Archive: Wither the Seminaries?

by Riley Case

The School of Theology at Claremont: Chung Hyung-Kyung, an Asian theologian who integrates Buddhism, Shamanism, Taoism, and Confucianism into a new Asian understanding of Christianity, receives a creative ministry award. Drew University, the Theological School: Communion is offered in the name of Sophia, goddess of wisdom. Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary: Professor Rosemary Radford Ruether writes liturgies for women that celebrate the cycles of the moon. Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University: A seminar on witchcraft is held during Women’s Week.

Welcome to United Methodist seminaries, where what has historically been called paganism is now celebrated as diversity and multi-culturalism. From these campuses, students are sent forth to be the spiritual leaders of United Methodist churches.

Is there any hope? That question is frequently asked. Is there hope that the disintegration of faith within the mainline churches might eventually be reversed, or that seminaries might some day be known for their defense of the faith rather than their questioning of the faith? Is there hope that the seminaries might sometime be associated with clear teaching on the authority of Scripture, the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, and the importance of holy living? Is there hope that the evangelical perspective on Christian faith might have an honest hearing on the seminary campuses, or that commitment to Jesus Christ might not have to be sacrificed in the pursuit of academic excellence?

Whither the seminaries? Is there any hope? To understand the present situation it is helpful to reflect upon early Methodism in America.

Methodists originally came from among the common people. A good percentage were black, most were poor. Until 1784 they were little more than a sect, existing without benefit of clergy. Their leaders, such as they were, were hardly from America’s aristocracy—no graduates of Yale, Princeton, or Harvard. Francis Asbury had only a few years of formal training, and many of his preachers had less.

Nevertheless, what Methodists lacked in wealth, education, and refinement they made up with zeal. The story of Methodism is the story of revival, church planting, and a willingness to sacrifice all for the sake of Christ. From a handful of followers at the time of the first Christmas conference in 1784, the Methodist movement exploded with such power and growth that by the time of the Civil War it is estimated that one-third of all Americans identified themselves as part of one of the Methodist bodies. The movement was optimistic, reformist, and creative, taking on issues of temperance, women’s rights, and the abolition of slavery. It contributed to a positive sense of values in American culture and helped define the nature of American evangelism.

With success came respectability, and respectability brought a desire for learning; hence colleges, books, and ever more stringent ministerial qualifications. While many Methodists applauded the increased emphasis on education, others expressed concern that head knowledge might be substituted for heart knowledge. The wrong kind of education would open the door to worldly and skeptical influences which would undermine rather than strengthen the church in the long run.

It was in this context that the first “Biblical Institutes” were founded. They were called Biblical Institutes because the phrase suggested Bible training rather than the stuffiness, formalism, and spiritual coldness associated with some of the existing seminaries. The Evangelical Association and the United Brethren Churches rejected all efforts to establish seminaries before the Civil War. When the idea of seminaries finally gained acceptance, Methodist bishops were given limited oversight, including the approval of faculty hiring, in order to safeguard the integrity of the faith. However, seminaries then, as now, did not wish to be safeguarded. They were much more attracted to German “higher criticism” than to camp meeting preaching. They preferred the distinction of impressing the academic world over the ministry of encouraging the Wednesday night prayer meeting. It was a time of the emerging social gospel, Darwinism, and the thoughts of William James.

The inevitable calls for accountability, investigations, and heresy trials soon followed. Several professors were actually removed from positions, thus becoming martyrs in the sacred cause of academic freedom. The momentum at the turn of the century was, however, hardly on the side of orthodox Christian faith. The surge of Methodist respectability and liberalism in the 1890s had already led to the exodus of numbers of populist preachers and camp meeting evangelists into the newly forming Holiness denominations. There were no major orthodox intellectuals to stem the tide.

At the 1908 General Conference of the northern Methodist Church, the responsibility for approving professors at seminaries was taken away from bishops. Ever since that time the seminaries have pursued their own direction without control from the bishops, the General Conference, doctrinal or confessional standards, public outcry, or, presumably, the angels themselves. Professor Otto Baab assessed the situation: “At last we have been emancipated from the literalism and fundamentalism of our fathers, set free from bondage to bibliolatry and proof text theology.”

What had always been known simply as Christianity was now negatively labeled: fundamentalism, literalism, and bibliolatry. Within the period of a very few years there was a quick and complete capitulation to modernism—a movement to preserve the respectability of the faith by accommodation to modem thinking. In a study of the theological commitment of Protestant seminaries conducted by Ministers Monthly in 1925 it was revealed that every Methodist seminary of both the southern and northern churches viewed its orientation as modernist. Of all the major denominations, only Methodism could identify none of its seminaries as orthodox or even “mixed.” (United Brethren and Evangelicals combined, listed three seminaries as orthodox.)

With the wholesale commitment to modernism in its seminaries, Methodism was poised to make its claim as the major religious force in America. In the Methodist seminary communities it was the day for kingdom building, for extolling the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man.

It was about this time that the number of Baptist churches in America surpassed the number of Methodist churches.

Methodist seminaries between the 1930s and the 1950s found themselves caught up in whatever theological or cultural fad emerged on the scene. Personalism, pacifism, socialism, process philosophy, neo-orthodoxy, existentialism, situation ethics, or Freudian psychology—all were pursued with breathless enthusiasm. Evangelical theology, usually translated as fundamentalism or literalism (terms of derision), was viewed as an indication of cultural lag, soon to be eclipsed by cultural and academic progress. As one of my seminary professors explained, “In another generation we won’t have to worry about it.” When some students asked if Billy Graham might be invited to speak on campus, Dr. Dwight Loder, then president of Garrett-Evangelical Seminary, dismissed the request with the remark, “We don’t wish to be identified with that brand of Christianity.”

About this same time, membership in the Baptist churches in America surpassed membership in the Methodist churches.

It was in part because of the frustration with the seminaries that Good News was founded in 1967. The trigger for the beginning of Good News was an article by Charles Keysor in the Christian Advocate which asserted, among other things, that despite everything the seminaries were about, and despite the stifling brand of liberalism that prevailed among the boards and agencies of the church, there were a great number of Methodists—Keysor used the term “The Silent Minority”—who believed the Bible and held to the historic doctrines of the church. Furthermore, this group wanted to be a part of Methodism’s future.

In their more grandiose dreams, the leaders of Good News hoped to steer the giant ship called Methodism away from a course set toward apostasy and disaster. There were danger signs that Methodism was facing the future with a hollow core, even when membership was at its high point. It was becoming evident that widespread reform was needed in the seminaries and in other places of power. At more realistic moments, Good News leaders hoped at least to be a rallying point for those evangelical Methodists who sometimes felt like aliens in their own churches. They hoped also to provide a forum where spiritual and theological issues might be discussed honestly and openly, implying that such forums did not otherwise exist.

The seminaries and the denomination in the late 1960s had plenty of problems to deal with (not to mention Good News, which they characterized as a movement of right-wing reactionism motivated by fear): the supposed “Death of God,” the secular city, Black Power, Viet Nam, nuclear proliferation. This was a time of anti-establishment sentiment and mistrust of institutions.

Seminaries, in their zeal to be relevant, were attracted to the avant garde faddishness of the day. “Let the world set the agenda,” was a frequently heard slogan. And so the world did. Student activism at the seminaries differed little from student activism at major secular universities. After a series of demonstrations, sit-ins, and an invasion by the Weatherman—a radical student group—Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary literally shut down. In many schools, chapels were largely unattended, or became opportunities for political maneuvering, rather than for worship.

About this time, despite the increased United Methodist membership resulting from the Methodist merger with the Evangelical United Brethren, the number of members in just one Baptist denomination, the Southern Baptists, surpassed the number of United Methodists.

In the 1970s and 1980s it became increasingly apparent that, despite all the emphasis on relevance on the part of the seminaries and denominational leaders, Americans were abandoning the mainline denominations in droves. One often-given reason: seminary trained pastors were biblically illiterate, couldn’t preach, couldn’t relate to youth, and didn’t believe anything!

Seminaries wanted to study culture and public policy, not theology and the Bible. The pressure on students and faculty to conform to politically correct ways of speaking and thinking (no male pronouns for God) were a betrayal of the spirit of openness, liberalism, and academic freedom the seminaries supposedly sought to project. The causes of the cultural left: women’s issues, mysticism, Native American spirituality, peace programs, Marxist analysis, environmental ideology, and liberal politics—were advanced, often with unrestrained zeal. But there were few takers in the churches. Those groups that seminaries viewed as their special burden: ethnics, the poor, and the intellectually elite, were particularly disinterested in what the seminaries had to offer.

What about the 1990s? The story is not totally discouraging. The resurgence of evangelical faith in America and the world over has led to the enrollment of more conservative students in seminaries. A sprinkling of evangelical professors has now taken place in several seminaries. A Fund for Theological Education, an organization funding evangelicals for advanced academic degrees has prepared a number of persons for teaching. Chairs of evangelism have been funded for several seminaries.

Serious problems still exist however. Seminaries worship at the altar of academic freedom, and seem to be proud that no religious tests are required of any professor hired to teach. The University Senate, the agency in the UM Church responsible for church-institution relationships, is noted for its aggressive policies of affirmative action, which translates into legalistic requirements about the number of female professors, but not the first question about whether anybody believes in God. Values esteemed by the seminaries—inclusiveness, relevance, relativity, tolerance, and modernity—are advanced in such a way that evangelical faith with its strong assertions of truth is viewed as exclusivistic, irrelevant, absolutist, intolerant, and antediluvian.

Despite the continued claims by seminary spokespersons that evangelical faith is affirmed, treated with respect, and heard with integrity, the testimony of evangelicals is otherwise. Not only is evangelical faith rarely advanced, frequently it is not even understood.

What can be done? The Ministerial Education Fund (MEF) pours hundreds of thousands of apportionment dollars, with no strings attached, into the seminaries. One suggestion is to give the funds directly to students in the form of vouchers which can be used at any accredited seminary. This would not only provide freedom of choice for students, it would produce a market-driven situation where seminaries would need to offer balanced, quality education to attract students.

In addition, the church might insist that the seminaries be accountable to the doctrinal perspective as outlined in the Book of Discipline, paragraphs 67-69 (the doctrinal standards). At every General Conference for the past 20 years a number of petitions from individuals, churches, and annual conferences have made this or a similar request. To most ordinary people in the church, it seems only logical that seminaries funded by the church and entrusted with the responsibility to train the church’s ministers would be committed in some way to the doctrine of the church. Without exception, these petitions are opposed by persons connected with the seminaries. They warn darkly of witch hunts and heresy trials. One individual at the 1992 General Conference expressed it this way: “If the church were to control the seminaries in this way we might end up with the same tragic situation that exists in the Southern Baptist Church.”

Within a few years, the Southern Baptists will have doubled the membership of the United Methodists.

Riley B. Case is pastor of St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Kokomo, Indiana. He is also a Good News board member and a contributing editor to Good News magazine.