Is theology better training in management than an MBA?
The recent furor about the closure of the religious studies department at the University of Stirling in Scotland made me think again about the value of studying theology at university. In response to something a friend posted about this on Facebook, I remarked that it was not for nothing that theology was called “the Queen of the Sciences,” and it probably does a better job of equipping people for management than an MBA.
My justification for this was that when the University of South Africa in the 1990s first felt the need to include black faces among the Afrikaner Broederbonders who dominated the university administration, the only place they could find competent people was from the theology faculty, which they “asset stripped” of some of its best academics to turn them into administrators.
I’m not thinking here so much about the study of religion as a phenomenon (which was what the University of Stirling concentrated on), but rather the study of Christian theology itself.