Problems of the educational process in pre-revolutionary theological seminaries as reflected in the “Responses of diocesan bishops regarding church reform”

In this article, based on the document “Responses of Diocesan Bishops on the Issue of Church Reform,” an analytical review of the main shortcomings of the educational process in theological seminaries at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries is carried out. The excursus shows that the system of education that existed at that time needed fundamental changes due to its inconsistency with the high goal of shaping personalities and preparing future shepherds for the ministry. The key problems of the system of secondary theological education, which required constructive changes, by the beginning of the 20th century were reduced to the following: class isolation of the clergy, entailing the duality of the goals of seminary education; high workload of the small staff of the administration with obediences of an educational and administrative nature; lack of live communication between teachers and students; lack of regulation in the charter of theological schools of the private life of teachers. The results of the study are relevant at the present time, since theological seminaries are the most numerous and “crowded” type of theological educational institutions of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the reform processes in them are of a regular nature. Pre-Revolutionary experience in this respect can serve as an analogy base for making some decisions, and its analysis expands the subject field of church history.