Is the Church’s Call for Younger Seminarians Realisitic?

According to “Growing Pains: The Challenge of Overcrowded Schools Is Here to Stay,” an August 2000 U.S. Department of Education “Back to School Special Report on the Baby Boom Echo: Growing Pains,” there will be record growth in all levels of the education system during the next decade as the grandchildren of the Baby Boomers and the increasing numbers of immigrant families enroll and progress through elementary, secondary and college education programs.

The report further says, “Nationally, the white, non-ethnic population will not increase at the same rates as Hispanic, Asian and African-American families. Between 2000 and 2020, the number of white non-Hispanic children is expected to decrease, while the number of minority children is expected to rise.

“For example, the number of Hispanic children is expected to increase from 7.9 million to 12.7 million, an increase of 60 percent.”

And, yes — if the church is willing to embrace both their social idealism and their religious pluralism.

The college-age and younger prospective seminary students we have met and talked with this past year are incredibly spiritual, social justice-oriented people. As they talk about spiritual and ideological questions they are wrestling with from their contexts, these young people, often unwittingly, express callings to ministry as they investigate options and answer the longings God has placed on their hearts and in their lives.

Yet, while considering themselves Christians, many of these young people are uncomfortable with committing themselves to one denominational tradition. Likewise, many of these young people are at the same time very interested in other religious perspectives, both their similarities to and differences from Christianity. They are seeking an environment in which they can explore and respect non-Christian faith traditions while remaining Christians themselves.

Interestingly, many of these same prospective seminary students express other views that are more theologically conservative than what one might expect from persons who seem to accept readily religious pluralism as a societal norm.

This apparent ideological trend presents both a dilemma and a challenge for seminary recruitment from among this demographic group.

The dilemma is two-fold: persons preparing for ordination as a minister of the Word and Sacrament must at some point in their preparation commit to one of the Christian denominations. Likewise, denominationally affiliated seminaries have a mission to prepare the majority of their Master of Divinity degree program students for ordination in their particular Christian tradition. Although we do have a significant number of students pursuing ordination in one of four Methodist denominations and a number of other Christian traditions as well, the majority of our students still come from Presbyterian churches and are training for ministry in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

In Barbara Brown Taylor’s Easter 2002 Journal for Preachers article, “Easter Preaching and the Lost Language of Salvation,” she states that “a whole new generation of Christians is having a great deal of trouble believing that salvation is reserved for them alone.

“They know all about Mahatma Gandhi. They have read every book the Dalai Lama ever wrote.

“They have gone to school with Muslims, Jews and Sikhs, as well as with Asians who defy religious categorization.

“Unlike their parents, they formed relationships with these people before they encountered stereotypes about them.

“Given a choice between believing in their friends or believing in a religion that excludes their friends, most of them will choose the friends every time.”

The challenge then is to recruit from this demographic group with integrity, both affirming the importance of religious exploration as a part of one’s lifelong faith and vocational journey, and seeking to enroll qualified persons in a seminary degree program that leads to ordination in a particular Christian faith tradition.

And there is one other trend we have noted as we recruited prospective seminary students from the college-age and younger population. These young people are very mission-oriented. Many of them have been going on church mission trips for years, and have gone on either a short- or long-term mission-oriented internship during college or upon graduation.

These are young people who take our Scriptures’ concern for the poor seriously enough to go forth themselves as Christ’s hands and feet to minister and serve among those whom most of the world continues to choose not to see or hear.

These observations are echoed in remarks prepared by Melissa Wiginton, director of the Partnership for Excellence of the Fund of Theological Education (FTE), for presentation in May to the Panel on Identification and Recruitment of the Lilly Endowment Evaluation Consultation.

Wiginton says, “As I have studied the lives of the young people I believe will be exceptionally good ministers, I see some habits of mind and life that set them apart. I want to call these qualities ‘markers of resistance’ and we will consider four.”

Before listing and interpreting these “markers of resistance,” Wiginton acknowledges that they are based upon her studies of FTE Fellows, who to date have been overwhelmingly white.

According to Wiginton, the “first marker of resistance” is an “inner life.” She says, “FTE Fellows demonstrate a healthy inner life. They write in journals, practice contemplative prayer, write poems, go on silent retreats, read books about the spiritual life. The point is they reflect on feeding the soul. They can’t live without pondering and mulling.”

Her second marker of resistance is “a sense of wonder.” Wiginton says, “Many of the FTE Fellows are artists: They play piano, oboe, clarinet, trombone, flute, cello, violin and guitar. They sing — solo and with choirs. They are photographers and painters and poets. They write essays, plays, prayers and would-be novels. They dance and act and direct and do all kinds of things related to theater and the dramatic arts.

“Many of the FTE Fellows are also people who will risk unfamiliarity. They don’t just travel to places my grandmother would’ve called foreign countries; they live there. They do semesters abroad. They spend summers working in social locations and cultures very different from their own. They participate in lots of different religious practices. They are curious people.”

Wiginton’s third marker of resistance is “an appreciation of ritual.” She says, “we have found that many of the Fellows who will make exceptionally good ministers are not sure in which tradition they will serve — for a variety of reasons. But more importantly, the quality of resistance at stake is the refusal to act as if what we see, touch, eat, buy or wear is all that there is to reality. We as human beings engage symbol and ritual to point us to something beyond our apprehended experience.”

Her fourth marker of resistance is “engagement for healing the world.” Wiginton says, “We hear a lot about students on college campuses spending more and more time volunteering to do service as they are preparing for their careers. Helping others probably functions in several different ways for most of these students, as it does for the general population.

“But the young people we want to identify, those who will be exceptional pastoral leaders, are not simply interested in helping people. They are interested in changing the world, in making a difference in the life of the world.

“I don’t think you will find FTE Fellows working for Save the Children and Merrill Lynch without seeing any contradiction, but I do think you will find them relationally engaged with the needs of the world and acting as servant leaders and agents for justice.”

Can seminary admissions directors recruit with integrity from what demographers tell us is going to be an ever-increasing pool of younger and ever more diverse seminarians? Gamm says, “Absolutely!”

In addition to our own recruiting experiences on college campuses, there are the findings of a study by Conrad Cherry, Betty A. DeBerg and Amanda Porterfield reported in an article titled “Religion on Campus” printed in the Fall 2001 issue of Liberal Education. The authors studied the impact of secularization on religious interest and practice on four college campuses, one of which is described as a major public university, representing what they term “diverse points on the educational map.”

What the study found was that the majority of the students preferred to refer to themselves as “spiritual” rather than “religious,” who nevertheless reflected a deep and intentional faith, and faith practice that was less individualized than had been expected.

According to the article, “If anything, the ethos of religious choice seemed to stimulate religious interest and religious enthusiasm . . . . Indeed, we found religion on the four campuses sufficiently vital and inviting to make us wonder if it had ever been more so in the past.

“It is possible that young people in American culture have never been more enthusiastically engaged in religious practice or with religious ideas. And it is possible that religious practice and education have never been more connected with personal responsibility for society.

“More clearly, our study reveals that the ethos of de-centered, diverse, religiously tolerant institutions of higher education is a breeding ground for vital religious practice and teaching.”