Clergy Education in America

This book explores the first 150 years of how pastors, priests, rabbis were educated in the United States. These clerical and professions were educated to lead in both religious and public life—specifically through cultural production in five social arenas: the family, the congregation or parish, schools, voluntary associations, and publishing. Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Jews established distinct traditions of graduate theological education during this period of development. These schools placed theological and rabbinical disciplines within liberal arts pedagogies that emphasized the formation of character, interdisciplinary reasoning, and the oratorical performance of their professions. Other schools followed for women religious leaders, African-Americans, and working-class whites that built upon these traditions and often streamlined them more toward Biblical reasoning and vocational skills. All of these traditions of theological rabbinical and populist education were transformed by the rise of the modern research university—first in Germany, then in America. Most Protestant seminaries, Jewish rabbinical schools, and many Catholic seminaries were re-aligned to with the modern university to some degree, while populist Bible and mission schools reacted against them. The result was to limit the professional performance of pastors, priests, and rabbis on religious leadership or higher education at the expense of the other historic social arenas in which they once lead. The book ends with an exploration of how best practices from this period of develop theological and rabbinical education might restore a balance of educating clergy for both religious and public life.