Church Divinity School of the Pacific
episcopal Church seminary in California, U.S
Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP) is an Episcopal seminary in Berkeley, California. It is one of the nine seminaries in the Episcopal Church and a member of the Graduate Theological Union. The only Episcopal seminary located in the Far West, CDSP has, since 1911, been designated the official seminary of the Episcopal Church's Eighth Province, the Province west of the Rocky Mountains.
The Church Divinity School of the Pacific, or CDSP, and Trinity Church Wall Street announced March 4, 2019 that the New York parish had acquired the seminary. The Very Rev. W. Mark Richardson, CDSP president and dean, told Episcopal News Service in an interview that the deal will put the school on a solid financial footing and position it for growth. CDSP and its assets now belong to Trinity, he said, and the value of those assets “will be a fund, among other resources they have, that supports the program at the school and operation.”
CDSP is accredited by the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada and offers degree and certificate programs aimed at training clergy and lay leaders for ministries in the Anglican Communion. It has EIN 94-1156508 as a 501(c)(3) Public Charity.
History
Church Divinity School of the Pacific was founded in 1893 in San Mateo, California, by the second Episcopal Bishop of California, William Ford Nichols, after the gift of 4 acres (16,000 m2) of land, funds for construction of the first building, and an endowment from George and Augusta Gibbs. Several of the seminary buildings were destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and the seminary relocated to San Francisco in 1911 to a new building on the grounds of Grace Cathedral.
“Church Divinity School of the Pacific” enters the record as episcopal Church seminary in California, U.S. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Church, Divinity and School can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Church Divinity School of the Pacific” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Church, Divinity and School provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5116581. VIAF identifies the subject as 1068148451572515970001. The Library of Congress control number is no2016172052. Authority coordinates are 37.876, -122.261. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1911, 2019, 1893 and 1906.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Church Divinity School of the Pacific” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.