Answering the Call After 30

"A man in politics can do a tremendous amount of good for a large number of people," said Robert P. Layne --and thereupon gave up politics. Explaining that he hoped" to do good for far fewer people but on a more profound basis," Layne, 31, announced last week that in June he will quit his job as a Republican senator in the Kentucky legislature to study for the Episcopal priesthood at Virginia Theological Seminary.

Turning from things secular to sacred has plenty of precedents. Within the past decade, U.S. seminaries have been getting a striking and measurable increase in applications from men in their 30s and 40s who want to abandon successful secular careers in everything from baseball to business. About one-third of the candidates at Vanderbilt Divinity School are former business or professional men, including a 43-year-old Memphis lawyer, a 39-year-old trucking-firm vice president, a 38-year-old photographer. Three years ago, at the age of 37, Rion Dixon was an executive of St. Louis' International Shoe Co.; two years ago Robert L. Catlin, then 40, was a Miami real-estate man; now both are ministerial candidates at Columbia Theological Seminary (Presbyterian) in Decatur, Ga.

Something Was Missing. Although seminary deans keep on the watch for failures seeking to escape the hardships of life through the church, they find that most older men are genuinely responding to calls they cannot escape. Layne, for example, spent three years wrestling with his decision. President Stuart LeRoy Anderson of the Pacific School of Religion observes that many applicants are "dissatisfied with whatever fields they are in because they deal only with materialistic things. They would rather give their lives to investigating the significance of life." The Rev. William Clancey, once an assistant U.S. attorney in San Francisco, says: "I loved the law, but I knew something was missing. After one martini, the idea would come into my head, but I kept pushing it out." He eventually stopped pushing, and at 35 began studying for the Episcopal priesthood.

One sign that the vocations are genuine is that most of the older seminarians have taken up theological studies at considerable sacrifice of money or position. One of the few rich seminarians is the former president of a $1,000,000-a-year Detroit auto-parts firm who promoted himself to board chairman in order to study for the ministry at the Chicago Theological Seminary. "I've had it so good that I thought I'd devote the rest of my career to helping society in some way," he says.

Better Rapport. Churches occasionally are reluctant to accept older ministers, concerned that they may be ready to retire by the time they have mastered their new profession. In the 1964 entering class at Maine's Bangor Theological Seminary, a school that specializes in training men with "delayed vocations," one student was in his 60s, another was 52. Yet nonclerical experience often gives these men a rapport with their congregations that ministers straight out of college cannot have. Methodist Preacher Russ Kemmerer, 33, a moderately successful pitcher in the major leagues for nine years--mostly with the Boston Red Sox and Washington Senators--finds his sports background invaluable in counseling youthful members of his church in Monrovia, Ind.

How good a man was in his secular life is often an accurate guide to how good he will be as a pastor. "If he's a successful businessman, he's likely to do pretty well in the ministry," says Methodist Minister Charles Merrill Smith, author of the recent How to Become a Bishop Without Being Religious. "If he's a punk businessman, he's likely to be a pretty punk minister."

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