Pre- Theological Training: An Empirical Study

Abstract

which holds promise of creative results in the field of theological education. What is the place of the college and university in the over-all program of theological education? What should be the relationship between the college and the seminary ? What role should the undergraduate institution play in the preparation of students for religious vocations ? What place should a Department of Religion have in all of this? These and similar questions are the active ingredients in this ferment which was reflected in the recent report to the NABI of its special committee on Pre-Theological Studies.' This discussion has been going on for several years, and the problem is beginning to achieve some form and clarity.2 It is readily admitted, however, by many who are engaged in this discussion that one of the great inadequacies of the analysis is the lack of empirical data. The Niebuhr committee, in its excellent study of theological education in the United States and Canada, has come closest to supplying this need, but it devotes only seven pages to the college and university as an area of theological concern.3 The special committee of the NABI has been instructed to continue its study along such inductive lines, and it is in anticipation of this project that the following material is presented. The purpose here is to suggest some of the relevant questions that need to be asked, and certain lines of empirical investigation along which answers might ultimately be found. The basis of this paper is an empirical study conducted by the Department of Religion at the College of Wooster, completed in 1957. It is presented here at the request of the editor of JBR not because of its excellence, but because of the current interest in this question. One might even discover here some of the values of negative education. The survey covered all of the students at Wooster between the years 1952 and 1956 who declared in their senior year their intention of entering some kind of full time religious work. There were two types of questionnaires: one was for those who had majored in Religion at Wooster; the other for those majoring in other subjects. In the former group there were fifty-nine students, twenty of whom responded to the questionnaire. These included two ordained ministers, two elementary school teachers, one YWCA secretary, one secretary to a college dean, two ministers' wives, and twelve students in various theological seminaries. In the latter group forty-four out of eighty-one students responded to the questionnaire.' Sixteen were ordained ministers, three were wives, one was in the army, and the rest were in seminary. This immediately points out some weaknesses in the study. Not only is the control group a small one, but these were not mature people to whom the experiences of professional life had revealed educational inadequacies. Perhaps they might make different responses to such a questionnaire in later years. There is, however, this value in choosing such a control group: the details of college life were still fresh and the shock of transition to seminary was especially vivid. This would suggest that the basic value of the survey lies in its description of what is the best kind of preparation for seminary. What is the best undergrad* J. ARTHUR BAIRD is a member of the Department of Religion in Wooster College. Dr. Baird is the new chairman of the NABI Committee on Pre-Theological Studies which published a significant report in the April, 1959, JBR.