The undergraduate program that successfully boosted enrollment at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary has a new name: instead of "Southeastern College at Wake Forest," which had caused some confusion about whether it was related to Wake Forest University, the school is now "The College at Southeastern."
Twenty years ago, the idea of a seminary campus hosting an undergraduate college was rare. Many seminaries had "Associate Degree" programs for students who did not have a college education, but did not pretend to offer a full college education.
That has changed, at least in Southern Baptist life, where it's more common than not for seminaries to host undergraduate colleges as feeder schools. The college at Southeastern was one of the first and most successful. A few years back, some trustees wanted to name it for former president Paige Patterson, who was instrumental in starting the trend. Since he was still president at the time, he appropriately declined the honor.
The school offers B.A. degrees in Christian studies, pastoral ministries, and missions. According to an article in Baptist Press, dean Peter Schemm said "One of the most appealing things about The College at Southeastern is that we are a college on the campus of a seminary, and our status as part of Southeastern Seminary allows our students to take advantage of academic programs, faculty resources and a way of life on campus that are not available at other undergraduate institutions."
This reflects the insular mindset of today's Southern Baptist education system that channels students into a narrow course of studies as opposed to a classic liberal arts education, where students have access to academic programs and faculty resources that might lead them to consider liberal ideas.
For most schools in the broader educational stream, it works the other way around. Many consider it more ideal for a divinity school campus to be associated with a university that offers many more options for study. Divinity schools at Campbell and Gardner-Webb universities, for example, offer combination degrees such as an MDiv-MBA or a combination MDiv and counseling degree. Many of the 15 seminaries or divinity schools affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship offer similar programs, and can do so because theological training is seen as a special area of studies within a broader spectrum of options.
Models that subsume a college within a seminary see undergraduate education as a focused step toward advanced theological training, rather than a learning experience with the broader base of options that one would find in a typical college or university setting.
I'm not suggesting that students can't learn a lot at seminary-run colleges, but what they learn won't have the breadth or offer the options to be found at colleges and universities where the theological cart can draw strength from a whole team of educational horses.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
One thing I hope Campbell Div and GW Div students will do to show their muster as the NC Primary comes to town is engage SEBTS mindset on the framework of the astounding Review of Charles Marsh's Wayward Christian Soldiers in current tnr.com
Titled the Idolatry of America, I encourage all of you to engage this conversation.
It's a stout one.
I understand Marsh was on Campbell ground recently. You are to be congratulated on that one.
Hoping students there will engage publicly the upcoming PBS endorsement of Francis Schaeffer as Marsh outlines serious reservations about the fundamentalism of Schaeffer in his book.
IMHO, I think having undergraduate programs on the campuses of seminaries like the one at SEBTS is a horrible idea.
I think the real issue comes down to control. Since the undergraduate institutions have typically been administered at the state convention level, the SBC has had a much less direct influence on what was taught there and who was doing the teaching. As more and more of these schools have wised up and reevaluated their ties to their state conventions, the SBC is less able to administer much influence. I guess it was only natural for the SBC seminaries to start undergraduate programs of their own...it was either that or starting all new universities/colleges.
It's too bad that there could very well come into existence a generation of influential ministers in the SBC, who have only been educated by the SBC for the SBC.
We need fewer ministers trained solely in Christian studies or pastoral ministries or the like...leaving them ill prepared to do anything but sit in the ivory tower of a church office. Instead, we need more ministers who have theological education along with a well rounded knowledge of other subjects as well.
Dr. Cartledge,
I've seen quite a few books on the shelves lately about "faith and the university" or "liberal-arts education & Christianity," etc.
In particular, folks like Stanley Hauerwas and Wendell Berry have some pretty stark commentaries on the state of universities. Part of the rub is that these days, schools that once educated people in humanities (which were designed to build-up virtuous people) now educate people for "success." Students in universities are now taught how to "compete in the job market" with no substantive thought given to ethics or morality.
It seems that a "confessionally Christian" undergraduate program is - in this way - at some advantage given that universities these days tend to turn out people who know how to compete but who don't know how to be "good people."
Looking forward to Genesis class next semester.
Grace & Peace, A.T.
Post a Comment