The Function of the Educated and of the Uneducated Ministry

Extract

In one sense of the word there is of course no place in the ministry for the uneducated man. The preacher who is so ignorant as to be illiterate—illiterate in that he does not read and study and observe—is not to be thought of as a candidate for the ministry. If, on the other hand, we think of the educated minister as the student who has been graduated from college and from theological seminary, we rather narrowly limit our definition of education. Many men of unusual success in the ministry have preferred to take graduate work along certain specific lines rather than to pursue the course in the seminary. In this they may have been mistaken, but of course they belong by pre-eminent right in the ranks of the educated. Moreover, the fact of actually receiving a degree is not the chief essential. Perhaps for our purpose we may define the educated minister as one who has in a reputable college, university, or seminary mastered the point of view of the scholar, attained some success in the use of scholarly methods, and acquired scholarly habits. For our purpose the uneducated minister is one who has not received his training at such an institution. We assume, however, in our use of the word “uneducated” that the minister has studious habits, and that he does the best he can to make good by incessant effort the lack of early institutional training; otherwise we can hardly see what place he has in the ministry. We may be permitted further to drop from our consideration both the occasional pulpit “genius,” who comes to popular power without formal mental training, and also that bearer of scholastic degrees who is remarkable chiefly for his dulness.