was launched. In 2013, the Collegeville Institute initiated the Fellows Program, which focuses on clergy leadership development with the goal of strengthening faith leaders’ sense of themselves as civic leaders and public theologians. In 2018, the Collegeville Institute launched the Called to Lives of Meaning and Purpose Initiative, as well as the Communities of Calling Initiative. These initiatives support ministries that help Christians discover and claim how God is calling them to lead lives of meaning and purpose.

Martin Wells is currently serving as the Acting Executive Director. He has been in that post since June 2023.