Official proceedings of the annual meeting: 1923

242

THE CHURCH

to find ample suggestions. But practical experience, under competent direction, is
needed to make even well-planned reading or lecture courses graphic and fruitful.
Turning therefore to the question of what opportunities for field experience in
social problems are open to seminarians, we must first remember that the location of the
seminary in the open country, small town, or city seems to condition quite radically
the experimental fields in which the men might work. Immigrant communities or
seamen's work cannot well be studied first hand in a small Kentucky town, nor can
rural life in New York or Chicago. On the whole, the seminaries located in the larger
cities offer opportunities for widely varied social work under good leadership that the
school in the small town seems to lack. New York, Boston, Chicago, and St. Louis
have abundant advantages. This apparent handicap confronting the school in a
small town or open country may however be capitalized as at Berkeley Divinity School,
Middletown, Connecticut, where they specialize in rural sociology.
However, regardless of location, the field for experimental studies is always at
hand. The seminary cannot get away from people and groups of people. Human
problems crowd about them. The laboratory for social studies may profitably be
found even in the internal life of the school, among the students and their families.
With trained leadership the men may learn to recognize the significance for society of
their own personal problems, and in this laboratory learn universally valid principles.
In fact, the greatest problem in preparing for social work is that of arousing ourselves
from the dream world in which we live and opening our eyes to the ever present, nearbyhuman problems which result from the contact of people in society. The theological
student who passes immediately from the pleasant college course to the quiet seminary
halls seems especially liable to live in an unreal world until upon his graduation, or,
long years after, he comes into brutal contact with the facts of life and sees human conditions as they actually are.
What does our study of the thirty-five seminaries reveal concerning their use of
their special opportunities to supplement reading with field work? They fall into two
classes.
Those of the first class, including most of the seminaries studied, give no serious
consideration to the thought of providing their men a practical, as distinguished from a
theoretical, knowledge of social subjects. They content themselves with a few elective
courses which have to compete for consideration with the other academic subjects.
The attitude of the faculties in a few such schools was that if the men were especially
interested in such subjects there could be no objection as long as it did not interfere
with the "more important" elements in the curriculum. This apathy arises from the
heavy academic, theological schedules required of students for the ministry in most
churches, completely filling the three brief seminary years and really demanding more
time; from the fact that, as in Roman Catholic seminaries, the men lead a semimonastic
life under rigid discipline; and also from the fact that in most Protestant seminaries
the men find it necessary to earn money for their expenses by taking spare-time, remunerative work provided by student pastorates, Sunday-school teaching, and club work,
which is primarily regarded as a source of income rather than a definite field for experience. The net result is that those men who are blind to the social obligations which
may be incumbent upon them as pastors, remain blind; others do work which does not
interest them enough to command their attention to its social implications; and only a
minority realize how invaluable such experiences might be. Too many are the men,