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The changing profile of seminary students has been much remarked upon. Whereas 50 years ago almost all seminarians in North America were white men who had recently graduated from college, today women are a major presence in seminary classrooms, as are (to varying degrees) ethnic and minority groups. Today’s students are also substantially older by the time they get to seminary.

Has this change been good or bad for theological education and for the churches’ ministry? On this subject, there is much debate. Some observers believe that there has been a steep decline in the abilities and skills students bring to seminary, a decline that bodes ill for the work of ministry. Others think that the new diversity of theological students brings resources, including maturity and diverse social perspectives, that will strengthen ministry overall.

Who is right? To find out, the Fund for Theological Education asked the Auburn Center for the Study of Theological Education to help document the changes in the student bodies and to test competing hypotheses about what the changes mean. The center surveyed 10,000 students who had entered master’s-level programs in the fall of 1998. About 2,500 responded. The survey was structured to permit comparisons with data from studies of entering law students (dating from 1991) and medical students (1996).

The survey confirmed that current students are older. The average age is 35, and nearly 60 percent of students are over 30. Roman Catholic seminarians tend to be the oldest students, rabbinical students the youngest. All are older, on average, than the sample of law students (26) and medical students (24.3). (See Figure 1.)

Seminary students are also more diverse than they used to be. One-third are women, and in mainline Protestant schools, women number nearly half. There is some racial diversity, though African-Americans (9 percent) and Hispanics (only 3 percent) are both underrepresented compared to their presence in the general population.

On average, students come from the middle of the middle class. About half their fathers and a third of their mothers have college degrees. (Medical and law students come from more highly educated families.) Family tradition seems to have been influential in many cases. Almost one-third say they have a "close clergy relative." (Medical and law students are almost equally likely to have a relative in their chosen profession.)

Perhaps the most striking change documented by the survey is the path by which most students now make their way to theological school. The traditional pattern included childhood church and Sunday school attendance, followed by participation in religious youth programs. Involvement in campus ministries was often the next step, typically at a denominational or private liberal arts college that sent substantial numbers of students on to seminary.

Today, students’ religious backgrounds are more varied and less stable than in the past: half switched denominations at least once before enrolling in seminary. They do not report being heavily influenced by youth or campus activities. There are few "feeder" colleges supplying substantial numbers of students to seminaries. Today’s students also have a very wide range of academic backgrounds. Only one-third majored in the humanities (including theology and religion) and about half in the liberal arts. Only one-fifth entered seminary immediately after college and only about one-third had decided to attend seminary by the time they graduated.

The evidence strongly suggests that today’s theological students are steered toward seminary as a result of post-college involvement in congregational life rather than by persons or studies in the college milieu. On average, students begin to consider seminary at about the age of 25; they do not enroll for another decade. In the interval, most work and about one-quarter earn a master’s degree in another field. A great deal of their nonwork and nonfamily activity after college and before seminary is related to the life of a local church. Congregational clergy, along with spouses and friends, are reported to be influential in their decision to attend seminary.

Students come to theological schools in pursuit of a wide range of goals. Though 80 percent say they are preparing for a "religious" profession, fewer (60 percent) plan to be ordained. Ministry in a congregation or parish is the primary goal of less than one-third of master’s-level students and of only half of students in master of divinity and other ordination-track programs. Counseling, chaplaincy and other forms of ministry to groups and organizations are also attractive, and more than a quarter of entering students are headed for teaching, social service or administration.

Unlike previous generations, many students today do not attend full time. One-quarter of all students report that they enrolled part time in their first year. About the same number report working more than 25 hours a week. On average, entering students work outside the seminary 11 to 15 hours a week, though about one-quarter do not work at all. (Anecdotal reports suggest that the longer students remain in seminary, the more they tend toward part-time attendance and toward taking on heavy loads of paid work; also, the longer students stretch out their programs, the less likely they are to graduate.) Sixty percent live on or near campus. About half of all students are married or have partners; 60 percent report having dependents (2.3 on average).

How capable are today’s seminary students? This is a difficult question to answer, given the difficulty of defining skills and talents. One noteworthy bit of evidence is the relative lack of selectivity on the part of theological schools. The median acceptance rate for Protestant seminaries is 87 percent. Students are evidently well aware of this reality, since most students apply to only one school, and 90 percent say the school they are attending was their first choice. Very few (15 percent) of those who are not attending their first choice say they were rejected by schools they preferred. By sharp contrast, almost all law students (85 percent) make multiple applications; only 46 percent are attending their first-choice school; and 87 percent of those not attending first-choice schools say those schools did not accept them.

Seminaries share a general definition of quality, though they may weigh various factors differently. For entrance into master’s programs, most require academic ability signaled by at least a B average in undergraduate work. Most look for evidence of good character and interpersonal skills, or the potential to develop them, especially in students headed for ministry, priesthood and the rabbinate. Applicants for professional programs are often required to give an account of their faith, though standards of orthodoxy or religious maturity are rarely imposed on entering students. Similarly, students in master of divinity and other professional programs are usually asked about vocational goals; strong interest in ordained ministry is, of course, welcome, but fewer institutions now than in the past require that all students in ministry programs be sponsored or approved by ordaining bodies.

Finally, most institutions apply criteria to the profile of the whole student body, hoping that their student bodies will incorporate a variety of experience and perspectives based on gender, race, ethnic ties, social class and prior occupations and involvements. Diversity in all these areas is widely believed to create better conditions for learning and to help religious communities meet their needs for leaders of different kinds.

If we keep all these measures of quality in mind, can we say that students are good enough to meet the demands of contemporary ministry? Some critics say that today’s students lack the quality of younger students in the past. Others argue that the diversity of today’s student body brings new strengths.

To test these judgments, Auburn compared younger students (30 and younger) with the rest. Men and women and minorities and nonminorities were also compared on a wide range of measures.

The analyses show that younger students often do bring certain strengths to theological study that older students lack. Younger entering students have significantly higher grade-point averages than older students have. Younger students are more likely to have received college graduation honors and other awards and to have been elected to a national honor society. (See Figure 2.) They are stronger on all these measures, even when compared with older students who earned graduate degrees before seminary.

Almost two-thirds of younger students (62 percent) decided before or during college to attend seminary, and they first considered a religious vocation at an average age of 18.5 years, compared with 29 years of age for the older students. Not surprisingly, then, younger theological students are far more likely than their older counterparts to have chosen one of the undergraduate majors usually recommended as the best preparation for theological study: theology, religion, philosophy or other subjects in the humanities. Older students are much more likely to have majored in a scientific or technical subject.

Considering all these measures, it can be argued that today’s student bodies, with a majority of older students, are less able than they would be if the total group were to include more younger students.

Older students also contribute considerable racial and gender diversity to the total population of theological students. Older students are more likely to be female and more likely to be African-American than younger students. No doubt the backlog of women who did not attend seminary earlier because their presence was not welcome is still bolstering seminary enrollments of older women. In the case of young African-Americans, it is very likely that vigorous recruitment efforts of other professions deflect many from careers in ministry.

It is important to note that older students who contribute the most to making student bodies diverse contribute the least to the gap in academic ability. Even though many women, African-Americans and Asians are older than other students, there are no significant differences between them and other groups on various measures of academic performance.

The most dramatic difference between the older and younger groups is in social class. Educational levels of parents, a standard indicator of social and economic class, differ markedly for younger and older theological students. Eighty percent of fathers of younger students have some education beyond high school; only 53 percent of fathers of older students have that much education. Differences for mothers are comparable. On this variable, younger theological students closely resemble law students, about four-fifths of whose fathers also have education beyond high school. Parents of younger theological students are almost as well educated as medical students’ parents.

Further, older students are more than twice as likely as younger students to have attended a vocational or technical high school or a two-year or community college, and much less likely to have attended a private, nonreligious grade and high school.

Other differences between the two groups may be linked to class status. Though younger students are much less likely to be married than older ones -- and although marriage in this and other Auburn studies is closely and positively associated with students’ economic comfort levels -- younger students are much more likely to be full-time students. (Ninety percent are full time, compared with 74 percent of older students.) These statistics suggest that younger students have found the means (from family resources or perhaps from the prospect of future wealth) to pursue theological study without simultaneously working full time. Older students are also much less likely to live on or conveniently close to campus (49 percent, compared with 75 percent of younger students) and less likely to say they have adequate time for study.

In summary, though the Auburn survey shows that older and younger theological students both have strengths, it also strongly indicates that there is a problem overall. Some students in each group have the full range of abilities and characteristics that define "good" students, but many come to seminary with serious limitations. Older students’ previous academic work often has not been strong or is not the most helpful preparation for theological study. In many cases, their religious commitments, though intense, are not long established. At the same time, younger students often lack interest in ministry, especially congregational ministry, and although they more often grew up in religious communities, they are currently less involved in church life.

Some students in both groups have all these deficits. Yet most theological schools maintain enrollments by accepting almost all applicants who meet minimum standards. This poses a great challenge for theological schools and a danger for religious communities. Because seminaries are not selective and because they dismiss very few students for any reason except noncompletion of work, religious communities cannot assume that a professional degree from an accredited theological school guarantees genuine promise for ministry.

Theological study and ministry do not rank high among the chosen professions of college graduates. By the time the average theological student begins to think about a religious profession (at age 24.6 years), the average medical student is already in medical school and the average law student has taken the LSAT exams. In other words, most future lawyers and doctors are set on their professional course before most future ministers have begun to consider theirs. For this reason, some persons who might make good religious leaders are lost to the profession simply because they made early decisions to take other paths. Those concerned about quality in the ministry must devise ways to persuade substantially greater numbers of college students to consider the ministry.

To do so, theological schools and religious bodies will probably need to make major, long-term investments in recruitment. Other professions have had great success with programs of "early identification," such as summer and co-curricular programs for student in high school and early college years. Foundations have recently sponsored a few such programs for prospective theological students. Denominational and other clusters of institutions should continue to make these opportunities available. Such programs are especially important for mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic schools, which have the most difficulty attracting younger students, and for any theological school that wants to recruit younger women and African-Americans -- groups that are scarce in the student bodies of most schools.

Schools should also offer special support to the ablest older students. Though intensified recruitment of younger students is needed, it would be a mistake to ignore older students. They bring important strengths, especially commitment to ministry and diversity of background. Since older students are already interested in theological study in significant numbers, aggressive recruitment is less important than financial support during seminary. Older students are far more likely than younger ones to be enrolled part time, to be working full time or nearly full time, and to live at a considerable distance from campus. Additional aid would make it possible for them to concentrate their efforts on study and to focus on ministry practice. Such aid would also make it possible for them to finish seminary in a shorter time, lengthening their period of service.

Such steps will probably make a measurable difference, but they will not make ministry an easy sell in our culture. Religion is pervasive in North America, but more and more it is individualized, privatized and diffuse. Almost all religious organizations except the newest and most effervescent are struggling, and even new organizations encounter difficulties as soon as the process of institutionalization begins. The marginal status of organized religion is very likely the basic cause of the difficulty of attracting leaders for religious organizations. People of ability, especially the young, seek social roles that position them to make a substantial difference. The internal weakness of many religious organizations and their lack of influence in the wider society limit the amount of impact their leaders can expect to have.

First, encourage respect for the profession of ministry by increasing compensation and by other means. The clearest measure of the value that religious groups place on the profession is the low pay scale for Christian ministers and most other religious professionals. Most religious groups justify low pay as the outworking of such values as simplicity and financial restraint, but pay rates for many religious groups are so low they make even a simple life difficult. Many ministers cannot afford to contribute to their children’s college education or to retire with any measure of financial security.

Is low pay a significant barrier to the recruitment of able persons into the ministry? The Auburn survey produced significant evidence that it is -- evidence found in the comparison between rabbinical students and others. Though their course of study is longer and their debt load higher, rabbinical students, as a group, have most of the characteristics of "quality" that other groups say they want. They are almost uniformly young, headed for ordained service, seeking positions in congregations, and of high academic ability. (See Figure 3.) Compared with Christian students, they are religiously well trained and enculturated. A number of factors account for these striking differences, but certainly key among them is the high status of the rabbinate, which goes hand-in-hand with starting salaries as much as twice as high as beginning salaries for Christian ministers.

Other factors may also make the rabbinate attractive, including the esteem in which Jewish congregations hold their rabbis and the freedom, even encouragement, rabbis have to be active in civic and cultural activities. Pay, however, is a sound indicator of how much religious communities care about the quality of their leadership. If Christian religious organizations really care about ministry, they will express their priorities in financial and other concrete forms.

Second, theological schools should raise entrance and completion standards. The obstacles to any such move are formidable. Most seminaries admit as many students as possible to generate much-needed tuition income or to justify their existence. Sponsoring religious bodies expect and sometimes require them to accept marginal students. These pressures make it improbable that any effort to achieve higher minimum standards by regulation would succeed.

Further, unlike many other professional schools, seminaries do not form a unitary system, and therefore it is not possible to limit strictly the number of schools in the system or the number of places for students in those schools, as medical schools do. Given the diversity of seminaries, neither would it be fair to rank them comparatively based on selectivity and other factors that are goads to quality in fields such as business and law.

There are, however, things that theological schools can do to address the question of quality. One approach deserving exploration is the creation of an honors track within existing programs. This would signal an emphasis on quality while not requiring any school to exclude from its basic program students who are sent to them by their sponsoring religious body. If, in fact, the programs produce abler graduates, employers will seek them out, thereby motivating schools to recruit and educate more students by the honors route. The impact on quality would be slow but real, especially if accrediting standards were created to ensure that the honors designation is more than decorative.

Without minimizing the difficulties, theological schools and the religious groups they serve must ask themselves the hard questions: Do we care about the quality of religious leaders we educate? If so, how shall we join forces to set higher standards and to meet them?

There is a widespread tendency to take book publishing for granted. People assume that the publishing of serious books -- unlike other cultural activities such as serious music, dance, theater, art and even television and film, all of which are widely acknowledged to require philanthropic support -- will happen more or less automatically, the natural result of the supply of manuscripts meeting the demand of interested readers.

But recent publishing developments suggest that this assumption is no longer true. Changes in the structure and economics of book publishing have diminished the chances that the smaller markets formed by readers with specialized interests will be served. The mainline Protestant audience of academics, clergy and laity who read books on a variety of theological subjects (biblical studies, ethics, pastoral ministry, church history, systematic and constructive theology) make up one such market. Currently the market is served by an assortment of publishers: presses sponsored by the mainline denominations, large and small commercial publishers and some university presses. Various factors, however, make it no longer clear what publishers will be willing and able in the future to produce serious theological books for a mainline Protestant audience.

Two years ago, troubled by mounting evidence that denominational commitment to and resources for serious publishing were decreasing, Christopher Walters-Bugbee, editor of Books and Religion, and I decided to study the situation. With support from a grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc., which viewed our study as part of its larger investigation of mainline Protestantism, we interviewed representatives of those firms that publish theological books and studied the catalogs that their houses have produced over the past 30 years. We focused particularly on the denominational publishers. Though book publishing for a mainline Protestant readership has always been a shared effort between denominational and independent publishers, the former have been the core of the enterprise. During the past 20 years, most of those houses have faced serious difficulties. One (Seabury) has been sold, another (Judson) has drastically reduced its book publishing activities, and several others have become considerably weaker. They have accepted fewer ambitious projects, have published fewer books overall and have not considered themselves financially secure.

Therefore, to assess the state of denominational publishing we visited the largest mainline presses (Abingdon, Augsburg, Beacon, Fortress, John Knox, Pilgrim and Westminster) and interviewed their directors, editors, and business and marketing executives. We also interviewed most of the denominational officers to whom the directors of these presses report. We met with publishers and editors from the independent houses that are increasingly active in Protestant theological publishing, including large trade houses (Harper & Row) and small and medium-sized privately owned presses that specialize in religion (Cowley, Eerdmans, Crossroad/Continuum) , and we visited three diverse university presses (Chicago, Indiana, Mercer) that publish religious books.

Denominational presses have a long and intricate history. By the middle of the 19th century, impelled by the Second Great Awakening’s evangelical energy, almost all Protestant -denominations had established boards to publish tracts, materials and books for the burgeoning network of Sunday schools and other educational institutions. Most contemporary denominational publishing houses trace their origins to these early educational boards.

The fortunes of the Protestant church-owned presses oscillated until the 1940s, when the work of American theologians began to command international attention and sales of theological works mushroomed, reaching a broad national and international audience. The popular audience for religious books also expanded dramatically. In 1949, four of the five best-selling nonfiction books -- excluding books on canasta -- were religious titles, and though independent publishers produced many of these books, the popular interest in religion benefited the denominational publishers as well. Building on a cultural mood hospitable to religious ideas, the denominational presses developed diverse and energetic publicity programs during a two-decade period of unprecedented prominence and success. In several denominations, presses grew into publishing houses of considerable size and wealth to meet the denominations’ needs for a wide variety of church goods.

By 1970 the boom had ended and the denominational presses felt pressure from two sides. First, the cultural climate had shifted. Though many religious books continued to sell well, those intended for mainline Protestants did not. Almost simultaneously, the presses had to cope with a severe national economic recession. Suddenly, several prominent and recently prosperous presses were in serious trouble. The Century (April 28, 1971) wrote ominously of "decline but not demise" in Protestant publishing. For some, even demise was a prospect. In the late 1970s, adverse conditions led the board of trustees of the Unitarian Universalist Association, owner of the venerable Beacon Press, to vote to sell the press. (The board was later dissuaded by the denomination’s larger governing body.) In 1983 the Episcopal Church sold Seabury to Winston Press. Several other houses faced extinction, but survived in a reduced state.

In the past ten years economic conditions have improved, but the mainline audiences that in the 1950s were easy to reach with both popular and more serious and specialized books have dispersed. Thus even the more stable presses work in difficult circumstances. The strains of publishing for a market that is relatively small and difficult to reach show in the new priority placed on fiscal stability. In several houses religious publishing has been reconceived. In the 1940s and 1950s publishing was chiefly a cultural activity, driven by editorial and educational considerations; now it is first of all a business, in which "product lines" (to use the terms of one denominational publisher) are "developed" and marketed.

At greatest risk in this uncertain situation is serious theological publishing. The denominations that sponsor presses have an immediate need and ready market for congregational items -- curriculum materials, Bible study guides, official documents and handbooks, and popular literature that nurtures piety. There is much less pressure to produce books which, though by no means unique to

the mainline, are one of its distinguishing marks: studies that conjoin affirmations and questions of Christian faith, on the one hand, and the methods of critical reflection and scholarship from a wide range of fields, on the other. Traditionally, some studies that are seriously theological in this sense have been produced as scholarly works; others, just as serious and original, have been framed for a wider audience of thoughtful lay readers. Though audiences for both kinds of books still exist, it is not clear whether denominations will exert the effort required to serve them. The readership for serious books crosses denominational lines, so the internal communications channels that churches have developed will not serve as the primary medium to sell serious books, which require special, more expensive marketing strategies. And because the readers for such books do not form a denominational constituency, a denomination has few political incentives for directing its publishing efforts in that direction.

Compounding concern for the future of serious theological publishing is the fact that, currently, four of the seven largest mainline presses face complete reorganization as a result of denominational mergers. Westminster and John Knox will combine their operations, and Augsburg will be joined with Fortress. The fate of Fortress is particularly important. Over the past 20 years it has become the workhorse of theological publishing. Judging from the 1985 catalogs of all seven denominational publishers, Fortress published over 40 percent of the total list of serious theological books. The effects of its pairing with Augsburg, a financially powerful press whose major success has been in popular publishing, are difficult to predict, but the prospect has caused considerable anxiety among authors. Last summer New Testament scholar Helmut Koester wrote to Lutheran scholars and church leaders across the country urging reconsideration of "new plans" that might do "serious damage" to Fortress, which he characterized as "an important instrument of theological scholarship" of which the new Evangelical Lutheran Church in America should be proud.

Some of those who take this instrumental view look on book publishing chiefly as a source of revenue, and indeed, some presses do contribute what surplus they have to the denominational treasury or to special causes such as clergy pensions. Though most presses do not make such contributions, there is still pressure, says one director, to "chase dollars" at the expense of "serious, substantive publishing." Other church leaders think the press should be chiefly a service center for the denomination, producing materials closely matched to denominational program priorities and specifically designed for use in the denomination’s congregations. One executive who supervises publishing says the primary purpose of his denomination’s press is to supply the church’s "crying need for identity."

A much smaller group of executives and elected officials think a publishing program that aims to reach not only the denomination’s members but also the broader public is itself an important form of the church’s mission. However, this group is divided. Most of those who understand publishing as mission think the denomination’s role is to improve upon the independent publishers’ popular offerings, producing "more responsible" devotional and self-help books. Serious theological publishing, said an executive who takes this view, is an "elitist" undertaking to which substantial church resources should not be devoted, since it benefits only a few. Only a handful of interviewees disagree with him. Unitarian Universalist President William Schulz is one. "A denomination does not deserve to be taken seriously," he insists, "if it does not have a commitment to serious publishing as a contribution to a broader, corporate religious view." Lurking in the majority view of mainline leaders that serious theological publishing is optional -- something that a denomination may do provided that the effort pays its way and consumes none of the denomination’s mission funds -- are some deep and dangerous assumptions. One is the prevalent and persistent fallacy that market forces will ensure that any books that have an audience will get published. Those who continue to argue in this vein say that as the denominational publishers have weakened, others have turned their attention to the Protestant mainline. It is the case that large- and middle-sized for-profit publishers and university presses as well as a number of new small presses now publish substantial numbers of books by mainline Protestant writers. But commercial publishing is hardly a safe haven. Independent presses operate increasingly in a market dominated by what veteran editor Ted Solotaroff has called "the literary-industrial complex."

One element of the complex, according to Solotaroff, is the handful of large corporations that have bought long-established, prestigious publishing houses in order to transform them into more profitable producers of best sellers. The other element is the chain bookstores, which sell a limited number of books, including best sellers at discount, often crowding out of the market the independent bookstores that have traditionally sold a wide variety of books of high intellectual and literary quality. Some of the independent publishers, such as Harper & Row, which have already been acquired, have continued their commitments to theological publishing, but they remain vulnerable to sudden changes in direction and ownership. Some firms can fend off acquisitions because families, universities or religious orders own them, but even they are affected by the workings of the "complex," especially by the difficulties of selling through chain stores, which have little interest in books that, however high their quality, appeal to a limited audience. Thus, though independent firms currently play an important role in serious theological publishing, there is no assurance that they would fill the gap if denominational publishers were to abandon the field. Nor are university presses in a position to take over the responsibilities of strictly religious publishers. Many operate with academic boards that direct them to publish studies in religion but not in theology. And most, as relatively small publishers of "good books," encounter the same financial and marketing problems that the denominational presses face. A second dangerous assumption, embedded in the complacent and sometimes disdainful attitudes of denominational leaders toward theological publishing, is that the present challenge confronting the mainline denominations is not fundamentally theological. What denominational leaders want most from their presses -- greater revenues and materials specific to the denomination’s "own" programs -- strongly suggests that they view Protestant renewal chiefly as an organizational matter: build a stronger organization, one with increased financial resources and more evangelistic "team spirit," and decline will be arrested. The combination of chauvinism, mechanism and pietism built into this approach seems to contradict essential elements of the liberal Protestant character, especially its commitments to free and open inquiry, ecumenical theological ventures, and the critical exposure of what Paul Tillich called "distortions" of all kinds, including those built into its own structures.

We began our study convinced that denominational presses needed scrutiny and advocacy because they can be one important means among others for a renewed sense of Protestant purpose. But the publishing situation is also a revealing symptom of what has gone wrong in mainline Protestantism. It seems that denominations that do not understand their obligation to publish a wide array of challenging theological ideas for the broadest possible audience have forgotten some of the central insights of the Reformation traditions in which they are grounded.

These two presses are very different. Fortress, which was one division of the Lutheran Church in America’s separately incorporated Board of Publication, under two decades of strong leadership has drawn on wide European connections to build a high-quality program (especially strong in biblical studies and theology) that has had a central role in Protestant publishing. Beacon’s history has been more mercurial. In the 1940s it was a widely respected source of both general trade books and works of liberal philosophy and religion, publishing figures like Albert Schweitzer, James Baldwin and Arnold Toynbee. Then, in the 1960s and 1970s, it lost its sense of editorial direction and its finances faltered. But in the past seven years it has re-established itself with a talented staff and strong denominational backing, and again offers a varied list of philosophy, current affairs, social criticism, liberal theology and belles-lettres. Alone among the denominational presses, it has successfully "crossed over" into the general market for books of good quality.

Different as these two presses are in history, structure and focus, they have certain features in common, features that suggest what a denominational press requires to do substantial, serious theological publishing.

Most critical is clarity of mission and unambiguous support from the sponsoring denomination. The publishers that have made distinguished contributions have consistently exhibited seriousness of intent and the determination, in the words of Clayton Carlson, vice-president of Harper & Row, "to do what no other set of publishers is well placed to do: leaven our hurly-burly world of religious publishing with a clear standard of excellence." Further, they have understood their mission broadly, as the obligation to publish for the widest possible audience. For these presses, publishing is not chiefly a "service center" for the denomination, but a ministry to the religious and intellectual world beyond (as well as within) the denomination’s bounds.

High standards and breadth of scope, along with firm denominational support, give a press concrete advantages. Important authors in a specialty field like theological studies choose a publisher on the basis of its reputation. They want editors who can recognize and help shape excellent work, and they want their books to appear in the company of other important contributors. And authors want to know that -- and this is where denominational support is critical -- the publisher will remain committed to a high standard well into the future, keeping their work and others’ in print as long as possible. Denominational commitment is also crucial for the press itself. Many serious projects take years to develop, and they cannot be undertaken if there is a chance that, by the time they come to fruition, the denomination will have withdrawn its support.

Resources must back up a strong, denominationally ratified sense of mission. Though serious publishing can "pay its own way" if properly managed, nonprofit presses have difficulty obtaining the operating capital that a business like publishing requires. Most denominational houses have come to rely for that kind of support on staples such as hymnals, service books and curricula which after their initial development produce regular income and require little attention. Several church executives question these arrangements and suggest that the income stream that these projects produce should be diverted to more denominational purposes. If church officials or publishing house executives act on that suggestion, they will cut into the support base that makes serious denominational publishing financially secure.

Not even fervent advocates of serious publishing favor lavish denominational subsidies. Publishing is much more than the Printing of good books; it also entails building a public for those books. The requirement to sell what one prints is a powerful incentive to build a public. Thus denominational publishers, in light of the struggles of Fortress, Beacon and others, are healthiest when they are a little bit hungry. But if they are starved, cut off from a regular, easy-to-earn source of capital for expansion and new projects, they will not continue to exist. Finally, serious publishing requires both freedom and enlightened oversight from the denomination. This requirement has been the most difficult for the denominations to meet. Though editorial freedom is essential for good publishing, denominations, like other large organizations, are not used to granting subsidiaries they "own" a high degree of autonomy, especially when that freedom may lead to controversy. As a series of famous incidents has shown (for instance, Westminster’s decision in 1977 to publish John Hick’s Myth of God Incarnate, despite intense protests from some church members) , a denomination’s self-restraint in decisions about publishing particular titles is an essential concomitant of support for publishing. Presses are most likely to achieve distinction when they are permitted to work without interference in editorial judgments.

A denomination must do more, however, than simply leave its hands off editorial decisions. It must also structure its relationship to the press so that the press can operate easily. Budgeting and reporting requirements should be fitted to the rhythms of publishing; often routines designed for denominational agencies hamper the work of the press. Equally important is the matter of who sits on the board that oversees publishing. If the press’s mission is properly conceived, its public will be broader than the denomination’s membership. Therefore, some of the members of its governing body should represent the interests of that broader public. Again, denominations have difficulty disciplining themselves to make these special arrangements, for few immediate political rewards orient the press to the world beyond the denomination.

Werner Mark Linz, director of Crossroad/Continuum, summed up these requisites for serious denominational publishing in a formula: "Give the press a mandate, means and freedom. That’s all it takes." Recently, there have been some encouraging signs from denominational presses and their sponsors. Abingdon has opened a new office in Atlanta, specifically for editing academic books; Westminster/ John Knox has affirmed its interest in serious theological publishing; and Augsburg Fortress has sought to reassure those concerned about the future of the Fortress tradition. What is not clear, however, in these and ether cases, is whether the denominations stand behind these efforts, ready to give "mandate, means and freedom" for the extended time it takes to build a distinguished publishing tradition. In the ideal, one would hope for even more: for the mainline Protestant denominations to recognize that the work of serious theological publishing offers a splendid opportunity. At a time when these denominations feel that their social impact has declined, publishing is an important channel for their continued participation in the pluralistic conversation about intellectual, cultural and social values. Rather than begrudge their presses the support and resources they require, mainline denominations should promote them with enthusiasm.

An old story tells about a philosophy professor who, despite his long tenure and large classes, remembered every student he had ever taught. Late in his career he approached a middle-aged woman at a reunion of graduates. "You are Mary Smith," he said to her. "You took Philosophy 101 in 1967. You sat in the third row, on the window side of the classroom, four seats from the aisle."

"Wow!" said the woman. "That's amazing. How could you possibly remember me? That was almost 30 years ago! And," she added, "who are you?"

The story has its charm, but it is not at all illustrative of the educational experience. Students remember faculty more than they remember anything else about their education. While the administration often personifies a school for its faculty for students the school is the faculty This was strikingly evident in the two institutions several colleagues and I studied during the past decade (a study which recently appeared as Being There: Culture and Formation in Two Theological Schools). Students, we found, barely notice what administrators do and say, unless students encounter them as teachers, and most students have no idea who constitutes the board of trustees. But faculty play a pivotal role in students' lives, not only imparting information and demonstrating how to think, but also teaching by example how to treat people, what to wear, what jokes are funny and what art and music is good. Students adopt some of the ideas and habits of their teachers, reject some, and adapt some to their own circumstances.

It matters a lot, then, the sort of faculty schools have and will have. During the past five years, Auburn Seminary's Center for the Study of Theological Education (with support from Lilly Endowment Inc.) has been intensively examining theological faculty. In one project, which I codirected with Katarina Schuth, O.S.F., we surveyed current theological faculty and all current graduate students in theology and religion. We also interviewed cohorts of junior faculty in three theological schools over a three-year period, as well as assorted junior faculty in other seminaries. In addition, we conducted case studies of four theological schools that have reputations for being good places to work. And we studied faculty compensation, the history of the faculty role, and the special challenge of recruiting and retaining minority faculty.

We began the study because so many people -- seminary deans and presidents in particular -- told us that they were worried about whether theological schools would be able to recruit enough qualified faculty to replace the many who soon will be retiring. Between the beginning of this decade and the middle of the next, about two-thirds of those who were teaching in 1990 will have retired.

Our research soon convinced us that there are enough people to consider for faculty slots. Doctoral programs in theology and religion contain more than enough students to fill the number of available jobs.

But will these people be trained and formed in ways that equip them to prepare religious leaders? Deans and presidents have doubts and anxieties about this. Religious studies, they fear, is coming to dominate doctoral programs in the field. Some of the largest programs are housed in universities that have no seminaries; several are in public institutions. Administrators worry that doctoral students increasingly will be trained in the history of religion or comparative religions rather than in Bible, theology, ethics, church history and practical studies -- the traditional fields of theological education.

That a number of newly minted Ph.D.s do not hold the M.Div. degree, are not ordained and have no hands-on pastoral experience gives rise to worries about whether theological education will adequately maintain its church connections. Deans and presidents fear that doctoral programs are emphasizing research at the expense of teaching. Added to these worries are the perennial complaints of bishops, denominational executives and prominent pastors that faculty live in academic ivory towers, preoccupied with guild concerns and insulated or even alienated from church life.

Our evidence suggests that many of these anxieties are not warranted. Many widely held impressions and assumptions are inaccurate. We made three especially surprising discoveries.

(1) The popularity of religious studies has not substantially reshaped the training of theological faculty. About two-thirds, including the younger, more recently hired teachers, are trained in 25 doctoral programs, almost all of which were also among the top 25 faculty-supplying programs 30 years ago. There have been a few changes -- Hartford and Johns Hopkins have faded, Emory and Fuller have emerged, and far fewer faculty, especially Roman Catholics, are trained in Europe--but every program on the list still is located in a seminary, a religiously related university or a university that has a divinity school. Religious studies programs in institutions that are not related in any way to the church or to ministry preparation do not play a substantial role in training theological faculty.

Many more younger than older faculty lack the M.Div. degree, but almost all the non-M.Div.s got a theological master's from a seminary or divinity school rather than, or in addition to, an academic master's from a religious studies program. (If theological schools don't like having fewer faculty with M.Div.s, they have only themselves to blame for creating an alternative degree.)

Also, theological ways of organizing doctoral study are still dominant. Many more current graduate students locate themselves in theological studies than in religious studies (49 percent versus 37 percent, with the remainder rejecting the terminological division). An even larger number are studying in one of the traditional theological fields. About three-quarters want to teach in Bible, theology, ethics, Christian history or ministry studies rather than religion or something "of' religion. Strikingly, three-fourths of doctoral students, whatever their own interests, report that Christian studies dominates the curriculum of their doctoral program. And more than 90 percent of current graduates say they would seriously consider teaching in a religiously affiliated college or university or a divinity school. More than 80 percent would teach in a denominational seminary, indeed, denominational seminaries ranked highest among first choices of places to teach.

Our survey does not, of course, tell us whether religious studies has changed the way that "theological" subjects are taught and studied at the doctoral level (no doubt it has had some effect). But the worry that the pool of future faculty will be dominated by graduates of religious studies programs whose whole training is outside the fields and institutions of theological study and who would not want to be associated with such schools is misplaced.

(2) Most theological faculty are not primarily absorbed in academic research and scholarly publishing for narrow guild audiences. The single most often reported research "area" is interdisciplinary research. Fewer than 10 percent of theological faculty report that the pressure to publish interferes with their teaching responsibilities. And scholarly publication rates are not notably high. About one-third do little or no scholarly research. One quarter are highly productive scholars, but almost all of these also produce publications for a general audience. These self-reported rates and types of publication for theological faculty are almost exactly the same as the rates reported by undergraduate faculty. Given that theological education is a graduate enterprise, one is inclined to wonder not whether faculty spend too much time walled up in the library but whether they do enough scholarly research.

(3) Virtually all theological faculty are heavily involved in religious practice. Four out of five have served in a professional ministry position, and three out of five have done so full time. Almost all attend worship services often, and many regularly lead them. Half of the ordained faculty and 40 percent of all faculty say that they lead worship at least once a month, and one quarter of the ordained faculty (who are 75 percent of the total) do so weekly.

That younger faculty are markedly less likely than their older colleagues to hold the M.Div. degree, be ordained or have professional ministry experience is largely due to the entry of many women into the field. Women are not eligible for ordination in the Roman Catholic Church and in many conservative Protestant churches. Mainline Protestant women report that they sometimes are advised not to try to do both ministry and teaching. Perhaps this advice is good. It is very difficult, according to women who have done both, to fit seminary, parish ministry, doctoral study, teaching, publication and child bearing into the two decades between college graduation and the age -- the early 40s -- at which tenure usually is granted.

Theological faculty also are active in their denominations and in ecumenical agencies. They spend an average of 15 days a year in such activity in addition to their other church involvements. Figures like these convince me that the standard proposal of church leaders -- that seminary faculty regularly spend sabbaticals or other periods of leave as ministers in congregations -- is misguided. Most already invest a great deal of time that way. In contrast, they allot very little time to civic and community activities or to recreation and leisure. My strong impression, based on these data, is that faculty tend to spend too much rather than too little time in church activities, and that scholarship and involvements beyond the church consequently sometimes suffer.

Though these findings led our research team to conclude that many standard concerns about theological faculty are not well grounded, all is not well. Our study produced evidence of problems -- or at least strenuous challenges -- that do not yet worry church and seminary leaders but probably ought to. These problems are linked to a major social and cultural shift that affects all the professions. I call the shift commodification.

Not long ago professions were understood as the social roles in which occupation and vocation combined. One committed one's whole self to the profession. Character and spirit were as relevant to professional practice as knowledge and technical skills. Because the profession was what one was as much as what one did, the commitment to it was usually for life. The institutions that professionals served demanded this kind of dedication and often returned it, giving many the chance to work in the same place from the beginning to the end of their careers. Committed to a calling for life and to particular institutions for extended periods, professionals were expected to be both experts in their fields and social leaders.

Increasingly, however, professionals now are viewed as vendors of highly specialized services. The profession is considered not an identity but a marketable capacity to be sold to the highest bidder. A person's character and commitments and the larger purpose of his or her life are irrelevant as long as the professional product meets the standard set in the contract for services. If the market for one kind of service weakens, the professional may well refit herself to offer a different one.

Institutions no longer expect a major personal commitment or a long tenure, and in their quest for the most and best service at the lowest cost they make fewer commitments to those they employ. Vocation and occupation have been uncoupled. Professions are more and more viewed simply as high-level jobs.

In college and university education and in fields like medicine, where these developments have received more attention than they have in the church and seminary, both sides tend to assign blame to the other. Institutions accuse young professionals of self-centered careerism. They are preoccupied with their own security and advancement, or so the indictment goes; their commitment to the welfare of the persons, institutions and wider society they serve is secondary at best. Young professionals, for their part, say that the institutions that employ them care most about finances and will readily exploit their employees and sacrifice the quality of the institution's work to ensure positive financial results. Because institutions no longer offer the opportunity for long-term commitments or sometimes even full-time work benefits, professionals have to give priority to taking care of themselves.

I doubt that either side is chiefly or exclusively to blame. Rather, both participate in a culture in which security, independence and financial success for the individual and the institution are more highly prized than the common good -- both in its collective aspect and in the emphasis on nonmaterial goods. That these changes are widespread does not make them desirable. It seems quite clear from the experience of doctors working for managed-care companies, of engineers and other technical specialists who live from one short-term consulting contract to the next, and of permanent adjunct faculty that this model of professional life is scary and unsatisfying. The toll on institutions may be high as well.

Something important for our social health and strength is missing from commodified medicine, even if the new arrangements are not yet raising mortality rates. Companies that downsize their employees and replace them with contractors and consultants often see the quality of their product suffer, and some discover that they are not saving much money either. I think we will soon see that schools in which professors are not fully committed to teaching and the life of the mind do not form the characters or intellects of students and may not be effective even in imparting technical skills. Commodification of the professions is a trend to be challenged and resisted.

Is commodification a problem in theological education? Our evidence suggests that it is. Schools increasingly rely on adjunct and part-time faculty. In 1970 among schools in the Association of Theological Schools there were 12.4 students per full-time faculty member; in 1990 there were 22.3 students for each full-time faculty member. In the 20-year interval, the number of full-time faculty increased 5 percent and the number of part-time faculty 129 percent. More and more these part-time and adjunct faculty not only supervise field work, as they did in the past, but also teach core courses.

Our studies of graduate students and junior faculty show that they often view themselves as service providers rather than professors on a long-term mission. From one perspective it is welcome news that almost all graduate students will teach in almost any kind of institution: it means that schools get to choose their faculty from a very large pool. It also seems salutary that most doctoral students, wherever they locate themselves, have positive views of both religious and theological studies. Perhaps the hostilities that other research has documented between camps of senior faculty split along these lines will not be as fierce in the next generation.

But these findings are also cause for concern. Both graduate students and new faculty say that they decided to pursue the doctorate in religion or theology because they became keenly interested in a subject -- Bible or ethics or anthropology of religion. Our interviews suggest, however, that many are not committed to any broader purpose, such as shaping the next generation of religious leaders, or molding undergraduates into citizens who understand the importance of religion whether or not they practice it, or making the case for theological perspectives in intellectual circles where theology is viewed with suspicion.

As long as these young scholars can teach and do research on their chosen subject matter -- as long as they provide, that is, their specialized services -- they will do it for almost any institution and any purpose, rather like engineers who will offer their skills to build either medical equipment or weapons systems, depending on who offers them the better job. Our graduate students and newest faculty increasingly have fields and specialties -- services to sell -- but not vocations to make a particular kind of difference in the church or the world.

Will theological schools have the faculty they need for the future, faculty who will shape the educational mission of the institutions and make their programs more influential? They will have such faculty only if they can temper the process of commodification. We propose two steps in that direction.

First, institutions should aim to have as high a proportion of their faculties as possible be full-time, tenure track or continuing. There are heavy pressures in the other direction. A school can get a lot of course-teaching services for the salary of a full-time faculty member who draws fringe benefits and earns sabbatical leave. Institutions that must staff courses given at distant sites and odd hours are especially tempted to lean heavily on occasional teachers rather than regular faculty, many of whom don't like to move around or to teach after dinner. But there is a high educational cost in replacing faculty on regular appointment with other kinds of teachers. However able occasional faculty may be, students do not revere them. In the two seminaries we studied, it was the students' sustained exposure to the professors who were a consistent presence that gave them examples of character, behavior and deep convictions against which to measure themselves. Only in that testing and measuring process did genuine learning -- including content learning -- occur.

Second, institutions should nurture faculty members' sense of vocation, giving special emphasis to junior faculty. The single least expected and most significant finding of our study of junior faculty was that their success -- defined as tenure or extension of contract -- is a function not of how well they perform but of decisions the institution makes before they arrive. Early in the three-year study, before we knew what would happen to those we were following, we noticed that some junior faculty had what we came to call "valuable jobs." They were doing things that key faculty members thought important. Others had what we called "junky jobs" -- a collage of tasks no one else wanted to do but that had to be done to please accreditors or political caucuses in the school or in outside constituency groups.

We also noticed that some junior faculty had been carefully chosen for their potential to fit the school's culture; these usually got a lot of attention from powerful senior faculty after they arrived. Others were hastily appointed and usually ignored. Not surprisingly, most of the carefully chosen junior faculty were serving in valued positions and most of the haphazardly appointed in junky jobs.

It was also not surprising that most of the first group were tenured or promoted or both, and the others weren't. If one of the schools we studied had not had a financial crisis, the correlation would have been almost perfect. In only one or two cases did sponsored faculty in good jobs mess up so badly that their colleagues did not want to retain them; and in only one or two instances did junior faculty manage to overcome the handicap of appointment to a junk job.

The success or failure of new faculty, then, is largely determined before they begin to work for an institution by the way that institution has shaped the position and the care with which it selects the occupant. The reason for this, I'm convinced, is that new faculty -- though very smart and well read (and probably better educated than most of their senior colleagues), though religiously observant and already experienced in teaching, though flexible, open and good-humored -- have not found a vocation, do not know what purpose they want to serve. If administrators and senior faculty set their assignments with real seriousness and adopt them into the company of educators with great care, that invitation can function as a genuine call to profession. and many of those so called will find their calling.

If, however, schools cobble together positions purely for their own convenience and select the occupants carelessly new faculty will see that offer for what it is: a contract to buy their services. The work will probably get done, but the relationship will not be happy or lasting.

The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarshipby George M. Marsden. Oxford University Press, 142 pp., $22.00.

"It is time to face the fact, long suppressed in the highest intellectual circles, that a religiously diverse culture will be an intellectually richer culture. It is time to recognize that scholars and institutions who take the intellectual dimensions of their faith seriously can be responsible and creative participants in the highest levels of academic discourse." With this statement, George Marsden pretty well sums up his main argument: Christian scholars should cease being Christian merely in private, as though their faith were no more than a hobby, unrelated to their scholarly pursuits. They should integrate faith and intellect, thus becoming whole in their minds. Rather than being scholars who just happen to be Christians, they should be Christian scholars. And the academic community should accept them as such, just as it accepts scholars committed to secular ideologies such as feminism or Marxism. Marsden aims, above all, at breaking down the antireligious bias he sees in present-day universities and colleges.

Marsden's argument involves three claims. The first concerns the reigning ethos in 20th-century American universities, an ethos which Marsden calls "a virtual establishment of nonbelief." Scholars who are Christians are trained by the dominant academic culture to keep quiet about their faith as the price of full acceptance in the academic community. As a consequence, "something very much like 'secular humanism' is informally established as much as Christianity was in the 19th century." Marsden would readily grant that there are exceptions, such as Calvin College, where he once taught, or the University of Notre Dame, where he teaches now. But these only prove the rule, which is a surprisingly inflexible and widely prevalent insistence that faith and learning be kept apart.

Marsden's second claim is that this rule is unfair. Universities often make a considerable show of "celebrating diversity," but Christians are not welcome to stand under the diversity umbrella. Feminists, Freudians, Nietzscheans, Heideggerians and many others are admitted to the scholarly community without question, but not Christians. All that can reasonably be demanded of Christians is that they obey the established rules of scholarly discourse, and Christians are perfectly willing to do this. Although their Christian orientation is based on faith, their conduct of intellectual disputation can be and normally is as rational as that of any other scholars.

Marsden notes how ironic it is that Christians are rigorously judged against the standard of rational objectivity at a time when the very possibility of rational objectivity -- as an inheritance of the Enlightenment -- is under widespread attack.

Marsden's final and perhaps most important claim is that the world of scholarship, far from being somehow threatened or impoverished by the presence of Christians in its midst, would be enriched. Faith makes a difference to whatever scholarship it inspires and sustains, although the difference in no way compromises intellectual integrity, as the secularists who govern our universities seem to fear. The Christian faith may, for example, alert scholars to subjects worthy of investigation; thus (my example, not Marsden's) a great deal of empirical research into the influence of religious beliefs on political behavior is being conducted by Christian political scientists. In many cases these scholars can understand the beliefs they are investigating better than those who have never, so to speak, been inside them. Further, religious faith may prompt a scholar to ask questions that another scholar might neglect -- concerning nuclear war, for example, or medical ethics.

In addition to orienting scholarly research in directions that might otherwise be ignored, Christian faith may provide useful hypotheses. For example, Christianity presupposes a more pessimistic view of human nature than is held by many people. This view may provide a useful framework for investigating areas of human behavior, such as politics, in which typical behavior is worse than behavior anticipated by more optimistic views. One of the most helpful hypotheses set forth in our time (again, my example) is Reinhold Niebuhr's concept of "original sin."

If Christian or other religious commitments make differences of this kind in the conduct of scholarly inquiry, the scholarly community makes itself poorer by its ban on religious expression. Marsden's plea to secular scholars is not simply "Be fair!" but also "Consider your own best interests!" These interests dictate that scholars listen to every reasonable voice and rule out no argument unheard.

Marsden's position is well founded. I wonder whether there is a single Christian in American academic life today who would deny "the virtual establishment of non-belief." While there are openly professed Christians in American universities (a few of them well-known scholars and in prestigious universities), professing one's Christian faith in an academic setting is not an easy undertaking. Recently I found myself advising a Christian graduate student in a renowned university who was facing interviews for faculty positions not to go out of his way to make his Christian faith known. A Christian acquaintance on that university's faculty fully concurred.

What about Marsden's claim that this antireligious bias is unfair to Christians and impoverishing to academic life? On the issue of fairness, unbelievers would probably be more reluctant than believers to agree with Marsden. Still, if I interpret him accurately, he gives little cause for disagreement. In no way does he question the validity of the established rules of scholarly discourse. We must address one another on the basis of reason. Christians have no business asserting that something is true because God says that it is. They must support whatever positions they take with evidence and reasons that non-Christians can rationally weigh. It is hard to see what nonbelievers have to fear: they are not asked to compromise their scholarly integrity in any way but only to extend to Christians the courtesies that, in this era of exultant diversity, they extend to every sort of secular persuasion.

Can the scholarly realm be enriched by the presence of Christians? No doubt many nonbelievers will remain unconvinced, but Marsden's response to their doubts might be phrased as a question: What harm can come from giving religious scholars a hearing? Or, recalling John Stuart Mill, Marsden might ask: On what rational grounds can you reject arguments you have never heard? One suspects that some of the difficulty in winning non-Christian academicians over to a viewpoint like Marsden's derives from the fact that they are not well acquainted with Christian writings. They are often unfamiliar with the works of even the greatest Christian writers such as Thomas Aquinas or Karl Barth. They do not realize the high order of rationality and learning that is displayed in such works.

A theologian in their eyes is somewhat like a dragon -- strange and alarming--and they shrink from the prospect of facing such a creature in scholarly debate. But their doubts have little to do with the real nature of the Christian intellect or with the intrinsic merits of the viewpoint Marsden is arguing.

Marsden's manner is persuasive. He is unfailingly civil with his readers; sarcasm does not seem to be in his intellectual arsenal. And in fashioning his polemic, his style is one of studied moderation. But this moderation and civility may have led him to be less bold than is warranted by the strength of his case.

Why, for example, should Christian scholars want to join secular scholars in a single community of inquiry? What can they learn from secular scholars? Why shouldn't they heed Paul when he urges Christians to separate themselves from the company of unbelievers and to stand apart? Marsden tends to say only that Christian participation in the world of secular scholarship is a matter of rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar's. In everyday life, believers and nonbelievers alike "routinely move from one field of activity to another, each with its own set of rules." Such adaptability is "fully consistent with Christian commitment."

Something stronger might well be said. If Marsden does not say it, or says it only very faintly, it may be because of his moderate and civil spirit, not because of his convictions. Christianity is concerned with the truth above all else, and truth for Christians is not an esoteric doctrine, as it was with the Gnostics, but is the Logos pervading the universe. In entering the realms of rational inquiry, Christians are not in alien country. However uneasy secular scholars may be in the presence of Christian scholars, Christian scholars can be quite comfortable in the presence of secular scholars. To whatever degree they possess authentic truth, secular scholars are on common ground with Christians. Christians can in good conscience listen to them and learn from them. I wish that Marsden has pressed his argument in this direction.

He might have pressed it in another direction as well. Marsden's exhortation to his secular colleagues is minimal: be fair, don't discriminate unreasonably against professed Christians; be reasonable, recognize that you can learn from Christian scholars. Sometimes he seems to say even less -- that Christian scholars, once admitted into the arena of the secular intellect, will prove to be harmless. Some of his most interesting arguments, however, suggest that secular universities are far more dependent on Christian insights than he wants to say explicitly. He notes that many professors have "deep moral and political convictions" but are unable to defend them because they are captives of moral relativism. With their belief in a divinely grounded, hence absolute, moral law, Christians are in a good position to help them.

A similar situation exists in the field of epistemology. "Human perceptions," Marsden writes, "are notoriously limited and, with God excluded from consideration, it is difficult to find a point of reference for establishing any certainty in what we claim to know." Hence, with the spread of postmodern relativism, secular scholars today are "up a creek without an epistemic paddle." Christian scholars have a paddle they could lend to secular scholars; they have transcendental resources for resisting deconstruction and other such corrosive forces. Finally, in the godless universe of secular academics, "humans loom as the ultimate creators of reality. The self, or perhaps the community or the nation, is inflated and absolutized." Christian scholars can help bring a sense of proportion into intellectual debate; they can remind us from time to time that we are human and not divine -- a reminder scholars need perhaps more than some other groups.

Marsden is not clear about how these services can be performed without making a direct appeal to revelation -- which, of course, the rules of scholarly discourse preclude. The key point, however, is that if the secularized academic community cannot on its own terms sustain moral standards, gain epistemological assurance or avoid the virtual deification of the human, then far more than fairness and open-mindedness is at stake in its relationship with Christians. The viability of the scholarly community is at stake.

This may seem an extreme way of speaking, but the plight of the secular university invites such speech. A research community that has no moral standards for directing its investigations or judging the results, that has no way of knowing whether it really knows anything at all, and that saddles human beings with expectations and demands that they (being human and not divine) are constitutionally incapable of fulfilling is in desperate circumstances. Marsden is aware that his analysis hovers on the edge of such conclusions. This is shown by the very first sentence of the book: "Contemporary university culture," he declares, "is hollow at its core." However, it's as if, having said that, he clapped his hand over his mouth and resolved to be more discreet. Never again does he speak so plainly, even though he provides himself with ample grounds for doing so.

Finally, it is arguable that Marsden makes too little of the chasm dividing Christian and secular scholars. He writes as though most nonreligious scholars will recognize the common sense informing his argument and will accordingly revise their attitudes toward Christian scholarship. Having suggested that Christians are more realistic in their assessments of human nature than are their secular colleagues, Marsden is not very realistic in his assessment of his secular colleagues. He ignores the fact that one of the prime motives behind secular hostility to religion is pride. Even Christian scholars may be reluctant to admit how clouded and unsure the human mind is, and how dependent on revelation. How much more so non-Christian scholars! To have been explicit on this point would of course have necessitated speaking of sin -- a delicate if not impossible task in this context. It would, however, have brought to light conditions to which Marsden gives insufficient attention. In view of the intractability of sin (maintaining its hold, presumably, on both sides of the chasm), relationships between Christian and non-Christian scholars are unlikely ever to be free of serious tensions.

These tensions can easily be seen if we note how unavoidable it will be for Christian scholars to appeal, at least occasionally and tacitly, to revelation. Can a Christian scholar affirm absolute morality without in some way introducing the proposition that the moral law is revealed and underwritten by God? This is doubtful. Even the concept of natural law, which probably lends itself to rational definition and defense more readily than any other theological version of morality, makes little sense without God as its ultimate premise. And can a Christian scholar offer any sort of "epistemic paddle," that is, any assurance that human knowledge can attain absolute truth, without at least implying that such knowledge must be checked and completed by revelation? Again, that is doubtful. But to fall back on the authority of revelation is sure to cause offense.

The propriety of appealing to revelation in public debate is a complex issue. On the one hand, it seemingly does no harm as long as all participants are free to follow reason and conscience. Moreover, what one person affirms on the basis of revelation, another person may accept on the basis of reason or of personal intuition; such an exchange is particularly easy to imagine in the area of moral inquiry. On the other hand, if the ultimate criterion in scholarly disputation is reason, then publicly claiming prior authority for revelation is a breach of ethics and is rightly reprehended by secular scholars.

In any case, Marsden too casually assumes that Christians can always make a rational case for beliefs they regard as revealed. To begin with, it is doubtful that revelation can, even in principle, always be supported by reason. And even if it could, it is doubtful that in the heat of scholarly disputation it always would be. When Christians and non-Christians take part together in intellectual inquiry, revelation is almost bound to be there, just under the surface, as a potential source of trouble.

Marsden characterizes his outlook as Augustinian. Just as Christians should fill a responsible role in earthly affairs even though they are citizens in a transcendental community, the City of God, so they should be "full-fledged participants in the secular academic institutions of the day, yet be free of illusions about those institutions." But the truth may be more radically Augustinian than Marsden grants. For Augustine, given the tenacity of human wickedness, no earthly city can be expected to realize the form and spirit of the City of God. In like fashion, we probably should not expect the realm of scholarly discourse closely to resemble the kind of truth-seeking dialogue imagined by great religious thinkers such as Martin Buber, and by great secular thinkers such as John Stuart Mill.

Even so, as Augustine would advise, while living on earth we should direct our eyes sometimes toward heaven. The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship is a heavenward glance. The scholarly community, secular and Christian alike, cannot but be the better for it.

A school is "theological," I suggest, to the extent that everything done in its name has one overarching goal: more clearly to understand God and to understand everything in relation to God. This answer is almost embarrassingly obvious. By definition, a theological school is about theology in its broadest sense of the term: logos, speaking thoughtfully or thinking articulately and clearly about theos, God. Theological schools are communities engaged in a lot of practices which have the same ultimate goal: to increase our understanding of God.

It is conventional to distinguish between theological schools that focus on the education of ministers by attending to the "heart knowledge" of God that people have through their Christian experience, through their piety or spirituality, and theological schools that focus on the education of Christian intellectuals by attending to the "head knowledge" of God that people have through critical intellectual inquiry. This is a false dichotomy. To be sure, heart and mind can distort each other, but neither is whole without the other. Faithfulness to God involves loving God with the whole person—heart, soul and strength along with the mind.

Therefore the theological school must reject the dogma that religious engagement and critical inquiry are mutually exclusive. It must welcome religiously engaged scholarship that is also rigorously critical scholarship. Even though this conjunction makes academic life more complicated, there is no reason to have to choose between "rigorous scholarship" that is needed to educate future scholars and "religious engagement" that is needed to educate future ministers.

Jesus said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind: the idea of a distinctively intellectual love for God is an old idea in Judaism and Christianity. It reminds us that love for God is not only an emotion, a passion and a willed commitment to the Beloved, but also a fixed attentiveness on trying to understand the Beloved.

But in the biblical traditions, God cannot be understood directly. The God whom we seek to understand ever more truly is not a datum lying around waiting to be understood. Moreover, human beings cannot simply and directly perceive God, lest they die. According to the biblical witness, God can be known only when and where God gives Godself to be known. God communicates indirectly, and our efforts to understand God must move in a corresponding indirection. So we modify our answer: a school is truly theological to the extent that it is a community of persons seeking to understand God, and all else in relation to God, by studying other matters that are believed to lead to that understanding.

Those other matters are concrete. For Christians they center on the figure of Jesus Christ in the context of God’s covenant people Israel. But our access to Jesus in his context is itself indirect, mediated mostly by scripture’s diverse witnesses. And scripture’s witnesses are properly understood only in the context of the social, cultural and historical circumstances from which they come. Moreover, scripture’s witnesses never speak directly to us but are mediated by traditions of interpretation. And those traditions are not simply intellectual traditions but integral parts of complex practices of speech, thought, worship and morally responsible action. In these practices, communities of faith attempt to respond faithfully to the God who has been graciously faithful to the world.

In hopes of a deeper understanding of God, we study such subjects as Jesus Christ and Israel, scripture in tradition, the history of practices of interpretation of scripture and practices of response to God in worship, moral responsibility and institution building.

We study all these topics because they shape the practices that constitute the common life of contemporary communities seeking in faith to respond appropriately to God.

In order for it to be fruitful, our study must be disciplined. Our indirect road to deeper understanding of God must include our formation by several critical disciplines of inquiry—the disciplines of the philosopher and of the textual critic, of the historian and the scientist. Each of these studies is intellectually important and interesting in its own right, yet they are not in themselves theological studies. They become theological studies when we push beyond the demands of each critical discipline and its subject matter to ask: What does this inquiry suggest about how to understand God and how to understand our lives in relation to God? In a theological school, we cannot leave answering that question to one department or field. The question is the responsibility of every aspect of a theological school.

This approach collides with another piece of conventional wisdom about theological education. Many claim that the deepest challenge to American theological education is to figure out how to integrate theory and practice. This wisdom supposes that what makes theological schools theological is that they train the members of a profession called "the ministry." "Theological" is defined not by reference to God but by reference to one profession among many. Ministry, in turn, is defined as the set of capacities required to provide the services that the profession of ministry is expected to offer. Hence "truly professional" ministers must have skills in counseling, educating young children, educating adolescents, educating adults, preaching, conducting liturgy, building community, fund raising, and management of small nonprofit volunteer organizations.

According to this picture, theological schooling is a movement from generating abstract theory to applying theory in concrete practice. It is as though the underlying picture of theological schooling came from engineering: we receive theories from "pure" scientific research, generalize applied theory from parts or from implications of the "pure" theory, and then devise techniques and technologies governed by the applied theory to solve well-defined practical problems. In theological education it is assumed not only that psychology and other human sciences generate useful theory, but that historical studies and theological reflection on doctrine and ethics should yield theories that are relevant to ministry and can be applied in practice.

This picture of theological schooling leads to intractable problems. If it were correct, there would be so many bodies of relevant theory that one would not be able to learn the theories and test them critically in a three- or four-year course of study.

Let there be no misunderstanding. It is essential that leaders in communities of faith learn how to preach, how to counsel and how to manage an organization mostly staffed by volunteers. This critique is not a matter of the "academic" side of the school dumping on the "practical side." What makes a theological school theological is neither the cultivation of academic skills nor the cultivation of practical capacities. Learning to talk knowledgeably in an Augustinian or Cappadocian way, or in a Rahnerian or Barthian way, no more constitutes a theological education than does learning how to preach well, counsel or run a Sunday school. Teaching and learning these things make for truly theological schooling only when they are done in the service of a further end: learning so to love God with the mind as to come to understand God more deeply and more truly.

When we picture theological education as a movement from theory to the application of theory in practice, we focus on the bodies of theory as the ultimate subject matter to be studied. We focus not on matters that we believe will lead us to a deeper understanding of God, but on matters that we must master in order to become skilled in certain professional techniques. When that happens, the study of a theory takes on a life of its own, and the curriculum becomes a clutch of unrelated courses instead of an integral course of study. When theological schooling is conceived in this way, it is structurally impossible to integrate theory and practice because it is humanly impossible to integrate all the relevant bodies of theory.

However, if the subjects of study are concrete networks of human practices by which communities of faith attempt to respond to God faithfully, and if they are practices which mediate an understanding of God, then the movement of theological schooling is more like an engaged meditative gaze than it is like problem solving. It is more the circular movement of patient and appropriately disciplined attention toward complex "goings-on": What is going on in these communities of faith? What are they doing here? What are we doing here? What is God doing here? We move from these questions to insights and then test the insights by our further attention to what is going on.

Theological schooling is not movement from theory to the application of theory in practical techniques. Seeking to understand God by critically disciplined attention to those concrete realities through which God makes Godself known begins not with theory but with messy concrete realities. Theological schooling makes use of bodies of theory to keep itself self-critically honest, but it does not generate much theory. Instead, it seeks to generate the insight and wisdom that shape lives.