The Dissolution of the Seminaries

Between 1536 and 1540, Henry VIII dissolved all monasteries, convents, priories, and other religious institutions--about fifteen thousand of them across England and Wales. The act unemployed one out of every fifty persons in the population, not to mention gutting the nation's centers of education (literacy and the arts) and charity (especially healthcare and the support of the poor). What had stood for centuries was pulled down in four years. I am tempted to think of it as a disaster--and especially where libraries were lost. But to peoples long fed up with the hoarded riches and power of the ecclesiastical estates, they had it coming. As Roman Catholic historian David Knowles said, "There were far too many religious houses in existence in view of the widespread decline of the fervent monastic vocation, and that . . . the monks possessed too much of wealth and of the sources of production both for their own well-being and for the material good of the economy." When I look at the news coming out of the seminaries and churches of the West, I wonder if what is going on today is a lot like dissolution. And I wonder, did we have it coming too?

Find more statistics at Statista

This graph has a tale to tell: the number of people who are members of a church is declining against a rising number of people who aren't members.[1] The loss of a tithing populace affects churches' abilities to support full-time clergy, which changes how the pastoral ministry is done. And that changes seminary enrollment and the seminary system. Fifty seven percent of schools in the Association for Theological Schools (ATS) report declining enrollment. And for those who do enroll, online work and shorter educational times are in demand. People do not want to take on educational debt and especially when they cannot expect to be supported in full-time in ministry. Therefore, the gold-standard three-year Master of Divinity degree is being replaced by one- or two-year Master of Arts degrees. Seminaries are intentionally dissolving themselves of expensive-to-maintain housing, dormitories, and land and embracing online education. I hardly know what to call it, but I can say that the quiet library stacks, the late-night stress in book-crowded carols, and the mental hum of people literally becoming scholars: all that is going. Maybe we did have it coming.

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[1] In their book The Great Dechurching (Zondervan Academic, 2023) authors Michael Graham and Jim Davis say that America is seeing in real time “the largest and fastest religious shift in U.S. history,” with some 40 million people—1 in 6 Americans—having stopped going to church in the past thirty years. “That’s a lot of people who have changed their rhythms and habits,” Graham said. The losses in church going are greater in number than the people who came to faith during the First Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening, and all the Billy Graham crusades combined.

[2] For a bit of extra credit, watch this lecture about the dissolution of the monasteries by Massolit. The name of the lecturer is unlisted.