How mainline seminary education undermines orthodox perspectives
March 22, 2007
by Ryan Travis
[Editor's note: Ryan Travis is a first-year master of divinity student at Louisville Seminary, an institution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), that is in full-communion with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He is a member of Lutheran CORE.]

As I approach the end of my first year of study at what most would regard a typical mainline Protestant seminary, I am increasingly concerned about the future well-being of the church. Many courses designed for the theological and spiritual formation of future pastors employ texts and resources that articulate views that significantly deviate from the historically confessed faith. Below are three different ways some courses I have taken undermine orthodox perspectives.

I. They exclude or marginalize orthodox voices.

Perhaps the easiest way to undermine orthodox perspectives simply is to ignore or outnumber them. Orthodox authors routinely are excluded from course syllabi or, when they are included, make up an extremely small portion of reading assignments. For example, out of 20 readings in a course packet for "Transforming Seminary Education," a required "introduction to theology" course, only one text could be said to have come from an orthodox theologian. And that one reading--a brief passage from Augustine's "Confessions"--was used only to describe the art of spiritual narrative. the rest