Alumni by the numbers

Graphic: Mark Zurolo ’01MFA

Data: Yale Divinity School View full image

Three hundred years ago, men went to Yale for a religious education, and not a multifaith one; Yale had been founded to provide a stricter version of Congregationalism than what was available in Cambridge. Today, the Divinity School has alumni from a wide array of faiths. Those who go on to become clergy—as these results from the school's 2009 alumni survey show—still include a healthy portion of Congregationalists. (The United Church of Christ is descended from the original Congregationalists.) But they also include clergy from all of the "seven sisters" of mainline Protestantism, most notably the Episcopal Church, whose representation swelled after Yale's incorporation of the Berkeley Divinity School in 1971. The Yale trustees of 1722—who fired the president for daring to become an Episcopalian—would not be amused.