Theological Formation: More Personal and More catholic, Please

A response to Dale Coulter's "The Great Seminary Sorting"

By Bryan Hollon I Trinity Anglican Seminary I August 27, 2026

Although I’m a little late to the game, I’d like to make a few comments about Dale M. Coulter’s recent essay for “The Protestant Mind,” a project of First Things magazine. The essay is titled, “The Great Seminary Sorting,” and describes recent trends in theological education that none of us can ignore. After going through a list of institutions which have either shut down or seen dramatic decline (and the list is substantial), Coulter identifies three major shifts defining the present and future of theological education:

A generational shift – major scholars who defined theological education in the late 20th century have largely retired or died.

An ecclesial shift – away from mainline and “magisterial” Protestant traditions toward non-conformist churches.

Educational shift – toward distance learning, which now accounts for more than 50% of all seminary enrollment.

Coulter provides an analysis of these trends and explains well why they have taken hold so rapidly, and in a summary of the argument at the end of the essay, he asks and then answers his own question: “what do these three shifts tell us about the future?

First, the “traditional freestanding seminary with an on-campus population is over.” Interestingly, he suggests that “niche programs” like Nashotah House will remain, but most will not. He obviously knows nothing about Trinity Anglican Seminary, the far larger niche seminary of the ACNA.

Second, “seminaries that remain flexible and entrepreneurial will grow”

Third, “seminaries that effectively use the new media landscape will grow”

Coulter seems to be suggesting that those of us leading theological education should really get with the current trends or face a bleak future. In some ways, he is right, and one of the frustrations of leading in theological education today is that we cannot bend the world to our needs. We must live and work and do our best in the world as it is, and the world that Coulter describes is here whether we like it or not. No doubt, we must be flexible and entrepreneurial, and we must come to terms with the digital landscape and figure out how to flourish within it.

But what I found most interesting about Coulter’s essay is what he did not say. And that is, he offered no qualitative judgment on these trends whatsoever—no account of what is lost when residential theological education is abandoned, no reckoning with what these shifts mean for the ecclesial traditions that these seminaries exist to serve (if they serve an ecclesial tradition). In other words, what do these trends mean for theological and ecclesial formation?

Worship at Trinity Anglican Seminary’s Trophimus Center.

For Anglicans, a near-total reliance on distance education feeds a tribalism that is taking hold in our culture and across the wider church and certainly in the ACNA. Formation that is dispersed entirely into various “satellite campuses,” “Anglican tracks” and distance programs—and one that fails to unite students from different geographical locations the varieties of churchmanship in the common pursuit of theological formation—is a serious threat to “catholicity.”

How can we form our aspirants to proclaim the “faith once and for all delivered” in service to the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic” church when we have no institutions bringing the various parts of the church together in common cause? How do we maintain cohesion and good-will without the friendships forged during three years of intense classroom study, communal living, and common worship—with people not presorted according to region, churchmanship, and other cultural identity markers? At Trinity, we continue to believe that a vibrant residential seminary must be among the key factors ensuring catholicity and uniting a diverse province across differences but within the bounds of biblical orthodoxy. Though not distinctively Christian, the work of Yuval Levin and others would suggest that institutions like residential seminaries are absolutely essential for the vitality and resiliency of religious communities.

Coulter also fails to mention artificial intelligence, which is arguably the most important feature of the “new media landscape,” and the one that will shape the future of educational institutions more profoundly than any other. For reasons that I won’t go into in great depth here, AI could render asynchronous, computer-based education essentially meaningless. AI agents can already enroll in a class and complete all assignments as though they were human, and some distance programs have little defense against this sort of thing. There are many seminary programs that have invested heavily in the “new media landscape” and are now highly vulnerable to the emerging ubiquity of artificial intelligence. These issues are very much on my radar as a seminary leader.

So… while I agree with Coulter that seminaries need to be flexible, creative, and entrepreneurial, the most important factor moving forward is that formation must be increasingly personal. It requires more personal mentoring, more classroom instruction, more oral examinations, more hand-written assessments, and more apprenticeships. A totally digital, online education is woefully insufficient in the age of AI. At Trinity, we want our students to be well established within a community of learning where they can be personally observed and known deeply by those helping them to discern their future in Christian ministry. We want to hear and see their learning as they ask questions, engage in dialogue, exposit the Word of God, eat and drink with people they would not have chosen as friends, and much more. With our residential students, this human assessment happens naturally, though it is also programmatic as we meet regularly as a faculty to discuss the progress of the students that we work with.

For our distance students, this means that we are working hard to ensure that their formation takes place in a church-based community and that they are paired with competent and caring mentors (in the context of a faithful church) who can provide ongoing, human assessment. Several years ago, we developed a “church-based pathway” to ensure that our distance students receive the hands-on personal and communal formation that ministry preparation absolutely requires.

As we move forward, we aren’t focused on “surviving” the great seminary sorting. Our clear goal is to remain faithful in the midst of it and to subvert its most destructive tendencies. We want to be the sort of institution worth saving, so as we adapt to meet the many challenges of this time, it is always to pursue that calling more faithfully. The challenges before us will require flexibility, creativity, and courage, but they do not alter our mission or justify losing sight of it. Trinity exists to form leaders for Christian ministry and mission who are deeply known, personally formed, theologically grounded, and prepared to serve the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.

In the age of AI, pastoral ministry will remain one vocation where “knowledge work” continues to matter as much or more than ever because it employs knowledge not as a utilitarian tool but as a key dimension of human formation for the very personal “cure of souls.” May God bless all who labor in and benefit from this important work.

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The Great Seminary Sorting can be read here: https://protestantmind.com/p/the-great-seminary-sorting?utm_source=LinkedIn&utm_medium=&utm_campaign=Newsletter&utm_term=Seminary