Theological Education in the DCNY

The article below talks about the problems that the liberal pecusa seminaries are facing. Trinity and Nashotah House have been less exposed to these issues of declining institutions in a declining denomination since they also train clergy for the realignment.

The issues raised in the article, particularly issues of time and money, are issues that dioceses face as they determine how they will train ordinands. Diocesan training programs have been one answer that offers the benefits of being less costly and more convenient. The downsides are less spiritual formation and less education. This has been noticeable in the DCNY. The reading requirements, classroom interaction experiences, and spiritual formation in a seminary community are three areas where ordinands and the churches they will serve are shortchanged.

The reading requirements of the DCNY program are in no way comparable to that of a first-rate seminary program. The classroom interaction is necessarily limited since the program has adopted a kind of "weekend warrior" approach. Ordinands spend a weekend a month at the Bexley Hall satellite campus. This will or has been changed, since Bexley Hall is closing their satellite campus in Rochester. The third area mentioned above, spiritual formation, cannot happen as well on weekend visits to a seminary and most parishes or dioceses do not offer the kind of community life that fosters good or sufficient priestly or diaconal spiritual formation.

The DCNY has ordained a number of locally trained priests in recent years. One of the current realities of the DCNY is declining churches and churches that cannot afford seminary trained priests. So, the DCNY answer to this situation is a local training option that provides these churches with poorly trained clergy who have not been trained to think theologically. The locally training approach is more akin to a technical school than a seminary.

Of course, rigorous theological work is not what most Episcopal priests are trained to do, so the current theological malaise has not only been created by locally trained priests. It is more truthfully the fault of the liberal pecusa seminaries. However, with the theological level in pecusa already approaching the vanishing point (as evidenced in To Set Our Hope on Christ), this current trend of local training of clergy certainly doesn't improve the situation.