Continuing my study of Douglas Sloan’s Faith and Knowledge. Read part one.

Chapter 2: The Church and the Crisis in the University

Much of this chapter deals with the origins, analysis, and impact of Sir Walter Moberly’s The Crisis in the University:

This crisis in the university, as Moberly - and the other SCM [student Christian movements] writers - saw it, lay primarily in the dominance within the university and modern culture of science as a worldview that could not deal with questions of human meaning and value, but at the same time had become the source of the notion that a spurious scientific objectivity and value-neutrality should govern the pursuit of all knowledge. (40)

Moberly and other Christian writers sought to show how religion - and Christianity in particular - could resolve this “crisis” and provide a unifying force within the university. Unlike other elements of the student movements, which saw social action and Christian fellowship as their topmost concerns, a group of mainline Protestant theologians and writers (including those influenced by neo-orthodoxy) believed that “the churches’ proper relationship and mission to higher education must be above all in the intellectual realm” (40-41). Moberly, and many following his lead, concluded that the purpose of the Christian in higher education was “to enable the university to be the university.”

Sloan outlines three concerns that led to this intellectual emphasis:

1. The belief that “the university was the most powerful institution in modern culture” (41)
2. The belief that “the university was evading its responsibilities to raise and explore ‘the basis questions of human existence’ and of cultural purpose” (41)
3. A desire “to show that the theological enterprise itself was not only intellectually respectable, but also indispensible to the complete university” (59)

Unfortunately, Sloan notes, two platforms of the churches’ engagement with the university, which began as carefully reasoned analyses, often became mere slogans that inhibited truly “radical” redirection of the universities. First, many writers accepted a faith-knowledge split that set “facts” in the world of objectivity and “values” in the world of subjectivity. To many writers, this split gave religion a “reason for being,” since they argued that only “values” could give objective facts any meaning whatsoever. However, this split often led a sense of arbitrariness to religious belief. It also led to the conclusion that, for example, there was no such thing as a “Christian physics” (55) - that is, that the practice of academic disciplines was identical among Christians and nonChristians alike, and only the interpretation of a discipline could have religious content. This hampered Christians’ abilities to bring about true change in any discipline and, in fact, raised the question of why they were so concerned with Christians in the disciplines in the first place.

The second “slogan” was the phrase “all truth is God’s truth.” Sloan notes that, for Moberly, this statement was true, but required critical discernment to identify truth within secular thought. In less reflective hands, the slogan led Christians to uncritical acceptance of “whatever conceptions of truth and claims to truth happened to hold sway in the university and culture at any particular time” (57).

Sloan concludes the chapter by identifying three tasks necessary if “the hopes for the theological renaissance and its engagement with American higher education were to be fulfilled” (63):

1. University faculty would need to “grapple with the knowledge side of the faith-knowledge relationship.”
2. “Leading American theologians” would need to take up this same task.
3. Finally, the “central epistemological and faith issues” would need to be communicated “clearly and persuasively” to both the “larger educational community” (i.e. nonChristian authorities in higher education) and the broader Christian movements among students and faculty.

Next up, Chapter 3: The Church Engages Higher Education.

Posted in American Education, American Thought and Practice, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

The Faculty Ministry Leadership Team is reading together Douglas Sloan’s book Faith and Knowledge: Mainline Protestantism and American Higher Education. Sloan himself gives a terse description of his purpose:

This book tells the story of this last, major attempt by mainline Protestantism to have a significant influence on American higher education. (vii)

This attempt began in the 1930’s, alongside the Protestant “theological renaissance” brought about by the writings of Barth, Buber, Tillich, the Neibuhrs, et al., and ended in the 1960’s.

[Note: my journal of Mark Noll’s America’s God is briefly on hold. I was reading a library copy for the first few chapters, and I am now waiting for my personal copy that I ordered from abebooks.com to arrive.]

Chapter 1: The Church, the University, and the Faith-Knowledge Issue: Background

Sloan sees the “faith and knowledge” question as central to the relationship of Protestant churches to universities. From the preface:

In the prevailing modern view of how and what we can know, the quantitative, the mechanical, and the instrumental [i.e. the primary content of higher education] are accorded full standing. All those things, however, that involve - as Huston Smith has put it - values, meaning, purpose, and qualities [i.e. the content of religion] are regarded as essentially having little to do with knowledge… (viii)

According to Sloan, the majority of intellectuals during the Victorian era regarded the “conflict” between science and religion as having been fully resolved. Evolution and religion were seen as having the same goal - the improvement of man (the famous Victorian faith in “progress”). As a result, many liberal Protestants welcomed the secularization of private colleges and the establishment of secular public universities as a sign of the “progress of civilization and the coming of the kingdom of God on earth” (22). Meanwhile, conservative, pietistic Protestants welcomed secular education because their children could learn professions without “the hazards of classical [i.e. pagan] learning” (23). In the midst of this, other forces also contributed to the reduction of Protestant influence. One example that Sloan gives is the Carnegie Foundation’s retirement plan for college faculty.

A major stipulation of the plan was that participating institutions had to be free of all denominational control [since this control inhibited the development of “true science”]. A number of colleges, such as Brown, Centre, Coe, Drake, Rochester, Rutgers, Wesleyan, and others severed their denominational ties and became eligible to receive the proffered retirement funds. (20).

As universities and churches were systematically disengaging from one another, theology was preparing for a re-engagement. The Victorian “synthesis” of science and religion had proven to be imaginary as both scientists and clergy had come to realize that the “value-free” principles of Darwinism were hardly compatible with a Christian world view. Any morality of this “progressive” movement had been imported wholesale from the Judeo-Christian tradition, without justification from within the mechanistic world view of Darwinishm and scientism. The horrors of the First World War shattered intellectual belief in the inevitable moral progress of man. Meanwhile, the “neo-orthodox” movement was gaining steam in North America through new translations of Barth, Brunner, Kierkegaard, and Buber, and the new American-based work of Reinhold Niebuhr, his brother H. Richard Niebuhr, and the German immigrant Paul Tillich. Sloan notes,

In many respects the emphases of the theological renaissance were tailor-made for engagement with higher education. Most importantly, the theological renaissance was preeminantly an intellectual movement…[The theologians] were capable as few before them of mobilizing an awareness of the religious origins of Western, and especially of American, higher education. Moreover, most of the leading theologians of the new movement were faculty at so-called university divinity schools [Union, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Chicago, Vanderbilt] and well situated to speak to the university…

Thus, Sloan sets the stage for “Chapter 2: The Church and the Crisis in the University.”

Posted in American Education, American Religion, The Church in America | 3 Comments »

Over the last couple of years, I have been reading up on my American history - especially the American Revolution and Civil War. My admiration for Washington and Lincoln continues to grow with each book I read. Especially Washington - my knowledge of him was woefully underdeveloped by my formal education.

I am currently reading Gordon Wood’s The American Revolution, a short (190 pp.) summary of the causes, major events, and results of the Revolution. His description of Washington particularly struck me. Wood writes that, while Washington managed the war well:

Washington’s ultimate success as the American commander in chief, however, never stemmed from his military abilities. He was never a traditional military hero. He had no smashing, stunning victories, and his tactical and strategic maneuvers were never the sort that awed men. Instead, it was his character and political talent and judgment that mattered most. His stoicism, dignity, and perseverance in the face of seemingly impossible odds came to symbolize the entire Revolutionary cause. As the war went on year after year, his statute only grew, and by 1779 Americans were celebrating his birthday as well as the Fourth of July.

When I think of Washington’s achievements, two of them - admitting that he chopped down a cherry tree and throwing a dollar across the Potomac - are entirely fictional and the third - refusing to become “President for Life” - is about an absence of action. Yet, in every history I’ve read, Washington seems to be universally admired, even revered, by his other Revolutionary figures. Among giants like Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Harrison, Madison, et al., Washington walks the scene like a giant among giants.

There is no doubt that Washington was a supremely gifted individual, both in his personal traits and in his familial/social connections. Washington’s greatness, though, did not come from genius-level military achievements or ground-breaking political vision. That was provided by other characters in the Revolutionary drama. Instead, Washington’s greatness was rooted in his virtue, which incarnated the American Revolution’s ideals of civic duty, productive living, temperance, personal integrity, etc. He was a true citizen, a modern Cincinnatus, the farmer-general-dictator who, his term of service over, willingly gave up his dictatorship and returned to his farm. (This comparison was not lost on his contemporaries, who elected Washington as the first leader of the fraternal Society of Cincinnati, named a city in honor of the concept, and, of course, named our national capital in his honor.)

Washington’s personal virtues incarnated the Revolutionary ideals of the determined, independent citizen, willing to take responsibility for his country yet refusing the role of king or aristocrat.  Washington was a man for his time.

In contrast, can we imagine a contemporary political leader known primarily for his or her virtue and personal character?  The only one who comes to mind is Colin Powell, post-Persian Gulf War, who made a Washington-like decision to decline to run for president.  Barack Obama almost fits, but, to me anyway, Obama is a blank canvas, whose charisma and all-American back story allows people from nearly every demographic to identify with him in some way.

Posted in American Politics, American Values | No Comments »