My visual book review of The End of Theological Education by Ted Smith. This was presented to the faculty of Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN on October 25, 2023.

2. Ted A. Smith is Charles Howard Candler Professor
of Divinity and associate dean of faculty at Emory
University's Candler School of Theology. He serves
as director of the Theological Education between
the Times project.
(Amazon accessed 10/17/23)
https://candler.emory.edu/faculty-profiles/ted-a-smith/

7. A Standing
Order
AnAge of
Associations
Lyman Beecher
October 12, 1775 – January 10, 1863
A Parable

8. A Standing
Order
AnAge of
Associations
A Standing
Order
AnAge of
Associations
a SINGULAR
order
PLURAL
associations
standing, given,
intrinsic quality
free and voluntary

9. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/United_States_1809-1810-04.png

10. LaneTheological Seminary
1829-1932
The school maintained a complex
denominational identity, initially
trying to relate to both Old and New
School Presbyterians as well as the
Congregationalists who were linked
to Presbyterians through the Plan of
Union.
Denominational, disestablished,
and specialized for ministry, Lane
was a seminary that fit the times
(emphasis mine). (6–7)

11. Beecher HadTwo Leaps to Make:
Standing
Order
Age of
Association
s
Racial
Segregatio
n
Racial
Integration
Abolitionists vs. American Colonization Society
Debates

12. A Standing
Order
AnAge of
Associations
AnAge of
Authenticity
a SINGULAR
order
PLURAL
associations
Even-more-PLURAL
individuals
standing, given,
intrinsic quality
free and voluntary authentic ideal

18. Ch. 1: Consolidation
Ch. 2:
Individualization
Ch. 3: Unraveling
The
END
An Age of
Association
s
An Age of
Authenticit
y
Ch. 4:
Renunciations
Ch. 5: Affordances

19. Ch. 4: Renunciations
Changes that are NOT renunciations, but
seek to sustain voluntary association
model
• Sacrifices - Coverting endowments, land,
etc.
• Rationalization - Reforming method and
requirements, without renouncing
structures
• Pluralizations – diversity is good, but it
renounce professionalization

20. Ch. 4: Renunciations
Three Idols of The Age of Association we
must renounce:
• Professional Status – perpetuates
“whiteness” and hierarchical power
• Professional Debt – The religion of
capitalism; forces identity to human
capital.
• Professional Reason – instrumental
professionals is the only way to move
forward

21. Ch. 4: Renunciations
Thinking that we can give something up
only as a means to some known end
misses the basic demands of
eschatological practical reasoning

22. Ch. 4: Renunciations
Epistemology of renunciation:
• Renunciation does not follow vision; it
precedes it.
• In renunciation we release our grasp on
destructive forces and wait with open
hands for what God will provide
• Waiting acknowledges that our actions do
not have the power to give ourselves the
new life for which we long.

23. Ch. 5:Affordances
The authenticity Adorno critiqued
presumed the existence of some real, true
self that was prior to any social
relations…Redeeming authenticity begins
with renouncing the illusion of this presocial self
(175).

24. Ch. 5:Affordances
bell hooks, Patrick Reyes, Judith Butler – The
self emerges in the social, political space
created by the process of resisting oppressive
structures.
Smith adds…And being Christian involves
learning to give accounts—testimonies—that
describe ourselves not only in relation to
social and historical forces but also in
relation to God (178).

25. Ch. 5:Affordances
Pedagogies that mortify and redeem
the prevailing sense of
authenticity…will frame authenticity
not as dwelling in an inner starting
point we take up practice to express,
but as that which practice helps us make
(181).

26. Ch. 5:Affordances
Reflecting on the Road to
Emmaus…
The great end of
knowing and being
known by God is not
only over the horizon of
our walking, but also
present, in resurrection
grace, all along the way
(201).

28. The following slides offer key
quotations throughout the
chapters…

29. Ch. 1: Consolidation
• Standing Orders (parishes and public
office)
• The Mother Science (The Art of
Association)
• Church as a Network of Voluntary
Societies
• Ministers as Professionals
• Theological Education as Professional

30. “deep in the self-understanding of the voluntary
societies was an imperative for growth and a
desire to transform the world. Leaders were
instrumental to those ends…
…these shifts in leadership joined with Protestant
understandings of vocation and consolidated
around the image of the professional (44).”
Ch. 1: Consolidation

31. “The differentiated school mirrored the
differentiation of spheres that was happening with
disestablishment. Just as the unity of the old
standing orders gave way to separate spheres for
religion, politics, and economics, the older pattern
of theological education as general education in a
college gave way to theological education as
specialized instruction in a distinct kind of
Theological Education = Professional Training
Ch. 1: Consolidation

32. Ch. 2: Individualization
• Surface Tensions
• Instead of Secularization
• Homo Optionis
• Individualized Religion
• Resistance and Kenosis

33. Ch. 2: Individualization
The decline in church attendance/affiliation with
voluntary associations does not correlate to the
“Secularization Story.”
“The changes are not from more religion to less,
but from one dominant way of imagining the
relationships of individuals, institutions, the state,
and God to … something else (77–78).”

34. Ch. 2: Individualization
“A better understanding begins, I think,
not with secularization but with individualization
(78).”
adapted from German sociologists Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim

35. Ch. 2: Individualization
Individualism Individualization
often used to describe a
belief system that takes the
individual as the most basic
unit of society and valorizes
individual autonomy, self-
expression, and well-being
above all else (78.)
It is a historically contingent
but powerful set of social
processes that operate on us,
forming us as certain kinds of
individuals. Individualization
is not just something we
believe; it’s something that
happens to us, whether we
believe it or not (78–79.)
adapted from German sociologists Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim

36. Ch. 2: Individualization
homo optionis,
a person defined by having choices—and
bearing the costs associated with them—in
every part of life (79.)
adapted from German sociologists Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim

37. Ch. 2: Individualization
neoliberalism reprograms our relationships to
ourselves, pushing us not merely to satisfy what we
think of as our needs but to treat ourselves as
human capital, always in need of investment and
enhancement for the sake of competition in a
meritocratic market (82–83).
Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), Kindle location 336.

38. Ch. 2: Individualization
A better description of the impact of
individualization would stress not the
confinement of religion to the private sphere but
the transformation of religion into an identity
(86).

39. Ch. 2: Individualization
Charles Taylor, “The Future of Religious Past,” in Religion:
Beyond a Concept, ed. Hent De Vries (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2008), 202.
“The expressivist outlook takes [autonomy] a
stage farther. The religious life or practice that I
become part of must not only be my choice, but it
must speak to me, it must make sense in terms of
my spiritual development as I understand this
(88).”

40. Ch. 3: Unraveling
• …of Denominations
• …of Congregations as Voluntary
Associations
• …of Ministry as a Profession
• …of Theological Education as
Professional Education

41. Ch. 3: Unraveling
The twin engines of identity and expression are
driving changes that run through every institution
that came together to form the constellation of
voluntary associations, including denominations,
congregations, and ministry as a profession. (94.)

42. Ch. 3: Unraveling
when the voluntary association loses its aura, it loses
the power to anchor all these practices. And so
individuals are compelled to try to relate to God in a
way that feels more direct in the imaginary that is
emerging now: not by working on a congregation but
by working on themselves (105).

43. The idolatry of this worldview extends beyond the
voluntary associations to the nation-state that defines
the larger society in which they have meaning. Charles
Taylor points to the significance of belief in a
providential role for the nation in the social imaginary
of voluntary associations…people come together to
create voluntary associations that are charged
with significance as they are connected to
national mission (120).
Ch. 3: Unraveling

44. The End
I will put my law within them, and I will
write it on their hearts; and I will be their
God, and they shall be my people. No
longer shall they teach one another, or say
to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall
all know me
Jeremiah
31:31-24

45. The End
BHAG HOPE
Whatever the end of theological education
involves, it is not just expert knowledge for a
select group of leaders. It is saving knowledge for
all (126).

46. Ch. 5:Affordances
• Changing Demographics
• Ministries Beyond Professional
Leadership of Voluntary Associations
• PostProfessional Solidarities
• “Leaderfull” Movements
• Complex Institutions
• The Abiding Love of God

47. Ch. 5:Affordances
What if—instead of preparing students
for professional leadership in a network
of voluntary associations—theological
education acknowledged our shared
need to form identities and connections
in the wake of individualization (178).

48. Ch. 5:Affordances
what Justo González has called “an
uninterrupted continuity between
Christian education as it is provided in
the local church and that which is
available to more advanced students
(179).
Justo González, The History of Theological Education
(Nashville: Abingdon, 2015), 119.