Word: berger
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Apart from this unattractive prospect. Sociologist Berger insists that the ministry cannot possibly be relevant without a theological understanding of its role in the world. Christianity must penetrate "the consciousness of this age"; as he puts it, "the theologian is an indispensable participant in this task of Christian intellectual penetration...
What's wrong with U.S. theological seminaries and divinity schools? Plenty, charges Hartford Seminary Foundation's Peter Berger, 33, a Lutheran sociologist whose vivid attacks (The Precarious Vision, The Noise of Solemn Assemblies) on the organizational church are fast earning him a reputation as a kind of Connecticut Kierkegaard. Writing in the July issue of Theology Today, Berger argues that the seminaries have become so concerned with trying to provide for the short-term institutional needs of the church that they are in danger of forgetting what a Protestant minister really ought to be: first and foremost...
Oratory & Ceremonies. Trouble is, says Berger, that theology has become "dysfunctional" to the demands of the religious establishment. At present, neither church nor congregation expects its ministerial middlemen to know much theology. Since denominational differences among the big churches in an ecumenical age are less important than in the past, "the theological erudition of the minister is of only peripheral significance in terms of the expectations the organizations must have of him. What is important is that he effectively promote the program of the organization in a situation in which, inevitably, he is competing with others for members." Too often...
...Organization Minister. These institutional demands have had their effect on the seminaries. In the interest of "making Christianity relevant" and "vitalizing the curriculum," Berger charges, the divinity schools have tended to shunt the theology aside and substitute a welter of courses in sociology, psychology, church management and literature. The end product of such education is likely to be that thoroughly un-Christian figure-the organization minister...
...leaders. Stanley H. Lowell, chairman of the New York City Commission on Human Rights, who was at the conference, talked back to the Premier in the most direct terms: "You aren't the only answer to Jewish living. Jewish creativity and Jewish survival." In New York, Rabbi Elmer Berger. executive vice president of the anti-Zionist American Council for Ju Judaism, criticized the Premier for his "predilection for interfering with the destinies of all Jews." Said Rabbi Berger: "Judaism, we believe, is a universal - not a national - religion." Declared Professor Nelson Glueck of Cincinnati's Hebrew Union College...