A newly released report finds that students seeking training for church ministry are overwhelmingly attracted to evangelical Protestant seminaries with orthodox theology.
That’s according to statistics compiled by the Asociación de Escuelas Teológicas (ATS), which lists full-time student enrollment among accredited schools to get a better picture of the largest U.S. seminaries.
The ATS, which counts more than 270 Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish graduate schools of theology among its members, just released reports with two primary measures of enrollment from the 2023-24 academic year. It has similarities and contrasts with a similar ATS list from eight years ago.
The association provides both a headcount enrollment (HC) total (including part-time students) and full-time equivalent enrollment (FTE). Based upon each metric, schools have been ranked accordingly in the tables below.
Liberty Theological Seminary in Lynchburg, Virginia, now ranks largest with 4,050 full-time enrolled students and a headcount of 5,507 (the institution has a sizable online enrollment). Liberty University’s John W. Rawlings School of Divinity received ATS accreditation in 2020.
Your tax-deductible gift supports our mission of reporting the truth and restoring the church. Donate $50 or more to The Roys Report this month, and you can elect to receive “Saving Face: Finding My Self, God, and One Another Outside a Defaced Church” by Aimee Byrd, haga clic aquí.
Fuller Theological Seminary, with its flagship campus in southern California, the largest seminary by enrollment in 2016, has dropped by more than half to 657 full-time enrolled students from 1,542 in the 2015-16 academic year. It no longer ranks in the top 10 for FTE, and ranks 8th largest in headcount (1,614).
Southern Baptist-affiliated schools, including Liberty, continue to have the largest enrollments. Seminario Teológico Bautista del Sur, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Seminario Teológico Bautista del Sureste, Seminario Teológico Bautista del Suroeste, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary y Seminario Gateway all appear in the top 10.
The non-denominational evangelical Dallas Theological Seminary, the only historically dispensationalist school on the list, ranks fourth, while Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky, an evangelical school in the Wesleyan tradition, ranks seventh-largest. Seminario Teológico Gordon-Conwell, based in Boston, Massachusetts, which rounds out the list, is the largest seminary in the evangelical-Reformed tradition (note: there has and continues to be a large Reformed contingent at most of the Southern Baptist institutions as well).
All of the largest seminaries in the country are evangelical, and no mainline Protestant institutions rank in the top 10. United Methodist-affiliated Duke Divinity School continues to be the largest mainline Protestant institution with an FTE of 570 and a headcount of 624, followed by United Theological Seminary (which is both UMC-affiliated and evangelical) with an FTE of 515 and a headcount of 471 (note: these two numbers might have been transposed in the data, since headcount is almost always larger than FTE). UMC-affiliated Candler School of Theology at Emory University has an FTE of 412 and a headcount of 419.
Information provided by ATS reports that in the 2023 academic year 20 percent of member schools were Roman Catholic or Orthodox, 34 percent were mainline Protestant and 46 percent were Evangelical. Enrollment numbers were different: 9 percent of seminarians were enrolled at Roman Catholic or Orthodox schools, 19 percent were enrolled at mainline Protestant institutions and 72 percent were enrolled in Evangelical seminaries.
The 274 ATS schools reporting in 2023 had a total of 76,166 students enrolled. Full-time Equivalent Enrollment (FTE) was 46,398.
Data on individual member schools can be accessed on Table 1.2 of the 2023-2024 ATS Data Tables.
Josh Shepherd contributed to this article, a version of which was originally published at Ecumenismo Jugoso. Correction: this article was updated to accurately state the primary campus location of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
Jeffrey Walton is Communications Manager and Anglican Program Director for the Institute on Religion & Democracy.
Spanish 
English 
3 Responses
The article sees to want to include Liberty as a Southern Baptist Seminary. I don’t think so. Or am I not up to date. I think it is independent Baptist…l.very independent. :)
You are correct; Liberty Seminary is not affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.
It depends on what you mean by “affiliated.” No, Liberty does not receive funding through the SBC Cooperative Program, and the SBC does not nominate trustees to Liberty’s board of directors. Those are the hallmarks of a “Southern Baptist seminary,” of which there are five. However, Liberty Theological Seminary is a part of the John W Rawlins School of Divinity within the Liberty University system. The Liberty University system is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. Before he died, Jerry Falwell Sr. made several moves to bring his university into closer “affiliation” with the SBC on both a state (Virginia) and national level. So in those ways, Liberty University’s Liberty Theological Seminary and John W Rawlins School of Divinity are “affiliated with” the SBC. Neither the SBC nor Liberty “play up” their affiliation–after all, the SBC has five seminaries it supports in competition with Liberty Seminary–but from ACT’s perspective, they are “affiliated.”