But why has professional status become so important in ministry ranks? The answer is not hard to find. In general, the esteem in which we are held by our contemporaries has little to do with the intrinsic value of the work we do. The research that has been done on social stratification all seems to indicate that standing in society is determined by the values functioning in that society.
In America, importance is conferred by professional standing. By the end of the 1960s and the early 1970s, ministerial standing in society was plainly in need of serious professional upgrading… ministers were suffering serious status anxieties. The power that inward calling had once exerted on private consciousness, the sense of “standing” before God, of doing his work by making known his truth, apparently was not enough.
The realisation that the ministry was culturally adrift proved both alarming and disconcerting, and the response that was made across the board, under the careful direction of the Association of Theological Schools (A.T.S.), was to upgrade degree nomenclature. What had been the B.D. (Bachelor of Divinity) became the M.Div. (Master of Divinity) in the early 1970s, and, for those seeking upward mobility, the D.Min. was shortly thereafter added to the arsenal of social tools.
For those middle-class congregations that wanted to be served by a professional and those ministers who wanted their service validated by a doctorate, remedy was now at hand. Thus was the D.Min. born; in two decades, over ten thousand of these degrees have been issued.
It was, of course, the old market mechanism at work. In the 1970s, many seminaries were hard-pressed financially, and the D.Min. was a lucrative new product to sell... At the same time, many ministers were hard pressed psychologically as they sensed the decline of their profession, their growing marginalisation in society, and the corresponding loss of power and influence that entailed. And so the shotgun marriage was consummated.
The direction that this degree has taken since its inception has not been very reassuring… The quality of D.Min. degrees undoubtedly varies a lot, but there are a substantial number whose academic or intellectual demands are not great.
What in many professions are simply summer courses for updating, refresher courses mandated for continuing certification in the profession but with no significance for any degree, became the royal route that many ministers travelled toward a doctorate.
But what draws ministers to these minimalist degrees, and why do seminaries offer them? It strains one’s credulity a little to think that it is only a love of learning that has produced this happy match. After all, among those who have graduated with the degree, 78 percent expressed the view that they now expected to be more respected in the community, and 73 percent expected to be paid more.
The upshot of it all, in fact, is that some seminaries that might have suffered an ignominious demise survived because of the D.Min. degree, and ministers who might have floundered in their careers have now gotten ahead. At least they are seen to have gotten ahead, and that, in a world where image counts as much as reality, is what actually counts. |
