There were easier ways to deal with the draft than to become a Christian minister for life.
The Mormon church though, did get to hand out their own deferments, for instance they sent Mitt Romney to France.
“There were easier ways to deal with the draft than to become a Christian minister for life.”
The author I read didn’t intimate the ministers enrolling in divinity school intended to make the ministry a career goal. It was a way to wait out the draft. But then some discovered that churches could be a ready-made power base for continued activism. Not saying all or even most were like that, by any means.
Romney would have served a two-year mission and while some may have used it to avoid the draft, two years is a lot less than four years plus graduate studies in divinity school.