Are candidates for ministry getting more conservative?
How the is CRC getting more conservative when there are fewer candidates for ministry from right-leaning institutions
Today’s post refutes a claim I made a few weeks ago that alternative paths to ordination opened the door to candidates from more conservative seminaries. It also raises the following question: How is the CRC getting more conservative when there are fewer candidates for ministry from right-leaning institutions and from right-leaning classes?
Let’s dig in.
First, here’s the claim I made in a post a few weeks ago, Underrated reasons vote margins are widening:
Easier paths to ordination have opened the denomination to ordaining more conservative ministers. Over the past few decades, and especially the past few years, we are ordaining ministers who did not attend Calvin Seminary. More ministers are coming from places like Westminster and RTS. Chad Werkhoven, for example, who is among the farther right-leaning delegates to Synod 2023 and Synod 2024, received his degree from Reformed Theological Seminary. As recently as a couple decades ago, his path to ordination in the CRC would have been more difficult.
This is a widely held view in some circles. It came up in a conversation I had last week with Clayton Libolt and Paul Vander Klay. In that conversation, one of us commented (I can’t remember who and I’m too cheap to buy access to the video…) that the CRC Establishment made a number of institutional changes in the 1990s that were intended to perpetuate the slow leftward drift that started in the postwar decades. One of the most important of these changes was to make it easier for ministers to become ordained in the Christian Reformed Church without going to Calvin Theological Seminary. These have been referred to as alternate paths to ministry.
Previously, when candidates received an M.Div. somewhere else, they were still required to take a year of coursework at Calvin Seminary. But this changed in the mid-2000s, when the requirement was reduced from one year to only one quarter.
Though the stated goal of these changes was to make it easier for everyone who wanted to become a candidate, the unstated desire in some circles seemed to be to make it easier for candidates from left-leaning institutions, like Princeton Theological Seminary, to become ordained in the CRC. But then, in an example of unintended consequences, it was right-leaning candidates who took greater advantage of this easier path to ministry than left-leaning candidates. Instead of more candidates from places like Princeton and Western, the CRC got more candidates from Westminster and Mid-America.
The entry of more right-leaning candidates into ordained ministry in the CRC contributed to the end of the CRC’s leftward drift circa 2016 and began the CRC’s rightward drift, which among other things, led to the passage of the HSR and the current conversations around gravamina.
It’s a nice history, right?
Unfortunately, it’s not true.
Here’s what actually happened.
The institutions candidates come from
Here are the number of people ordained in the CRC by year since 1990.
Three things should be apparent by this graph:
Calvin Theological Seminary continues to be the main pathway to ordination in the CRC.
It’s possible to be ordained without an M.Div. degree. In earlier decades, people could become ministers in local context because of exceptional gifts. Later, people could be ordained as evangelists and then as commissioned pastors. These ordinations were localized. There are also people like Sue Rozeboom, Lyle Bierma, Michael Horton, and many others with theological training in the form of other academic degrees.
The overall number of candidates for ministry is declining.
A smaller percentage of candidates are coming from Calvin Seminary
Alternative pathways to ordination have led to fewer candidates from Calvin Theological Seminary:
However, this is not only because people are getting M.Div. degrees from elsewhere. It’s also because more people are becoming commissioned pastors than in earlier years:
Candidates from seminaries to the left of the CRC
Since 1990, the average number of candidates from places like Fuller, Princeton, Regent, and Western Theological Seminary (in Holland, not Portland), has grown from an average of two per year to around six per year:
The growth has been even greater in relative terms. In 1990, roughly 4% of candidates were coming from these institutions. Today, about 14% of these candidates are.
(I should briefly note that the only one of these institutions that might properly be called left-leaning is Princeton Theological Seminary, but I doubt many liberal theologians would call PTS liberal.)
Candidates from seminaries to the right of the CRC
The opposite is happening from seminaries to the right: there are fewer candidates, both in real terms and relative terms.
Since 1990, the number of candidates from places like Reformed Theological Seminary (all campuses), Westminster in Philadelphia, Westminster in California, and Mid-America Seminary has shrunk from an average of 2 to per year to just 1.5 per year.
As a percentage of all candidates, the decline is even more pronounced. In 1990, around 5% of candidates per year came from these schools, but by 2023, the average is around 3% of candidates.
Candidates from left-leaning classes
Not only are more candidates going to left-leaning seminaries, more candidates are coming from left-leaning classes.
For example, here are the percentage of candidates coming from churches in GRE and Lake Erie combined:
And here are the percentage of candidates coming from Minnkota and Iakota combined:
These are two representative groups classes—I didn’t have time to check others—but they tend to be at either the left or right extremes in the denomination. What’s apparent is that there are more candidates for ministry coming from left-leaning places like Grand Rapids than right-leaning places in rural Iowa and South Dakota.
Why is the CRC drifting rightward when its candidates are coming from institutions to the left?
To recap:
My original claim was wrong: that, though the CRC’s establishment of alternative pathways to ordination made it easier for left-leaning candidates to enter ministry, what actually happened was right-leaning candidates took advantage of the process, thereby reversing the CRC’s leftward drift.
Actually: there are more candidates for ordination from left-leaning places getting M.Div. degrees from institutions to the left of the CRC than there are candidates from right-leaning places getting M.Div. degrees from institutions to the right of the CRC.
If this is true, then why has the CRC begun getting more conservative even as more candidates are coming from institutions that are less conservative?
I’ll think through this question tomorrow.
Thanks for reading,
Kent
(The source for all the graphs above is the CRC Ministers Database.)
"I’m too cheap to buy access to the video…"
ME TOO!!!
As I'm sure you're realizing this sort of tracking isn't always easy to do. Not all candidates will wind up in the same sorts of places. My anecdotal experience will be a biased sample. Here are some factors that emerge with this.
1. Many candidates will land in staff positions. Fewer women will be solo or lead pastor positions compared to men. That means that if women tend to skew "left" many of those candidates will be absorbed in a smaller number of more left leaning churches or in denominational staff positions. Women are far more likely to work in the denomination than men, hence their influence is likely concentrated in areas that already lean "left" than men.
2. the rise of the commissioned pastor is significant in small churches. They are predominantly male and often without an M.Div. They will have a lot of classical votes and Synod votes, more than women. They tend to be less well educated and also lean populist and conservative.
3. West Michigan is a hotspot for sticky candidates who have spouses who won't/can't move. Again, a higher portion of women. Most will take staff positions in a West Michigan church or in denominational ministries or some sort of chaplaincy.
Numbers aren't always easy to track. Fortunately they are often small enough that you can actually track names.
It's likely that Classisical and Synodical delegations are more conservative than people in the pew. This is sort of a reverse from historic trends when clergy were more educated often than their congregations. Education having a decidedly liberalizing impact generally speaking.
I still think the largest conservative influence is the decline of CRC world cities population. Just the decline in NYC/NJ, Chicago, LA, SF, Toronto, alone might be enough to account for what we're seeing.