Abstract
The post-1960s literature on the mainline Protestant clergy bears a striking resemblance to post-Revolutionary debates in France; a massive and irreversible shift in the ideological landscape has raised the question, “Where next?” Our Old Regime is the Protestant ministry of the 1950s, replete with professional aspirations and exemplified by H. Richard Niebuhr's portrayal of the Pastoral Director. Despite changed social assumptions about ministry, structural continuities in seminary training and church bureaucracies remain far more striking than changes. We are left with a ministerial calling stripped of its professional raison d'ětre by a series of theological critiques that have yet to outline or achieve corresponding structural changes.
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