Theology: Have faith in your future

"We need to scotch that idea," says Chris Arthur, admissions tutor and senior lecturer in religious studies at the University of Wales, Lampeter. He is referring to the perception that people choose to study theology or religious studies in order to enter a career in the ministry. "Almost none of our students do that nowadays," he insists.

The university is one of the smallest in the country, and one of the most established, being the first in England or Wales, after Oxford and Cambridge, to award degrees. Its theology and religious studies department is thriving though, and has around 40 members of staff. "I don't need to tell you how relevant religion is in public life at this point in history and this is something employers are waking up to," he says, offering the police force as a good example of an employer that is keen to have staff who understand the ways religious communities can work. And it's not just the police - recent graduates of the degree have gone on to have careers in the media, the armed services, the Inland Revenue, librarianship, teaching and social work amongst others. "We had one graduate a few years ago who became a midwife and she hopes her degree will have equipped her to practice midwifery in developing countries," Arthur adds.

Perhaps less surprising is the fact that many theology students go into teaching. One was James Stephenson, who became a journalist after university but then decided to go back to school and teach religious studies. "My degree gave me the background skills to teach the subject and it also made me more tolerant which is a key skill when teaching 11- to 16-year-olds," he says.

Teaching was also the plan for Louise Gale, who studied theology and English literature at St Mary's College in Twickenham, London. However, her plans changed and although she is hoping to become a teacher eventually, Gale currently works in retail management, for which her degree has also been helpful: "I'm fascinated by world religions and it's given me a better understanding of world politics and the current political climate and how religion is still a major factor in an increasingly secular world. As far as people management goes it's helped me to be open minded regarding people's cultural and educational differences as well as having the tools to discuss, challenge and debate any issue that comes up in a workplace environment."

Walter Moberly, professor of theology and biblical interpretation at the Durham University department of theology and religion, sees three main reasons to study for a degree in theology or religious studies. "The first is common to any degree in humanities and that is the degree will help to develop skills of reasoning, understanding and analyzing and to gain intellectual skills. The second is that such a degree helps people to become articulate about some of the big issues in life that people feel strongly about but can be inarticulate about, such as the existence of god, life and death, right and wrong. And the third is that a good deal of those who study theology do so for reasons of religious commitment and for those who do so this is a good way of combining personal commitment with intellectual rigor. This of course applies just as much to some people studying politics."

Gill Allen, careers adviser at Cambridge University, agrees that such a course is a good grounding for most careers: "The course is very varied so students have a very good choice of what to study including courses in history, philosophy, literature and languages. They get a wide ranging and thorough education." As for what careers it leads to, Allen agrees with Arthur that these are incredibly varied, but does think that as a subject it is best suited to those who want to "work with people and for people in some capacity although that is very wide ranging." She adds to his list jobs in arts management, parliament, the civil service, NHS management, psychology, finance, IT, law and acting. Cambridge's students, says Allen, are an extremely varied bunch: "There are always some people who want to go into theology related areas but it's a very mixed subject with interesting people."

Allen's advice to careers advisers is that degrees in this area may suit people who have many interests and who are probably involved in many things outside of school and have a natural interest in what is going on in the world. For Allen, courses in the faculty of divinity are particularly popular at the moment because "there's such an emphasis at the moment on people living together and multiculturalism."

For Moberly at Durham, the popularity is more to do with a perceived shallowness in contemporary culture. But whatever the reason, he would recommend such a degree to all students except those who are not interested in the world or who regard it as a soft touch. "Very few degrees at university ever feed directly into what people do professionally but they do equip you to handle life well."

A theology degree provides the perfect grounding for most careers. By Ellie Levenson

Case Study: Toby Greene

Toby Greene is a political researcher and analyst specialising in the areas of Israel and the Middle East.

Greene studied philosophy for two years before he decided to switch to study theology for the final year of his degree at Cambridge University.

"As well as studying religious belief directly, my theology course at Cambridge allowed me to study the sociology and psychology of religion, including the related forces of secularisation, modernisation and fundamentalism. In recent years, these developments have come to be recognised as important factors in international affairs.

Subsequently working as a researcher in the area of international politics, I find it invaluable to have some appreciation of how religious identity affects billions of people around the world.

In general terms, the skills of collating, analysing and critiquing large amounts of information and presenting coherent findings, which come from pursuing a degree in the humanities, are central to my work asa political researcher."