Runtu wrote:Short answer: there is no professional clergy, so there's nothing in the church you can do with a theology degree. And of course, there's the whole "philosophies of men" thing too.
From my experience, BYU is designed to build a core of married believers who will staff and fund the church going forward. Degrees offered thus tend to be more of the "practical" side (well, I'm one to talk, being an English major) and certainly a religious or theology degree wouldn't be practical for a Latter-day Saint.
A lot of people with a theology degree are not clergy. Some teach religious education (RE) courses and/or lead RE as the director ( RE is somewhat parallel to Mormon Sunday school), some teach at Catholic schools, others are working in fields that aren't specific to religion.
Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction -Pope Benedict XVI
Hoops wrote:I recommend, in the strongest terms possible, Saint Louis University. I know it well.
I don't know it well, but have heard that it's a very good school.
We'll be taking a little road trip in July, going through St. Louis and visiting SLU and then heading up to Chicago where we'll visit the University of Chicago and Northwestern. Chicago is too far away, in my book, but my daughter thinks she might like it.
We'll see.
KA
I strongly suggest visiting UChicago before deciding to go there. The undergraduate culture is... unique.
At BYU a theology study course would have a difficult time as everything has to be filtered through l-dsinc 'truth'. Many University departments have problems due to this. Every time Evolution is mentioned in science courses some fools call their GA relatives in SLC and complain and a letter or phone call comes down and the prof is talked to.
All theology classes would be l-dsinc slanted with 'we are true and this is the baloney the deluded fools believe' as the working method for teaching.
"This is how INGORNAT these fools are!" - darricktevenson
Bow your head and mutter, what in hell am I doing here?
infaymos wrote: "Peterson is the defacto king ping of the Mormon Apologetic world."
I strongly suggest visiting UChicago before deciding to go there. The undergraduate culture is... unique.
I burst out laughing at that one!!! Yeah, it is. For a little while now I have been thinking that UC would be a great fit for my son for several reasons, and I have begun preparing him for the.... uniqueness... of the environment. But that decision is a few years away and children have the maddening habit of doing the opposite of what we say is best for them. And they have the gall to claim they have good reasons for their decisions!! What the...?
The University of Chicago is a (very) great school. But undergraduates there legendarily have no lives. They study all the time. It's extremely intense. There isn't even any football.
Daniel Peterson wrote:The University of Chicago is a (very) great school. But undergraduates there legendarily have no lives. They study all the time. It's extremely intense. There isn't even any football.
...or any other sports programs, which were the reasons they were highly regarded at the Canadian University I attended. I was afraid I was missing something. Thanks for the clarification.
Daniel Peterson wrote:The University of Chicago is a (very) great school. But undergraduates there legendarily have no lives. They study all the time. It's extremely intense. There isn't even any football.
...or any other sports programs, which were the reasons they were highly regarded at the Canadian University I attended. I was afraid I was missing something. Thanks for the clarification.
I think they have DIII sports, which is part of the appeal for my son (if he knows what's good for him). Engineering and college hoops, can't get any better.
Understand that I don't care about college football very much, as illustrated by the fact that I attended only one game as an undergraduate (because a former missionary companion, then serving as the student body president at the University of Utah, invited me to watch the Utes defeat the Cougars with him)* and have attended only two or three games as a member of the faculty (because, each time, I was invited to accompany substantial donors, and sat in the president's box).
But the University of Chicago is famous for the ultra-intense character of its students and for their relative lack of "fun." I think you'll even find that written up in various college guides.
It's not necessarily a bad quality -- I rather like it, personally -- but it's a bit unusual (quite unlike Stanford, for example, which is an equally good school) and may not be to every taste.
* The Cougars annihilated the Utes, by the way. It was most gratifying.