In several countries, the word Theology Degree is also employed for secular schools of higher education that train teachers. While the responsibility of the instructing Seminaries and theology seminaries is different, the nomenclature has not changed. During the 19th century in America, Seminaries schooled women for the only socially acceptable occupation: education. Only unmarried women could become teachers. Many older women’s colleges started as seminaries and created an significant corps of instructors.
A seminary college college, or divinity college is a special and oftentimes live-in higher teaching establishment for the aim of instructing students in philosophy, theology, spiritualism and the divine living, ordinarily in order to train them to become members of the religious clergy. Scholars in a seminary particularly of the Roman Catholic Church are called Seminarists.
The term “theological college” has its origin from Latin seminarium “seed bed”, the neuter form of seminarius “of or connected to seed”, used as a noun. This term is proper because a theological college is where the seeds of spiritual up-bringing are inseminated. The root of this word is semen “seed”, which comes from the identical earlier Proto-Indo-European source that give us the words seed and sow.
Other organized religions and cultures likewise have divine schools analogous to Christian Seminaries. The Islamic and Jewish equivalents to a Christian theological college are known as Madrasah and Yeshivah, respectively.