The State of Union

For much of its 136-year history, New York's prestigious Union Theological Seminary has been the largest interdenominational divinity school in North America. This fall, however, as Union opens its academic year, its enrollment is down 227 students from a peak of 665 four years ago, dropping the school to sixth in size. Moreover, Union is currently operating on a budget deficit ($390,000 last year) and, as President J. Brooke Mosley candidly admits, is undergoing an identity crisis. Says Mosley: "The school has not been clear about its priorities in the past several years."

Union's troubles are variously shared by other leading liberal seminaries. The University of Chicago Divinity School has suffered a net loss of 200 students in the past four years, reducing its enrollment almost by half. Harvard's enrollment for its Master of Divinity program is also down. Yale Divinity School has had its university subsidy cut from $300,000 a year to $30,000, mandating the school's recent merger with the well-endowed (though ailing) Berkeley Divinity School in New Haven.

As these once invulnerable bastions of liberal Protestantism reveal weaknesses, obscure outposts of evangelical conservatism are burgeoning. The five interdenominational schools that now rank ahead of Union in enrollment are all in this category. They are Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Deerfield, Ill.), Gordon-Conwell Theological (Hamilton, Mass.), Asbury Theological (Wilmore, Ky.), Dallas Theological Seminary, and Fuller Theological (Pasadena, Calif.).

All five schools hold to a rigorously conservative theology, including belief in the historical accuracy of the Bible and such doctrines as the bodily resurrection of Jesus and his Second Coming. While Union, Yale and Chicago have discarded their language requirements for divinity degrees, these Bible-centered seminaries require their students to master exegesis of Scripture from the original Greek and Hebrew. Traditional piety prevails on their campuses, and cutting chapel is at least as reprehensible as cutting classes. By contrast, an uninitiated underclassman at Union recently drew startled stares in a student meeting when he asked, "Don't we begin with a prayer?"

Radical Causes. All of the five conservative schools are meeting their budgets, despite high expansion costs and the lack of sizable endowments. In addition, academic standards, traditionally lower at evangelical seminaries, are markedly improving. Gordon-Conwell's entering students average 3.2 on the grade-point scale. At Trinity Evangelical, Dean Kenneth Kantzer points to the school's higher admissions standards and increased number of faculty doctorates--along with an enrollment that has rocketed from 31 students in 1962 to 600 this year.

Perhaps the strongest of these schools academically is Fuller Theological, with such scholars as New Testament Theologian George Ladd and Geoffrey Bromiley, Karl Earth's principal English translator. It is also the most innovative. Fuller has expanded its basic theology program and has created two new schools in World Mission and graduate psychology. It also has a program for black pastors without college degrees and offers various courses for the local black community.

The growing success of the conservative seminaries directly reflects broader shifts in U.S. Protestantism. While liberal mainstream denominations have been shrinking, conservative evangelical churches report rising membership (and bank) rolls. Many liberals have become disillusioned with the church as an instrument of social reform and have redirected their money to secular organizations. Moderates have become disenchanted for other reasons. Union, for example, lost some longtime donors as it became increasingly involved in radical causes.

"Liberal seminaries are suffering," says Fuller President David A. Hubbard, "because of the failure of the congregations they are closest to in motivating men for the ministry." Indeed, candidates who do enter the more liberal seminaries sometimes find it the final test of their faith. A recent survey of 32 U.S. divinity schools by the Lilly Endowment showed that many students encountered a "steady barrage of debunking and skepticism" rather than a bolstering of their beliefs.

Several secondary factors have also contributed to the decline of the liberal schools. They have come to the end of the era of such theological stars as Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich. They are no longer deluged with draft dodgers and dissidents--or even the great numbers of social activists--who swelled their enrollments in the late '60s, while the evangelical schools have begun to reap a rich harvest from the Jesus movement. Union and Chicago are also losing out on new students because of their crime-ridden urban locations.

Evangelical Advice. Some of the liberal schools are trying to tap the potential in the evangelical renascence by making overtures to conservative students. At Union, for instance, a committee charged with re-examining the school's constituency invited Conservative Scholar Carl F.H. Henry in for some evangelical advice. (His suggestion--hire qualified conservative scholars--was firmly vetoed by the students on the committee.)

The Chicago Divinity School has opted to emphasize its illustrious graduate theology program rather than shore up its dwindling ministry course. Union's problems will be more difficult to solve. The seminary's board of directors recently voted to establish quotas for women and minority groups; the move is bound to complicate recruitment efforts. President Mosley is also in the process of cutting the faculty by about a third. In addition, the seminary is phasing out its School of Sacred Music and overhauling its Master of Divinity program--which, like the rest of Union's curriculum, President Mosley concedes, has "lacked a clear focus."

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