Continuing my reading on Douglas Sloan’s Faith and Knowledge: Mainline Protestantism and Higher Education. Check out my coverage of chapter one and chapter two.

Chapter 3: The Church Engages Higher Education

This chapter describes the “on the ground” efforts that church bodies made with students and faculties. Sloan begins by noting the incredible changes in higher education post-World War II: the massive increases in enrollment, which opened up universities to a broader demographic of Americans, and the almost complete dominance of research universities in setting the agenda, tone, and purpose of higher education.

Student Ministries

Among students, the churches reformulated their view of evangelism to “take in the needs of the larger community and of the individual situated within the context of that community” (76). The university was seen as crucial to this “new evangelism” as “the cognitive center of the modern world” (as Sloan quotes Julian Hartt). Sloan continues,

Furthermore, the principal work of the new evangelism would have to be carried by people within the university, not by churchly intruders from without who had no real, integral connection with the university. (76)

As a result, many new student organizations were founded in the late forties through fifties, and many new forms of campus ministry were attempted by mainline Protestant churches. For example, the National Student Christian Federation took a strong stance in “political-social activism” (78) and eventually contributed to the work of the civil rights movement.

On other campuses, students and faculty joined to together in intentional, covenantal communities, such as the Christian Faith and Life Community at the UT-Austin. Similar communities formed at many other campuses across the country - Sloan mentions Brown, MIT, Yale, U. Wisconsin, and U. Iowa. Campus ministries also formed Christian research centers (e.g. at Michigan State) and trendy, largely short-lived “coffee house ministries” that attempted cultural relevance. Sloan also mentions the strong influence of the Methodist student magazine motive, which served to give many Christian students and faculty an artistic, literary perspective on Christian life.

Faculty Ministries

Among faculty, similar innovation was taking place. The Faculty Christian Fellowship, founded in 1952, took as its mission to

uncover the basic presuppositions of the various academic disciplines and to explore the tensions existing between them and those of the Christian faith. (84)

Throughout the fifties, FCF grew rapidly across the country.

Sloan surprised me by connecting the establishment of religion departments to the church’s new engagement of higher education. I had simply assumed (wrongly) that the teaching of religion had long been a part of American higher education - it had, but in a vastly different form. Sloan records that, by the mid-1960’s,

The older views of the student of religion as primarily evangelistic or as pastoral and professional training for religious educators had given way to the conception of religion as a scholarly, academic discipline. (86)

Very quickly, Christians had moved from fighting for theology to be recognized as an academic discipline to seeing “religious studies” become as professionalized as any other social science.

Finally, Sloan spends a good chunk of space covering the newfound interest of theologians (led by Tillich) in the arts, and the impact of these changes on church-related colleges.

Sloan concludes the chapter by noting that all of these changes in the church’s engagement with higher education were ultimately based in the “faith-knowledge” question. The universities had radically redefined “knowledge,” to the detriment of “faith.” It’s worth quoting Sloan at length on this matter:

The conception of knowledge as power and control [in higher education] was thoroughly utilitarian and intrumental. The research university, of course, was committed to the higher utilitarianism of providing theoretical knowledge for the management and advance of a complex, industrial-technological culture. The less prestigious institutions farther down the tail of the academic snake pursued the lower utilitarianism of immediate community service and vocational training. In the overall competition for resources the higher utilitarianism usually prevailed, for it could argue that in the long run all else depended on the high-level, theoretical advances it made possible.

In neither of these emphases, however, was there much concern for what had been called the “basic questions” of life, and very little concern, except in an instrumentalist way, for an education devoted to the deepening and enrichment of personal and cultural existance. That other conceptions of knowledge other than “knowledge is power” might be possible and might reveal dimensions of reality as real and important as the instrumental, quantitative, and technical, was as foreign to the one as to the other.

Thus, the churches’ efforts would depend heavily on whether theologians could put forth a convincing argument for “faith” as integral to “knowledge.” Next up, chapter 4, “The Theologians and the Two-Realm Theory of Truth.”

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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.

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. - Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

Almost 231 years later, these truths seem hardly to be “self-evident.” Vocal atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have recently pointed out the futility in assuming that we have a Creator. (They are both British, so perhaps their opinions should not matter much in this conversation.) Many of the authors and signatories of the Declaration owned human beings as property, calling into question how “equal” they believed “all men” actually were and how much right to “Liberty” they believed “all men” actually had. Debates over war, the death penalty, abortion, and euthanasia demonstrate that “Life” is a more complicated right than it might initially seem, and postmodernism, deconstructionism, and basic psychology argue that “truth” is in the eye of the beholder. Even high school sophomores breezily announce, “What’s true for you isn’t true for me,” as if this was an obvious and self-evident fact. Of everything stated here, only the “pursuit of Happiness” continues to be universally accepted as an unalienable right by the people of these United States.

Is it any wonder that Americans are known globally for our rampant consumerism, the pursuit of Happiness-with-a-capital-H raised to an ungodly pitch? It’s stated right there in our founding document. It’s given as one of the fundamental purposes for creating our nation and announcing our independence: the right to be “Happy.” We’ve traveled from throwing off King George to coveting the new iPhone in less than two-and-a-half centuries.

It strikes me that the Bible speaks very little of “rights.” Even the section entitled “The Rights of an Apostle” in the NIV (1 Cor 9), though Paul does assert what he is owed by the Corinthian church, is more about the rights that Paul has willfully given up for the sake of the gospel. To be like Christ, Paul urges the Corinthians, is to abandon claims to freedom.

What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make use of my rights in preaching it. Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. (1 Cor 9:18-19)

In The Complete Book of Everyday Christianity, Iain Benson writes,

The Scriptures speak so little about rights that it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that “rights” are not a scriptural concept. What the Scriptures speak of are duties and justice” “He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Mic 6:8).

Can we imagine an alternate history in which Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams had composed a Declaration of Dependence, announcing our new nation’s dependence upon God?

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to bind themselves with one another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the dependent and humble station to which God and the Laws of God call them, a proper reverence for the revelation of their Lord requires that they should declare what He has shown them to be good.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created in the image of God, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Responsibilities, that among these are to act Justly, to love Mercy, and to walk humbly with their God…”

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