Mark Dawes, Staff ReporterCARIBBEAN THEOLOGICAL seminaries have for many years been burdened by the expense of keeping their doors open. If they do not find a way to unite, cooperate and collaborate, these institutions could be forced to close their doors.
That was the view expressed by the Rev. Dr. Nathaniel Samuel Murrell, associate professor in the department of philosophy and religion at the University of North Carolina. Dr. Murrell, who is also a visiting lecturer at the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology which is based in Jamaica, was part of a panel which reflected on the state of theological education and ministerial training in the Caribbean at the 36th annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Black Religion (SSBR), held last week at The Riu Ocho Rios Hotel, St. Ann.
Dr. Murrell, 60, a Grenadian and co-author of Chanting Down Babylon: The Rastafari Reader, said that the Caribbean has extremely fragile financial resources to facilitate and sustain theological education. Such resources, he said, were crucial for Caribbean theological schools to attract top flight teaching staff as well as attain and maintain accreditation.
Furthermore, funding is critical, he said, if theological schools are going to be effective in communicating to students its own vision, worldview and standards.
He made the point too that the theological education in the region is directly influenced by the state of the Caribbean economy. Furthermore, those teachers who persevere in theological classrooms, do so largely out of a sense of divine calling and love for the teaching, than for any financial reward. " One's longevity in a theological institution in the Caribbean depends on one's ability to survive hardships, great inconvenience, be on good working terms with the administration and the church - and one's ability to not rock the doctrinal boat of the institution," he said.
ECONOMIC OUTLOOK
The associate professor hinted that in light of the adverse economic outlook for theological education in the Caribbean, the way forward must involve collaboration and co-operation among existing theological educational institutions. "We are fragmented peoples in sectarian institutions, training sectarians of various descriptions to teach sectarian theology under embarrassing poor conditions," Dr. Murrell said.
He recounted how for five years while serving as a theological educator in Trinidad, he sought to get leaders of poorly organised, struggling and embarrassingly weak theological schools, to work together to discuss the possibilities of offering a credible Bachelors degree in religion. He explained that despite his best efforts, sectarian considerations caused the project not to get off the ground.
According to the academic, he came up against "ideology, credal insecurity, myopic theological visions, and in some cases sheer arrogance and unfounded pride in a substandard product." Even to get theological schools to share library resources and teachers, he said has proved to be an uphill challenge.
He said many churches or Christian sects, want to own their own theological schools in order to teach their own sectarian dogma.
"The school may be in the pastor's library and the certificate may be worth a little more than toilet tissue in the academic world. Theological education offered to a large sector of the Caribbean Christian community is a ship gone adrift with a dismal destination," Dr. Murrell said.
Furthermore, in the Anglophone Caribbean, "what passes for theological education," he said, "often ranges from a little more than Sunday school classes to accredited degree granting institutions."
Dr. Murrell whose areas of specialisation include - African American Religions, Caribbean Religions, Old Testament - observed that (established) churches that sponsor accredited theological schools were not experiencing significant growth. Instead church growth is happening on an impressive scale among groups often labelled as fundamentalists and evangelicals. He lamented that fly-by-night theological schools are mushrooming to train pastors who in turn get huge congregations to lead.
He hinted that the time has come for those linked to theological institutions serving the established churches to forge relationships with the churches experiencing impressive congregational growth. He asked: "Who should be our target populations for future theological education in the region, the dying church or the living church? Should we ignore the large religious constituency - and because they are not with the established churches, pretend that they do not have the ability to appreciate theological education?"
SCREWED THEOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE
In closing, he asked: " Why did Jesus spend so much time with people whose theological knowledge was either screwed up or at ground zero. And he had so little to say to the trained clergy in the Jewish religion in Palestine. The person who wrote the Pastoral Epistles, spent so much time instructing and educating Timothy and others in pastoral theology, and he had precious little to say to the establishment.
Also speaking at the forum were the Rev. Dr. Lewin Williams, president of the United Theological College of the West Indies (UTCWI) and the Rev. Dr. Horace Russell, former president of UTCWI and retired professor of historical theology at Palmer Theological Seminary (formerly known as Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary), in Philadelphia.
Dr. Lewin, lecturer in Contemporary, Systematic and Contemporary Theologies, told the gathering of about 100 scholars that fundraising for UTCWI has become more difficult since September 11, 2001. Churches in North America which were formerly well-poised to contribute are not contributing the way they did in the past, he said.
He said too that a number of church groups have not been honouring their commitments to give to UTCWI even when they have the funds in hand. The UTCWI he noted, forms part of the theological faculty in the UWI's Faculty of the Humanities and Education. But with dramatic increases in the number of tertiary institutions in the region, CARICOM governments have been spending less on the UWI and more on these post-secondary institutions. He said that providing theological education via the Internet and satellite link-ups were on the agenda, but the absence of appropriate funding continues to stymie UTCWI's determination to offer such modes of learning.
The Rev. Dr. Horace Russell, said contemporary theological education in the Caribbean needed to be done in a way that acknowledges the challenges of living within a global community - yet ensuring that that learning is authentically Caribbean. He said it was important that church folk learn to get themselves trained in media so that they can be relevant in the present electronic age. For theological education to best serve the Caribbean region, he said, it ought to be universal, ecumenical, and contextual.
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