Christians only: Opinion of seminaries

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

I was discussing my plans for seminary/ordination with a friend today, and told him about the grad school in Denver that I've had my eye on for ten years. He responded by saying he doesn't believe in seminaries. He goes to a low nondenominational church, and his pastor has no degree in religion. He was instead trained by the church.

What's strange is he insisted that seminaries are exclusive to denominations and that's just not true. The seminary I want to attend is affiliated with the United Methodist Church, but they prepare students for ordination regardless of denomination. The Episcopal Church requires its clergy to obtain an M.Div or higher. I suppose I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

[vitoNova]

Freedumb.

Some of the best beer I ever had in Europe was brewed in monasteries along the Neckar and the Danube. 

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Formal education for clergy is good and necessary, which can be seen clearly in the relative theological acumen of churches that do and that do not require it, but the self-contained seminary-bubble environment has bred a lot of toxicity over the centuries, and made seemingly unrelated issues like sex abuse harder or even next to impossible to solve. Mixed, better in some denominations than in others.

[LabourJersey]

Right now I live not too far from an Episcopal seminary and have met quite a few seminarians. All very nice people, but I definitely have noticed there's a seminary bubble where they can be really in the weeds about theology and church politics that sound like a foreign language to non-Episcopalians. I've found them all to be quite helpful because I'm in the process of getting confirmed so learning more about the church is quite handy. But I imagine some of them are going to need to "mellow" a little bit once they start actually leading congregations

[Del Tachi]

While I don't have an explicitly negative opinion of seminaries, I still believe that lay ministry is the best and most Biblical form of pastoral management.

Some disparate critics I have of seminaries are:

1.  The primary place for pastoral training should be within the local church.  Isolating would-be ministers in sterile academic environments for 3-4 years may be great for paper-writing and encouraging esoteric theological debates, but it's really bad for missional living.

2.  Somewhat as a consequence of #1, many seminaries seem to be breeding grounds for the type of overly-critical Christian who sees the church as an impediment to good theology rather than the reason for it. 

3.  In a rush to cater to the increasingly niche interests of students, faculty and donors, most seminaries do not offer anything approaching a systematic theological education.  The idea of a cohesive "body of learning" is all but lost in the modern academy. 

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Seminaries are important, and were widely introduced in Orthodoxy in response to serious shortfalls in clerical ability, including some priests who were illiterate. With that said, there is a major risk of seminaries being theologically compromised, on account of the bubble effect that makes them hard to reform. In the OCA there have been concerns with the seminaries, but I think our leaders are doing a good job of sorting those out, especially with the reorganization of St. Vladimir's.

[John Dule]

I don't know what happens in them and I don't care. All I know is that they look cool and the one in Marin is an incredibly badass castle that elevates the aesthetics of the surrounding area.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I voted FI but don't think they're necessary. Like my church's newest pastor has no seminary education whatsoever and her previous job before the church was manager of a women's clothing store.

[DC Al Fine]

That quip about democracy being the worst form of government except for the others we tried, comes to mind.

[Georg Ebner]

We medieval Christians have only "a laughter" (Ps.2) for the seminaries of all those bourgeois sects and Jesuits and their schools - "the temple of the mediocre" (GOMEZ DAVILA) - in general: the Graces can rather not be taught!

[Senator Incitatus]

Formal education for clergy is good and necessary, which can be seen clearly in the relative theological acumen of churches that do and that do not require it, but the self-contained seminary-bubble environment has bred a lot of toxicity over the centuries, and made seemingly unrelated issues like sex abuse harder or even next to impossible to solve. Mixed, better in some denominations than in others.

Basically right and the same opinion I have of fraternities, which are seminaries for consuming rather than making beer.