Why Theology Matters in the Workplace
Prof Andrew Torrance (School of Divinity)
If you study theology, you will probably hear the question: “What are you going to do with a theology degree?” It tends to be asked out of genuine curiosity, but it often carries an unspoken assumption: that theology needs to justify itself by showing where it leads. Fortunately, it can.
Theology develops skills that employers consistently value: the ability to think critically, analyse texts carefully, communicate persuasively, conduct independent research, exercise judgement, and navigate complexity without rushing towards easy answers. These are not niche abilities. They matter across teaching, journalism, healthcare, law, business, public service, ministry, and many other professions.
Yet employability also raises a question we do not always consider. We often ask what makes a graduate attractive to an employer, and that is an important question. But it is only half of the story. Graduates choose employers too. We should therefore ask a further question: what makes an organisation somewhere that people actually want to work?
Imagine deciding between two organisations offering similar salaries, training, and opportunities for progression. The roles are almost identical. The difference lies in the culture. One organisation quietly assumes that professionalism means leaving your deepest convictions at the door. The other expects colleagues to work respectfully across disagreement while recognising them as whole people, whose experiences, values, and commitments inevitably shape the way they see the world. Which organisation would you rather join?
This is also a question about employability. Employability is not simply about becoming the kind of graduate employers want. It is also about recognising the kinds of institutions in which people can do their best work and genuinely flourish.
Theology contributes something distinctive here because it is, among other things, an education in how people make sense of the world. It places questions at the centre of its study that many disciplines explore, but theology pursues with particular persistence. What do people ultimately love? What do they trust? What gives meaning to their lives? What shapes their hopes, fears, and moral imagination? These questions may sound abstract, but they have a profound influence on how people interpret evidence, exercise authority, respond to disagreement, and make decisions.
One of the first lessons theology teaches is that disagreement is rarely only disagreement. Anyone who has taken part in a theology seminar will recognise this. A discussion that begins with the interpretation of Augustine or the meaning of a biblical passage often reveals deeper assumptions about authority, tradition, human nature, or what counts as a persuasive argument. The text matters, but it is rarely the only thing under discussion. Theology trains students to notice these deeper questions. Instead of asking only whether someone is right or wrong, they learn to ask why a position makes sense to the person holding it, what assumptions sustain it, and what experiences have shaped it.
This habit is closely connected to the theological tradition of intellectual charity. Intellectual charity is not agreement, nor is it simply politeness. It is the discipline of presenting another person’s position in terms they themselves would recognise before offering your own evaluation. It requires the patience to understand before judging. Religious literacy follows naturally from this practice. If we want to understand people well, we need to understand the traditions, communities, and experiences that have shaped them. People do not enter workplaces as blank slates. They bring with them experiences of family, community, tradition, institutions, and the convictions that have shaped how they understand the world. Theology helps students recognise those frameworks, not to eliminate disagreement, but to engage disagreement more thoughtfully.
Recent debates about vaccine hesitancy, for example, illustrate why this matters. It is tempting to assume that someone declining a vaccine simply does not understand the evidence. Sometimes this may be true. But sometimes what appears to be a disagreement about scientific information is also a disagreement about trust, community, responsibility, or previous experiences of institutions. Recognising that difference changes the conversation because it changes what we think we are actually trying to resolve. The question is no longer simply, “Why does this person reject the evidence?” but also, “What experiences and assumptions have shaped the way they understand the evidence?”
These habits matter well beyond the classroom. They are not simply academic habits. They are professional ones. Many workplaces are not held back because people lack technical expertise. They struggle because colleagues misunderstand one another, talk past one another, or mistake disagreements about values for disagreements about facts. Theology trains students to distinguish between different kinds of claim, to interpret another person’s reasoning carefully before evaluating it, and to ask better questions about what is actually at stake. Those are not simply academic habits. They are professional ones.
Whether you work in healthcare, journalism, education, public policy, business, or the voluntary sector, much of your working life will involve collaborating with intelligent people whose assumptions differ from your own. A student who learns these habits in a theology seminar may later find them shaping the way they approach a difficult conversation with a colleague, a disagreement in a team meeting, or a decision about the values of an organisation they are considering joining. The ability to understand those assumptions before responding to them is increasingly valuable in an interconnected and religiously diverse society.
This is why theology’s contribution to employability should not simply be reduced to a list of transferable skills, important though those skills undoubtedly are. Theology certainly develops excellent readers, writers, communicators, and critical thinkers. I can say that confidently. But it also forms graduates who understand people: graduates who have learned to listen carefully, interpret generously, and approach disagreement without reducing every conflict to winners and losers. Those qualities matter because they make organisations healthier as well as individuals more employable.
So yes, theology is an employable degree. It equips graduates for an exceptionally wide range of careers, and it develops intellectual abilities that employers rightly value. But perhaps its greatest contribution lies elsewhere. Theology asks what people love, trust, hope for, and fear, and how those commitments shape the way they live and work. Graduates who have learned to understand people in that deeper sense are often the people who help create workplaces where difference does not become division, where disagreement can be handled well, and where colleagues can do their best work together.
Further Reading
- Elaine Howard Ecklund, Why Science and Faith Need Each Other: Eight Shared Values That Move Us beyond Fear (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2020).
- Muhammad Haaris Tiwana and Julia Smith, ‘Faith and Vaccination: A Scoping Review of the Relationships between Religious Beliefs and Vaccine Hesitancy,’ BMC Public Health 24:1806 (2024).