Imagining the future of theological education

If theological education was ever in peril, it is now. The general state of higher education is gloomy, with the pandemic only adding to the gloom, but as everyone involved in Christian higher education knows, seminaries and Christian colleges were imperiled before the crisis. Since 2016 there have been 60 nonprofit college closings or mergers, 25 of which were church affiliated. The Association of Theological Schools reports nine seminary closures in the last decade, most of them in the last five years.

So when I sat down with four leading theologians to consider the future of theological education, I was surprised to find they were all passionately optimistic about the enterprise. They had reservations about a university-centric or cloistered monastic approach, but none held the view that the fate of theo­logical education need be determined by its place in higher education. This conviction followed from their view that theo­logical education is an essential work of the church and so shares the church’s destiny.

Shifting the center from the university to the church produces a vision of Christian education that is more daring, provocative, and hopeful than other outlooks. Theologians Rowan Williams, Justo González, Emilie Townes, and Sam Wells each offer distinctive images and fresh possibilities for improving theological education today. They envision an education shaped by the strangeness of the gospel rather than the structures of the university.