In the late 20th century when the language of spirituality gained currency, people often discovered that their clergy were ill-prepared to help them navigate their spiritual lives. Seminary education had celebrated prophetic preaching and ministry in the 1960s. Attention turned to therapeutic categories and counseling in the seventies. And leadership became all the rage in the eighties. Those who could speak to the spiritual life often “discovered” prayer and meditation by looking to the East. The sole exceptions were a handful of Orthodox, Catholic, and Anglican settings where older models of seminary education celebrated life in community.
For a brief time, it looked like things might have changed. In the early 21st century the Lily Foundation pumped money into the development of spiritual formation programs and a handful of Protestant seminaries pursued a variety of approaches to deepening the spiritual lives of seminarians. Some even discovered that the church had its own rich resources – resources that had been jettisoned by Protestantism as “too Catholic”.
But, sadly, that development was short-lived. In part, no doubt, because the development of those programs was not grounded in a profound reassessment of theological education, but was a belated response to the rise of people who described themselves as “spiritual but not religious”. Since then institutions have moved on, cutting and excising those programs in favor of developing Masters programs with more popular appeal. And – unsurprisingly – seminaries have sought to address the flagging enrollment in the Masters of Divinity by retooling the degree itself, hoping to make the argument that it is not just a degree for clergy, missionaries, musicians, and church educators but has equal utility for people who work in non-profits or hope to be community organizers.
This isn’t true, of course. On the whole, people outside the church mistrust the religious commitments of people who pursue an MDiv; and they are far more likely to hire someone with a degree in public policy or an MBA in non-profit management. So, the net result is that the Masters of Divinity no longer serves anyone well and – as one Episcopal bishop recently observed – seminaries don’t even staff their faculties with people who can provide many of the basics of a theological education.
There is little prospect that things will change for the foreseeable future. Seminaries continue to close or morph into what administrators hope to sell as the brave new future of theological education. And the demographics of both mainline Protestantism and its seminaries suggest that the financial perils both face will exacerbate the problems that they face.
Worse yet, these dynamics will likely recreate the situation that drove people away from mainline churches in the late 20th century. When people became concerned about their spiritual lives, they looked further afield to cultural influencers. They did this not because they were better prepared, but because they spoke to the deep needs that we all encounter on life’s spiritual journey and because clergy were not prepared to help them. In short, we failed them and we will fail them again.
Having spent a lifetime in both the church and the academy, I wish that I could see a way forward. But I don’t. Or to put it rather more cautiously, I don’t see an easy way forward.
- It will require a cohort of church leaders and seminary educators who are prepared to commit themselves anew to a curriculum with roots in the classic disciplines of the Christian faith: Spiritual formation, Church history and historical theology, systematics, Hebrew and Greek, Old and New Testament studies, preaching, and the cure of souls.
- It will require those institutions to own the task of preparing clergy, rather then seeing those students as a shrinking revenue stream.
- They will need to renew their commitment to candor about the purpose of a Masters of Divinity.
- It will require a conversation among church leaders and seminary educators about the unique place of seminaries in the life of the church.
- And it will require a faculty that sees itself as accountable to the church, not the academy.
There won’t be many who will do that. Given the current demographic trends, there don’t need to be many. Thankfully, in the history of the church, that’s not an unfamiliar place to find ourselves.
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