Divinity School rankings?

[marXian]

The thing is, Divinity Schools aren't telling their students that at all.  I could imagine something like that coming out of a conservative seminary, but the large Divinity Schools are largely approaching the study of religion from a post-Christian point of view.  I am surrounded by atheists, agnostics, and a smattering of Jews, Muslims, Unitarians, Buddhists, and other religious and non-religious people.  As MarXian hinted at above, theology, when removed from its faith context, is ideas, and a historian of religion dealing with theology is in effect dealing with the history of ideas.  Can you write a history of something without seriously engaging in the history of ideas? Sure.  Can you write a history of religion without doing so?  Probably, but it gets a lot harder. 

But I would completely reject the idea that Divinity Schools are telling students, explicitly, implicitly, or otherwise, that you must approach the topic from an insiders prospective.  Some of the best scholarship on religion comes from outsiders because they can be more objective. What I think I hear going on here is a conflation of Divinity Schools with seminaries and bible colleges.

 

At the risk of sounding a bit harsh (sorry), it is incomprehensible to say that theology isn't ideas when "inside" a faith context. That isn't what I was saying. My use of "religious ideas" was just to say that not all religious traditions conceive of themselves as having a "theology"--at least not in the Christian sense--and that some of the scholars mentioned, e.g. Orsi, are more interested in the "lived experiences" of religious adherents (in Orsi's case, Catholics) apart from the authoritative articulation of doctrine (or perhaps influenced by, but by no means coterminous with.) I'm all for blowing up the distinction between inside and outside in RS, but making a sharp distinction between "theology" and "religious ideas" is not going to be helpful. From my own perspective, the question needs to be how theology speaks to other kinds of religious ideas, and vice versa, where these things find points of cohesion and departure, where theology is inextricable from politics, history, sociality, etc. and vice versa. That doesn't entail thinking theology (or religion in general) as something special and quarantined from these other spheres of human life. It entails keeping these categories fluid.

 

Josh, I definitely understand where you're coming from. But because Foucault/Asad, it's not going to matter to most secular programs what divinity schools are telling their students. From the secular program perspective, divinity schools are creating subjects to think in the most basic categorical terms of liberal Protestantism while still believing themselves to by post-Christian. I'm sure someday someone will come up with a version of Godwin's Law for RS debates involving Foucault and/or Asad, but for now, that is the language of the discipline by and large. 

[HNV721]

I think this discussion has largely run its course after reading/skimming through most responses.

However, to better communicate my "liberal" comment, I feel I should say a couple things because it seems to have been misunderstood.

First, I do not like even using "liberal" or "conservative" as ways to characterize people or beliefs. They are too saturated but unfortunately, seemingly, the simplest way to describe certain ... oppositions.

Now, most secular state programs in the Humanities or prominent divinity schools are "liberal" in the sense that they commonly challenge (or contradict) a lot of people's idea of "traditional" Protestant Christianity. Some of that is good -- such as being more socially inclusive -- and some of that is bad, in my opinion. In some ways I am both. However, I would say (and this feels odd to type) I am "conservative" in the sense that I believe Jesus was/is God and that the Holy Bible is largely a reliable, spiritually authoritative text. From what I have seen here and elsewhere, I do not think most divinity school goers would agree or even be particularly kind to those ideas. Thus, with those being two indelible tenets for me, I envision divinity school possibly being fruitless theological/spiritual battles only designed to discourage.

I am not afraid of this -- and concede to possibly seeing this all wrong -- but see it as a pointless fight at a "divinity" school where the topic of God is just more ... central than at a RS program where I know I will probably be in the minority as well.

[sacklunch]

I think this discussion has largely run its course after reading/skimming through most responses.

However, to better communicate my "liberal" comment, I feel I should say a couple things because it seems to have been misunderstood.

First, I do not like even using "liberal" or "conservative" as ways to characterize people or beliefs. They are too saturated but unfortunately, seemingly, the simplest way to describe certain ... oppositions.

Now, most secular state programs in the Humanities or prominent divinity schools are "liberal" in the sense that they commonly challenge (or contradict) a lot of people's idea of "traditional" Protestant Christianity. Some of that is good -- such as being more socially inclusive -- and some of that is bad, in my opinion. In some ways I am both. However, I would say (and this feels odd to type) I am "conservative" in the sense that I believe Jesus was/is God and that the Holy Bible is largely a reliable, spiritually authoritative text. From what I have seen here and elsewhere, I do not think most divinity school goers would agree or even be particularly kind to those ideas. Thus, with those being two indelible tenets for me, I envision divinity school possibly being fruitless theological/spiritual battles only designed to discourage.

I am not afraid of this -- and concede to possibly seeing this all wrong -- but see it as a pointless fight at a "divinity" school where the topic of God is just more ... central than at a RS program where I know I will probably be in the minority as well.

 

I'm not sure how to break this to you....but, given your stated views, you will prolly get along with the majority of divinity students you encounter. HDS may be the exception, but honestly I doubt it. If you didn't think Jesus was/is God, then I would say you are going to run into resistance. At those 'liberal' state schools I think you will find that most people simply do not care. To many of us in RS questions of Jesus' divinity/Biblical authority are no different than Dionysus' divinity/Euripides' authority. You will likely view the latter with the same indifference as we view questions surrounding Jesus. So, in fact, you might have more in common with the RS people than you think!

[Cfl]

HDS may be the exception, but honestly I doubt it.

In my experience at HDS the student body was more confessional than the faculty. There were plenty of "Jesus is God" students and many who thought otherwise. But not a problem to be Christian there. I appreciated the challenges to my faith

[search the scriptures]

I know this discussion is old, but could someone please elaborate on what the top RS M* programs at non-divinity schools are then?  All the top divinity schools are mentioned in this read, but no names of said RS programs.

For subfield, let's say Biblical Studies (Hebrew Bible specifically)

U Chicago?  U Cal - Berkeley?  NYU?  UW-Madison?  

I am debating doing an MAR at YDS if I do not get accepted into a PhD program this cycle (current have an MA from an average program that's somewhat off the radar), and need to know if going this route would put me at a disadvantage compared to said RS programs.

[nevermind]

2 minutes ago, search the scriptures said:

I know this discussion is old, but could someone please elaborate on what the top RS M* programs at non-divinity schools are then?  All the top divinity schools are mentioned in this read, but no names of said RS programs.

For subfield, let's say Biblical Studies (Hebrew Bible specifically)

U Chicago?  U Cal - Berkeley?  NYU?  UW-Madison?  

I am debating doing an MAR at YDS if I do not get accepted into a PhD program this cycle (current have an MA from an average program that's somewhat off the radar), and need to know if going this route would put me at a disadvantage compared to said RS programs.

I'd also add UT-Austin to that list. 

[search the scriptures]

Thanks nevermind.  I guess I covered the main ones then.  

[drivingthoughts]

On March 2, 2015 at 10:38 PM, HNV721 said:

Is there anywhere to view national rankings of divinity schools? I checked the US News rankings and did not see any divinity/seminary schools listed.

@HNV721 It's hard to find a real ranking, because as @theophany accurately points out, there are simply too many variables. I would suggest you find out what school is best for you. A good fit is more important than prestige: your spiritual well-being, emotional health, and family (if applicable) should be priorities. You would be surprised how far you can get from a no-name M.Div. 

Here's what I did, and it worked well for me. End goal: be a professor of theology. I like Excel, so - 

• I made a table of every school that I would be willing to teach at 
• figured out where their professors (in my field) came from 
• made a smaller list of the most common 30 schools represented 
• looked at those schools to see where their current graduate students (T/PhD) come from 
• made another list of the 30 most common feeder schools (M.Div, MTS, etc)
• from there, I weeded out schools that would not have been a good fit (i.e. Billy Bob's School of Foundationalist and Unfunded Theology) and saw which had professors that I wanted to work with 
• at this point, I narrowed it down to how many I could realistically afford to apply to (7, in my case, all schools that would be a good fit if I got in) 
• when the results came back, I picked the school I would be happiest at and that made the most sense for where my life was at (i.e. selling the house, moving across the country, and having babies = Pasadena not a good idea). 

Making this tool was immensely helpful for further applications including my ThM and just culminating in my being accepted into one of the PhD programs I initially identified as leading to real jobs (which is also a really good fit). Another benefit of doing this - I now have a really good idea of who is at what school, what's going on in various departments, etc. 

[.adam.]

Not sure if anyone is still tracking here... but I found some of the discussion helpful, so I wanted to contribute.

This site is somehow affiliated with Huffington Post. We aren't talking ordinal ranks... just a grouping of seminaries considered to be making a measurable positive impact on the world. My wife and I have been searching all over the country for an M.Div program for her. Pretty much all of the schools we were considering are on this list.

http://stctw.faith3.org/

Peace,

Adam