Better Training for a Better Clergy

Better Training for a Better Clergy

Time was when a young clergyman could expect his first pulpit to be a rural clapboard church whose faithful accorded him and his preaching unquestioning respect. Today, he is more apt to find himself confronted with spiritual drift in suburbia or explosive hatred in an urban ghetto--and every-where by growing skepticism about the value of religion. Last week the American Association of Theological Schools published a study that bluntly accused most Protestant seminaries of being ill-equipped to train clergymen for ministering to today's world.

The survey was carried out by the Rev. Charles R. Feilding, professor of moral theology at Toronto's Anglican Trinity College, and was based on a sampling of the association's 140 member-schools. Entitled Education for Ministry, Feilding's work concludes that seminary teaching tends to be evangelically uninspiring and professionally im- practical. Bible study is more often than not "bibliolatry." Although much is said about making the church relevant, writes Feilding, "the greater part of the whole theological enterprise seems instead to be off on a vast archaeological dig, preoccupied with the long ago."

Urban Oversight. Despite the mounting problems of city congregations, the author adds, seminaries are in many ways still helping students prepare "for a ministry to whatever is left of small town society." Although today's sophisticated laymen expect something more from their pastors than dogmatic, take-it-or-leave-it preaching, Feilding says that "the teaching method honored in the school was the lecture, so the graduate not unnaturally sets out upon his ministry lecturing people."

Among other reforms, Feilding suggests intensive field work in which students would spend more time ministering to specific situations of human need, such as in city hospitals or schools--a program that is currently being carried out by the Episcopal Theological School of Cambridge, Mass. He calls for more campus ecumenism: "The ignorance which even neighboring schools have of each other is often profound and permits prejudice to abound."

Feilding also recommends that the seminaries and churches conduct ceaseless self-studies to make sure that their procedures, and their products, are up to date. "Few businesses or industrial concerns could stay in business were they not to subject themselves to regular self-scrutiny," he points out. Yet, "taking all the churches together, there are no agreed educational standards for the practice of the ministry."

Nothing for Granted. Many churches in recent years have indeed launched their own surveys of the problem. The United Church of Christ will hear the findings of a two-year study at its General Synod in June, and the Episcopal Church last year launched a major investigation of its seminary education. Feilding notes that a few seminaries already "are taking bold and effective steps" to reform. For example, Chicago Theological Seminary, which is affiliated with the United Church, has thrown out its first-year classes in favor of intensive courses "to introduce the student to the concrete study of the problem of the contemporary church in the midst of changing social structures."

To Feilding, who believes that "the churches can no longer take for granted a respectful hearing for anything whatever in their traditions," the changes can come none too soon. "How can pastoral imagery and a prescientific world-view," he says, "be of help to the millions in teeming cities alternately threatened with nuclear war and prom-ised life of unlimited leisure in an automated world? Theological education isolated from those who ask such ques-tions is useless."

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