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Being There: Culture and Formation in Two Theological Schools (Religion in America)
| | This book offers a close-up look at theological education in the U.S. today. The authors' goal is to understand the way in which institutional culture affects the outcome of the educational process. To that end, they undertake ethnographic studies of two seminaries-one evangelical and one mainline Protestant. These studies, written in a lively journalistic style, make up the first part of the book and offer fascinating portraits of two very different intellectual, religious, and social worlds. <P>The authors go on to analyze these disparate environments, and suggest how in each case corporate culture acts as an agent of educational change. They find two major consequences stemming from the culture of each school. First, each culture gives expression to a normative goal that aims at shaping the way students understand themselves and from issues of ministry practice. Second, each provides a "cultural tool kit" of knowledge, practices, and skills that students use to construct strategies of action for the various problems and issues that will confront them as pastors or in other forms of ministry. In the concluding chapters, the authors explore the implications of their findings for theories of institutional culture and professional socialization and for interpreting the state of religion in America. They identify some of the practical dilemmas that theological and other professional schools currently face, and reflect on how their findings might contribute to their solution. This accessible, thought-provoking study will not only illuminate the structure and process by which culture educates and forms, but also provide invaluable insights into important dynamics of American religious life. | |
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Hurrying Toward Zion: Universities, Divinity Schools, and American Protestantism
| | "No better study of theological education has been written." - Brooks Holifield, Charles Howard Candler Professor of American Church History, Emory University. A truly magisterial book...marvelously informative as well as a joy to read." - Winton U. Solberg, University of Illinois. Conrad Cherry's historical analysis of American Protestant university-related divinity schools tells their story in terms of four powerful social and cultural forces that decisively influenced American higher education in general and Protestant theological education in particular: specialization, professionalization, social reform, and pluralism. | |
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Needs of the Heart: A Social And Cultural History of Brazil's Clergy And Seminaries (Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies)
| | <i>Needs of the Heart</i> traces five centuries of conflict and change in the life of the clergy in Brazil, home to the world's largest and arguably the most dynamic branch of the Roman Catholic Church. Serbin examines how priests participated in the colonization of Brazil, educated the elite and poor in the faith, propped up the socioeconomic status quo, and reinforced the institution of slavery, all the while living in relative freedom from church authority. Earthy men, many flouted the rule of celibacy and became embroiled in politics. <P>Serbin also describes the conservative modernization of the clergy, effected through seminary education, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Emphasizing discipline, the seminaries aimed to mold a new kind of priestmoral, isolated from politics and social entanglements, and, above all, obedient and celibate. However, the social, cultural, and religious upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s led students to reject the seminary. Seminarians worked to form a national union, and many left seminaries to establish greater contact with the people. The seminarians' movement sparked the practice of liberation theology; it also reflected the quest for professional and individual development, including optional celibacy. The Church responded to its seminarians' demands for personalized education by attempting to build an ambitious program in liberation psychology, a phenomenon as important as liberation theology. <P>Seminaries necessarily dealt in the psychology of sexuality, friendship, and other basic human tendencieswhat historian Marc Bloch has called the "secret needs of the heart." Serbin argues that the "needs of the heart" were a cause of the political transformation of the Brazilian Church, a transformation catalyzed by the profound identity crisis experienced by clergymen and seminarians in the 1960s and 1970s. The story of this generation of seminarians and priests is intermingled with the challenges and fears present during the repressive military dictatorship (1964 to 1985) and its aftermath. <P>Serbin's definitive history of the Brazilian clergy combines social science research, including over one hundred interviews, with cultural and social theory and a sweeping historical perspective. Through his history of the clergy and seminaries, he provides a history of modern Brazil itself. | |
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