Dr Kevin Bauder on the "Cadillac" of Degree-The Master of Divinity Part 2

Interesting comment:

[bold emphasis mine]

 

Even though I went to seminary for half an MDiv, the biggest issue to me has been that many regard seminary as a boot camp for pastors or worse a place to lose faith. This has poisoned the MDiv to me.

I went to a "moderate evangelical" (i.e. liberal Christian) seminary and I was told people were dropping like flies. I saw this over time as the later required courses thinned out. No wonder, they taught the bible was beholden to "higher criticism," yet demanded inerrant faith.

I know fundamentalists reject these assertions about the bible, but do conservative seminaries have a similar problem in losing students whose faith was shaken by seminary?

I believe my qualms about seminary may be unjustified.

 

Issues of higher criticism aside, I don't have any problem necessarily with a seminary weeding people out, so to speak.

Lots of degree programs have courses which historically separate the able from the hopeful. Anatomy and Physiology I & II for nursing students. Differential Equations for engineers. Organic Chemistry for pre-med, and many others.

 

I have to agree with you Rob. In that if basic classes weed people out such as Systematic Theology, Church History, Greek and Hebrew, and a fundamentalist way of going in depth with the scriptures. Then it is a good thing that those with a lack of understanding get weeded out.

Perhaps my qualms of faith killing courses is not present in conservative seminaries. I think I'll go read up on testimonies of those who left conservative seminaries, in order to see if I had any foundation for my hostility to seminary. Maybe it was just a bad experience at a fundamentally liberal seminary that bothered me for so long.

 

Rob, it does appear I had a one time bad experience that bothered me at a liberal seminary. Thank you for helping me see that after my research.

For everyone, I found this interesting debate while searching. It deals with the original reason for the OP: a discussion on whether the MDiv is the best way to train pastors.

Why You Shouldn't Go to Seminary - bobthune.com

 

To be fair, your bad experience, being led astray by liberal professors, was also one of the major...what's the plural of impetus???..reasons for the Conservative Resurgence in the SBC. Throwing a bunch of Wellhausen and Bultmann up at people without a solid foundation is criminal.

 

Yeah, I totally agree. It is shocking to think that even Southern Baptist seminaries were liberal in their teaching in the past. I would have fled the whole Convention back then and turned IFB if I ever went to a SBC seminary and got the horrible education I received at Asbury Theological Seminary.

 

Yes, it can be present in conservative seminaries.

 

Could you please elaborate?

 

Yes, I will briefly. I don't think the way they "lose faith" is necessarily the same as how they do so in liberal seminaries. But I have seen preachers with an evangelically warm faith enter a conservative seminary and come out with ice-cold intellectualism. I've seen courageous preachers enter a conservative seminary and come out as sycophants who will do whatever is necessary to climb the church ladder. These are ways that destroy a person's faith, at least in some fashion.

On the other hand, I've also seen people enter a conservative seminary and come out more conservative than their mentors.