{"id":3452,"date":"2016-03-18T11:49:18","date_gmt":"2016-03-18T15:49:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=3452"},"modified":"2016-03-18T11:49:18","modified_gmt":"2016-03-18T15:49:18","slug":"downsizing-seminaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=3452","title":{"rendered":"Downsizing: Seminaries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/03\/19\/us\/theology-schools-facing-lean-times-look-to-one-another-and-the-web.html?smid=tw-nytnational&#038;smtyp=cur&#038;_r=0\" target=\"_blank\">New York Times<\/a><\/i> has an interesting piece today about the decline of seminaries.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>According to a study released this week by the Association of Theological Schools, 55 percent of its member schools have declining enrollments. The students are aging, too \u2014 by 2020, \u201cthere may be more 50+ students than 20-somethings.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In response, seminaries and divinity schools are in a period of unprecedented experimentation. Schools are merging; or joining together, across religious lines, in interfaith consortiums; or moving online.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You can see the problem. The Christian narrative is incontestably false, and the younger generation has left it behind.  That doesn&#8217;t mean they don&#8217;t think about ethical, how-shall-we-live? type questions; it means they don&#8217;t frame them according to some made-up bedtime-story from 2000-years ago.  It means, too, that matters once considered settled &#8212; homosexual relationships, for instance &#8212; are being considered anew and that, in some cases, non-traditional answers are reached.<\/p>\n<p>Undoubtedly, we shall see a great many seminaries disappear over the next few decades; in view of the miseries caused by the ignorance they cultivate, nobody should regret that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Times has an interesting piece today about the decline of seminaries. According to a study released this week by the Association of Theological Schools, 55 percent of its member schools have declining enrollments. The students are aging, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=3452\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3452"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3453,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3452\/revisions\/3453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}