Here’s a window back to 1946.
Per a Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis calculator:
- that $1,200 today would buy $14,300 (rounded)
- that $2,300 today would buy $27,400
- and that $6,000 today would buy $71,400
Seminary would likely been paid for, and the medical (and post-war housing!) situation is very different, but you can see what a period writer called the “mendicant order of Protestant ministers.”
This is interesting, especially the average salary equivalent of $27,400. But I also remember speaking to 2 ministers who attended Saint Lawrence Theological School in the late 1940’s. Both said that their tuition was paid in full, which gave them the financial freedom to serve in less lucrative rural settings.