Creating a Modern Profession

The sixth chapter analyzes theological schools that realigned themselves with the modern research university. Several narratives are explored: the struggle between Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia and seminary founders like John Holt Rice; the influence of the German university through immigrants like Phillip Schaff and theologians who studied abroad; the pragmatic adaptation of the German encyclopedia for organizing theological studies; the impact of the American university’s pragmatism, social sciences, and social reform on seminaries; and the influence of progressive education and the religious education movement on theological schools. University Divinity schools led this movement, especially the University of Chicago built by William Rainey Harper, but a number of independent schools, like Union Theological Seminary in New York, sought such realignment as “theological universities.” This realignment of theological schools had significant benefits, as it increased elective studies, developed specialized fields of ministry, and brought the social sciences to theological education. However, the realignment had unforeseen problems as it widened the gap between academics and those of professional practice; distanced faculty from interdisciplinary work and church leadership; replaced the Bible as a unifying discipline with “the scientific method”; and replaced the integrative role of oral pedagogies with scholarly lectures and the research seminar.

Introduction

The first century of educating clergy in the United States is rightly understood as classical professional education—that is, as formation into an identity and calling to serve the wider public through specialized knowledge and skills. This book argues that pastors, priests, and rabbis were best formed into capacities of culture building through the construction of narratives, symbols, and practices that served their religious communities and the wider public. This kind of education was closely aligned with liberal arts pedagogies of studying classical texts, languages, and rhetoric in order to form habits of inquiry, interpretation, and oratory in students. The theory of culture here is indebted to Clifford Geertz and Jerome Bruner’s social-semiotic view, which identifies culture as the social construction of narrative, symbols, and practices that shape the identity and meaning-making of certain communities. The theological framework of analysis is indebted to George Lindbeck’s cultural-linguistic view, which emphasizes the role of doctrine as grammatical rules that govern narratives, doctrinal grammars, and social practices for distinct religious communities. This framework is pushed toward the renewal and reconstruction of religious frameworks by the postmodern work of Sheila Devaney and Kathryn Tanner. The book also employs several other concepts from social theory, borrowed from Jurgen Habermas, Max Weber, Pierre Bourdieu, Michael Young, and Bernard Anderson.

Opening the Gates

The fifth chapter explores how theological education was opened to women, African Americans, and working class whites. Congregationalist Mary Lyon founded Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary (1837) to provide a rigorous education built on the liberal arts, theology, personal discipline, and domestic work—all designed to produce independent women for missions. Other women, like Methodist Lucy Rider, founded religious training schools for women in their denominations. For African Americans, pioneers like AME Bishop Daniel Payne, who revived Wilberforce University (1856), developed a blend of liberal arts and theological education. W. E. B. Dubois fought for this model as the way to educate “the talented tenth” needed for racial uplift. The other model, pioneered by Samuel Armstrong at the Hampton Institute (VA) and Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee (Alabama), combined a religious training school with industrial work so that black pastors and teachers could be self-supporting. Finally, Bible colleges, like that of Dwight Moody, opened theological studies to working people with only a basic education. Emma Dryer brought practical, normal school approaches to the beginnings of the Moody Bible Institute (MBI) in Chicago. Under Dr. R. A. Torrey, MBI combined a literal reading of Scripture with experiential holiness, spiritual healing, end-times prophecy, and practical business methods—all of which marked the future fundamentalist movement.

Conclusion

The conclusion argues that the historic preparation of the clergy for public engagement diminished significantly with the realignment of theological education with the modern university. Shifting from a liberal arts paradigm to a university model of specialization (academically and professionally) had the effects of (1) narrowing engagement with the social arenas of culture building, (2) shifting the nature of religious charisma and authority, (3) circumscribing the place and function of public oratory, (4) reshaping theology in relation to a generalized ideal of science, (5) developing new theologies that begin to marginalize confessional and ritual traditions, and (6) leading to the growing divide in the curriculum between the “pure research” of the German model verses the vocational pragmatism of the American approach. The book concludes with “best practices” from earlier clergy education that have much to offer contemporary reforms.

Reforming Church and Nation

This chapter explores Protestant theological schools that educated pastors as reformers of church and the nation after religious disestablishment. This education built upon the liberal arts of the colleges, which taught the basic textual interpretation, rhetoric, and oratory. Rev. Timothy Dwight led the way in fashioning a new liberal arts in the college, which served as the foundation for advanced theological education. At Yale, he integrated the belles-lettres of European literature and rhetoric into the predominant American framework of Scottish Common Sense Realism. He also coupled these pedagogies with the voluntarist theology of Jonathan Edwards and the New Divinity, which bolstered Christian volunteerism and mission. With Dwight’s help, New England Congregationalists developed a graduate theological at Andover with a faculty in Scripture, theology, and homiletics (practical theology) who taught in the interdisciplinary, rhetorical framework of the liberal arts. Dr. Ebenezer Porter raised a generation of princes of the pulpit and college professors of rhetoric and oratory, and he wrote the first widely used manuals in elocution. Moses Stuart in Bible advanced German critical studies of Scripture for future pastoral work and for scholars in the field. The greatest alternative to Andover was the historic Calvinism of Princeton Theological Seminary, as interpreted through the empiricism of Scottish Common Sense. President Archibald Alexander, historian Samuel Miller, theologian Charles Hodge, and later homiletics professor James Wadell Alexander emphasized the text-critical and narrative interpretation of Scripture, and the emphasis on classic rhetoric and oratory in homiletics culminated the curriculum.

Building a New Zion

The fourth chapter describes the rise of Jewish seminaries in America and their reconstruction of the tradition in the light of modern scholarship. Two traditions of schooling—one Reformed the other Conservative—are explored. The founder of Hebrew Union College (HUC), Isaac Wise, developed a curriculum for a “progressive and enlightened” Judaism that could engage with American education and culture. Moses Mielziner prepared a widely used introduction to the Talmud that argued for the reasoned development of halakah (law) from a more historical reading of the Torah. HUC included reforms of the Siddur or prayer book, egalitarian synagogue life for men and women, and a view of an “American Zion” as the best hope for Jewry. Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) was founded by the Orthodox rabbi Sabato Morais to advance a unified, developmental understanding of Judaism according to the Breslau school in Germany. Under Solomon Schechter, JTS became one of the world centers of Wissenschaft des Judentums (or modern study of) as it mobilized rigorous text-critical scholarship, historical studies, and the Hebrew language to advance the Jewish tradition.

Planting Catholicism in America

The third chapter explores how Catholic seminaries formed an American priesthood equipped to engage American religious pluralism. There were three models of formation. The first was the diocesan seminary founded by Sulpicians, a French order dedicated to the education of diocesan priests, founded by Fr. Jean Jacques Olier. Bishop John Caroll brought them to Baltimore to build St. Mary’s Seminary in 1791, where they combined the scholastic study of theology with a spirituality of interiorizing the mystical states of Christ’s life, as developed by Fr. Pierre Berulle. Priests became “little Christs” of self-sacrifice and formed an “ecclesiastical spirit” that prepared them as leaders of Catholic culture. The second model was that of religious orders like the Benedictines. Fr. Bonifacio Wimmer came from Bavaria to begin St. Vincent’s seminary in Pennsylvania in 1846. He established a regimen of private devotion, study, work, and the liturgy of the hours that focused on lectio divina of the Psalms. The oral/aural engagement with Scripture accompanied a liberal arts rather than scholastic approach to sacred texts. The third kind of Catholic seminary was the modern, professional seminary pioneered by “Americanists” like Bishop John Ireland. He sought a “civic minded Catholicism” that demonstrated the legitimacy and public value of the faith. Following the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, Ireland founded a minor seminary (1885), then a major seminary which included historical-critical studies, a science lab, modern periodicals, and a professional ethos.

Leavening Public Life

From the beginning of theological education in the United States, pastors, priests, and rabbis have been educated as leaders in public life by being producers of culture. This chapter describes how theological schools prepared clergy for leadership in five social arenas: families, congregations, schools, voluntary societies, and published media. Families were the seedbeds of religious identity and character, congregations became charismatic communities of piety and action, schools developed cultural capital and moral practices, voluntary societies mobilized resources and mass movements to reshape society, and popular media built national communities of religious identity and reform. These five social arenas also operated in harmony for clergy and religious communities to influence public morality and social discourse. Through their leadership in family life, educating youth, writing and publishing, and leading voluntary associations, the clergy mobilized aspects of their religious traditions to shape public narratives, symbols, and practices. In turn, this wider social engagement helped expand and renew the religious traditions they represented.