Lux Lex Pax

Theology and religious vocations: Prof $74,267 Associate $59,593 Assistant $52,241 New Assistant $50,620 Instructor $46,042

I think you're right about Chicago Div. being more pluralistic. The Div. School at Chicago is basically the religious studies program at Chicago; they have scholars that work on Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism. On the other hand, YDS is more of a Christian ministerial training ground, with the religious studies department as a separate but overlapping unit.

1) The field as a whole is less competitive than law, medical, or business schools. 2) The quality of students now studying at seminaries and divinity schools has dropped. Once upon a time, when the liberal-Protestant establishment still reigned supreme, religion (and theology) mattered in American society. The public square had room for reasoned religious voices that tried to articulate how a long intellectual tradition affected public issues. It was exciting, for some, to be connected to this movement. But, for various reasons (immigration, pluralism, loss of tradition, self-undermining, etc.), it has been in decline. Where once the call to ministry was a noble vocation on par with that of being a lawyer or doctor, it has lost the standing it once had. Ministry is no longer as attractive as law, medicine, or business, and, therefore, attracts lower quality students than it once did. As a seminary president recently put the matter, seminaries and divinity schools now face a brain drain from divinity to law, medicine, and business. I don't see how this reeks of superiority. These are just the facts. I've heard professors complain time and again about the quality of students and their lack of preparation in even the most basic of subjects. Students enter, professors say, with little knowledge of the tradition and poor writing skills. Things that were taken for granted a generation ago are no longer the case. Are Harvard divinity students idiots? No, I never implied it. There is, however, a qualitative difference between students at Harvard Law or Medical and Harvard Divinity. Part of the issue, I believe following Hauerwas, is that people think that it's more important to have someone knowledgeable drafting your contracts or diagnosing your illnesses than caring for your soul. There's just a gravitas in the study of law and medicine that isn't present in the study for ministry. Very few in divinity programs, besides conservative evangelical ones -- and they have their own issues, approach what they study as if it really mattered to the people in the pews. I think, in part, that this may also be the source of antipathy to religion and the study of religion at Harvard. Some at Harvard are hostile toward religion qua religion to begin with, but then you have less qualified and prepared students taking classes in other units of the university, completely oblivious to their "academic deficits," to put it mildly. And point of clarification, just because the school operates under the auspices of name Harvard doesn't mean it's highly regarded in the field. Many in the field think that HDS has been in decline for a while. Look at the great faculty members they've lost within the last few years: Sarah Coakley, Mark Jordan, Leigh Schmidt, R. Marie Griffith, etc. These incredible scholars were basically pushed out because of the hostile environment at HDS and Harvard more generally. Moreover, with the passing of Thiemann, there isn't much there in terms of traditional Christian theology. Maybe the new dean can change course, but let's not kid ourselves about the facts on the ground. It was also well known that HDS was going through financial difficulties before the financial crisis that rocked the economy. I'm not trying to pick on Harvard. These are general issues affecting the entire field, but since this thread was about Harvard specifically, my comments were about Harvard.

I think the 50% acceptance rate is pretty common across the board at the top master's degree programs in theology/divinity/religion. I recall seeing some numbers a few years ago that stated that PTS and Duke were the most selective programs to get into (approximately between 25-35% acceptance rates). The fact is that these programs aren't very competitive, as compared to law, medicine, business, etc., and the situation only gets worse once you go beyond the Harvards, Yales, Princetons, and Dukes. I've heard professors for years bemoan the precipitous drop in the quality of students that now study in seminaries and divinity schools. So, maybe students in other programs or units of the university rightly complain about the quality of divinity students, which the Harvard report seems to hint at when it mentions reducing the size of the MTS program to improve student quality.

I wouldn't worry about the ability of PTS to place you in a program like Yale's. M.Div. students from PTS have had great success gaining admission to top theology/religion programs. The benefit of PTS over Yale is that PTS has more theologians and they're actually around (I hear that Volf isn't always around and may not be that accessible). If you're really interested in Reformed -- and more generally Protestant -- theology, academia with the possibility of ministry, and a family friendly environment, I would choose PTS. If you were more interested in various kinds of liberation theology (Black, Latin American, feminist, womanist, queer, etc.), then I'd say go with Yale; PTS has some of that, but traditional Christian theological sources, approaches, and arguments are favored, or so it seems to me.

Also, as far as medievalists are concerned, PTS has Rorem in history, Charry in theology, Bowlin in theology, and there is Eric Gregory at the university who works on Augustine.

I have to agree with Neem217. PTS -- particularly the M.Div. program -- has placed many students in great Ph.D. programs in recent years. The list of schools includes: Yale, Harvard, Princeton, PTS, Duke, Chicago, Emory, UVa, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, UCSB, Fordham, Marquette, and BC to name a few. BC is great, but in terms of placement in top doctoral programs, I don't think it can match PTS.

We can't help you without more information. What are you interested in? Are the financial aid packages comparable? Do you have to work for your money in the form of TAships, etc.? Head-to-head, how do they fair as far as job placement in recent years? Is there anyone in particular you'd really like to work with?

If you go PTS, you'll have the opportunity to work in campus ministry at Princeton University or Rutgers University. PTS has produced tons of campus ministers, for instance, Luke Powery at Duke and Jonathan Walton at Harvard.

Go to Yale; it'll open more doors for you later than UGA will.

I'd advise going with the Ph.D. in psychology with an emphasis on religion. Psychology will open up more job opportunities both within and outside of the academy. I know of number of people at my school working in the social sciences with an emphasis on religion (sociology, anthropology, politics, etc.). Also, I get the feeling that religious studies departments like hiring people with training in the social sciences because they receive ample methodological training, as opposed to religion departments which don't usually teach quantitative, qualitative, or other methodologies.

From what I understand about Yale, the only tenured faculty member they currently have is Jennifer Herdt, since both Townes and Jenkins are leaving at the end of this school year; Townes to be dean of Vandy and Jenkins to UVa. Herdt is great. She's currently delivering a set of lectures at PTS. Her emphasis is mostly early modern Protestant ethics, but she also knows her Augustine and Aquinas.

I'd do groupings rather than rankings since the latter give the impression of a precise evaluation that is near impossible. Moreover, each of us is going to evaluate programs differently based on how our own interests align with the strengths of each program. For instance, working with Elshtain at Chicago will appeal to those who want to approach religion and politics in certain way, but working with Bretherton at Duke will appeal to others. Each program offers a very different experience and produces different kinds of scholars. With that in mind, I'd group them as follows: 1) Yale, Duke, Notre Dame, UVa, Princeton U/PTS 2) Chicago, Emory, Vanderbilt, Brown I've obviously omitted tons of schools, but these tend to dominate the field.

As an outsider, based on what I've read and what I've heard from students at Harvard, it seems as though the study of religion at Harvard, whether in HDS or CSR, is seriously looked down upon by other units. For instance, I've read that Steven Pinker lead a faction of the faculty against requiring a course in religion as part of its curricular reform. Can anyone verify this antipathy or hostility toward religion at Harvard?

Graham has taught Wittgenstein in the past at the Ph.D. level. I'm not sure if he's done anything at the M.Div. level. Graham is sharp and knows his stuff. The issue with him, like most philosophers or theologians for that matter, is his personality. Johnson does work in Levinas and has taught Levinas at the M.Div. level in his course on Postmodern, Post-holocaust, Post-9/11 theology (referred to as his "post, post, post" class). I think Johnson has also written stuff on Levinas. There are also knowledgeable people in those areas at PU. Leora Batnitzky is teaching a seminar this semester on Heidegger, Ricouer, and Levinas (with a healthy dose of Kant and Descartes). Stout knows his Wittgenstein as well; for instance, see the volume he edited titled "Grammar and Grace." Although the website doesn't list it, I would imagine John Bowlin at PTS would also know a fair bit about Wittgenstein and theology since he did contribute an essay to the "Grammar and Grace" volume and was trained by one of the big Wittgenstein/Aquinas scholars at the time (Victor Preller). There are definitely the resources at PTS and PU to study Wittgenstein, Levinas, and just about anyone else you want. My suggestion would be to befriend Bowlin while at PTS, who'll then connect you with the resources at PTS and PU that you need.

Students at PTS are allowed, within certain limits, to take courses at PU. It's definitely possible to do some coursework in the philosophy department. The PU religion department is also very philosophically oriented. In fact, although Hector got his Ph.D. at PTS, he worked closely with Stout at PU, whom he credits for his philosophical chops.

170v/160q/5aw No retake Yes I went to law school. It taught me how to read critically and carefully. Study vocabulary lists; you can find them at bookstores. Create your own vocabulary list. Always look up words you don't know. Practice reading different genres. Buy a used casebook (the kind used in law school), and practice reading and analyzing the arguments. Used casebooks can be found cheap, since you don't need the most up to date. Casebooks are great because you don't actually have to read entire cases, the editors have condensed the arguments for you, so all you need to do is break the argument down and see if it actually does what it says it does and how the other side responds; it's a great exercise. That's how I did it.

Something to keep in mind is that in order to get out of a required introductory level course you need to demonstrate that the undergrad course you want to substitute in its place covered the same ground. For instance, to get out of OT 101, you would need to show that you took an undergrad survey course that covered the entire OT. Even if you took a bunch of courses in single books of the OT, they won't let you out of the requirement. I think the same applies to the other required introductory courses (NT 101, TH 101, CH 101, etc.). They let you test out of the introductory language stuff, so you can jump straight into advanced work. Also, like cadences said, even if the undergrad course substitutes for the required course, you'd still need to complete the required number of units in each area (OT, NT, CH, TH, etc.).

Sorry, I don't know much about the program, so anything I'd say about it would be pure speculation. However, as I said before, faculty and funding are the two most important criteria. If they have faculty that are doing work that interests you, that are supportive and care about your theological formation, and that have a good record of placing people in desirable jobs, and the school is willing to fund you, then I say go for it.

This (http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/religion) is probably a little more helpful. It's all the same data, but this allows you to place more value on things you think are more important, for instance, student outcomes versus faculty productivity.

Reno's rankings seem completely impressionistic and biased. See for instance this post: http://tacet.wordpress.com/tag/graduate-theology/ <<A brief recap: Marquette in 2006 suffers from the “liberal-revisionist agenda” of the Jesuits, but in 2009 it has “avoided the narrow parochialism of the now old and often narrowly liberal Catholic theology.” In 2006, it is not quite cut out for the top ten, but in 2009 it is number five in the country. Onward. Fast forward a bit to 2010, where Marquette drops from fifth to sixth: “alone among Jesuit doctoral programs, the theology department at Marquette has as its greatest strength the fact that it is not hobbled by the increasingly superannuated agenda of liberal Catholic theology. The faculty in historical theology and systematic theology don’t necessarily jell into a corporate personality, but professors such as Ralph Del Colle and Susan Wood are pushing forward, trying to discern the possibilities for Catholic theology in North America after the collapse of the short-lived but once ruthlessly dominant Rahnerian consensus. Some of the avatars of the declining Rahnerian approach still teach at Marquette, but the theologies of Hans Urs von Balthasar and St. Thomas are also well represented … Marquette’s biggest liability is Marquette. It’s a fine institution, but it lacks the overall atmosphere of academic excellence that one finds at most elite universities, and this invariably holds back the theology department as well.” While I take issue with the final comment, that Marquette “lacks the overall atmosphere of academic excellence that one finds at most elite universities” (we do just fine, thank you), not much has changed between 2009 and 2010. Fast forward two more years, to 2012, and it would appear that we (Marquette) have barely made Reno’s cut. We place ninth overall, just before the University of Dayton: “in the past I’ve given Marquette University good marks. Lately staffing has changed. Ralph Del Colle passed away earlier in the year, and Alexander Golitzen left to become an Orthodox bishop. This tilts the program in the direction of dead-end liberal Catholicism. There are still good folks there (Mickey Mattox, Stephen Long), but it’s less congenial than it once was.”>> It's all going to come down to who you want to work with and how much money the school has to offer. Look for the scholars that you want to work with, apply to those schools, hope you get in and that they can provide you full funding plus a stipend. When looking for whom to work with, consider not only the kind of work they do but also the kinds of students they produce, how much attention and support they give to their students, and their track record of placing students in desirable jobs. And let's be honest, for the benefit of those new to the field, the top candidates in theology and ethics year-in and year-out tend to come from a handful of schools: Yale, Duke, U. Chicago, Notre Dame, UVa, Princeton U., Harvard, and maybe Emory and Vanderbilt. People can dispute it all they want, but these 7 (9?) schools tend to dominate the field. Does it mean you can't make it if you're coming from the GTU or Drew or CGU? No, it'll just be much harder.

Places like Princeton and Harvard offer basic stipends between $27-28,000, which can then be increased through top-up prizes or diversity fellowships. For instance, the President's Fellowship at Princeton provides an extra $3,000, paid in a lump sum at the beginning of the first semester, on top of the basic stipend. One of the other Princeton advantages is that you don't have to work for your money; it's all guaranteed, five years including five summers of support.

I think a reference from someone they know, respect, and are friends with is probably the most helpful, all things being equal. At least, that was my experience when I applied. I had a letter from someone who wasn't a big name but everyone knew and respected, and I'm absolutely certain his letter opened doors for me because everyone mentioned him and how great he was. But figuring out who is friends with whom and who is respected by people sitting on admissions' committees is the tricky part.

According to the website, "No one is admitted as a candidate for the AM, only for the PhD."

Coursework at the master's level is like a beefed up undergrad course; it's more reading and more writing, both at a higher level of quality. It'll probably be a mix of lecture courses and some seminars. Depending on where you attend, you might have the opportunity to take a Ph.D. level seminar -- those are usually much more demanding.