“whence and whither in evangelical higher education? dispatches from a shifting frontier,”...

Whence and Whither in EvangelicalHigher Education? Dispatches from aShifting Frontier—A Review EssayBy Amos Yong

Evangelical higher education appears to be a booming business in the twenty- 179first century. Enrollment and expansion have persisted at much higher rates overthe last two decades for schools affiliated with the Council for Christian Collegesand Universities (CCCU) than at other religious schools and certainly at secularuniversities.' Such success is no doubt good news for recruiters and those chargedwith balancing the books each year. Yet, of course, there are always financialchallenges - the mantra at every school is that there is not enough money to doeverything that is needed to be done - not to mention other concerns attendingthese numbers.

Following in the heels of expansion is, not surprisingly, a flurry of scholarlydiscussion and analysis. The literature is booming, and unless one was to havebegun one's scholarly career in and then remained engaged with the field for thelast few decades, it is difficult either to catch up or to keep up. I come to this mate-rial having taught the last 13 years at two CCCU-affiliated institutions: the earlierbeing within a liberal arts undergraduate context and the more recent in a seminarywhich is one school within a university. In a sense I have lived through some ofthe changes that have taken place in evangelical higher education, but it is onlyrecently that I have begun to engage with the scholarship on this phenomenon.^

This essay documents trends I have found noteworthy. Its four sections com-ment on four discernible shifts, first related to the secularization thesis, and thenconnecting, even if loosely, to the standard tropes of evangelical higher educationconcerning scholarship, teaching, and service. In each of the latter three arenaswe can see evidence that sets in relief the secularization thesis, in particular howthat thesis is being challenged by what institutions of higher education in theevangelical world are seeking to accomplish. The concluding section will spotlightdiscussions in the wider scholarship that evangelical higher educators will needto engage in the years to come.

My goals throughout, however, are quite modest: to identify some of the

Amos Yong is J. Rodman Williams Professor of Theology at Regent University School ofDivinity in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Christian Scholar's Review

180 major developments that I as a newcomer to the field have noted, but which Ihope will he of interest to all committed to the task of higher education within anevangelical frame of reference. For those who may not yet have heen initiated tothe extant literature, perhaps the following will serve as a kind of annotated bib-liography to this dynamic arena. More seasoned scholars in this area can comparewhat follows with their much-more-comprehensive grasp of the work that hasbeen done. They may also be intrigued hy what stands out to someone who hasbeen a relative outsider until recently.

From Secularization to Religious Revitalization

The 1990s saw what may have heen the apex of engagement with the secu-larization thesis in relationship to higher education, especially in North Amer-ica. Evangelical historian George Marsden and Roman Catholic scholar JamesBurtschaell were at the forefront of arguing this case.^ While the former focusedon historical, ideological, and methodological trends leading to the gradualsecularization of the major universities that were originally founded on religiousprinciples, the latter focused on a numher of case studies to show how collegesand universities over time hecame disengaged with, and eventually dissolvedfrom relationship to, their founding churches and denominations. Of course, thereasons in each case are complicated and the process itself quite gradual, evensubterranean oftentimes so that it is only with hindsight that the trends towardsecularization are evident. One could come away from this literature discouragedthat these developments appear to have heen inevitable despite the many con-scious initiatives of resistance documented over the centuries. Yet as with muchhistorical work, the value is that they provide lessons that can also inform futuregenerations of evangelical higher educational leadership and practice.

In part in response to these more ominous sounding clarion calls of the 1990s,

'See the introduction to Samuel Joeckel and Thomas Chesnes, eds.. The Christian CollegePhenomenon: Inside America's Fastest Crowing Institutions of Higher Learning (Abilene, TX:Abilene Christian University Press, 2012), 11-12, plus the reports cited there.^Precipitated by researching and writing "Finding the Holy Spirit at the Christian University:Renevral and the Future of Higher Education in the Pentecostal-Charismatic Tradition," inVinson Synan, ed., Spirit-Empowered Christianity in the 2V' Century: Insights, Analyses, andFuture Trends (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2011), 455-476 and 577-587, and more re-cently in preparing a book I am co-authoring with my colleague at Regent University, DaleCoulter, Finding the Holy Spirit at the Christian University: Renewing Christian Higher Education(Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2013).'See George M. Marsden and Bradley J. Longfield, eds.. The Secularization of the Academy(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); George M. Marsden, The Soul of the AmericanUniversity: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief (New York and Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1994); and James Tunstead Burtchaell, The Dying of the Light: TheDisengagement of Colleges and Universities from Their Christian Churches (Grand Rapids, MIand Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998). See also DouglasSloan, Faith and Knowledge: Mainline Protestantism and American Higher Education (Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994).

Whence and Whither in Evangelical Higher Education?—A Review Essay

the new decade has seen almost a reversal of scholarly trends. One the one hand 2S2we have analyses of how secularization trends continue to undermine the effec-tiveness of university education,** while en the other we are also observing howand why religious and especially evangelical universities and colleges have beenflourishing.^ The latter helpfully identify positive models of institufions that havemore or less successfully (to date) resisted the forces of secularization, and these,especially of the institutions that have had a longer history, deserve to be studiedcarefully by anyone interested in the future of Christian higher education. In afew cases, of course, there is documentation also of newly-established institu-tions, motivated in large part by the desire to offer a distinctively Christian formof education - in terms of both pedagogical form and intellectual/theologicalcontent - unavailable certainly in secular universities but also deemed inchoatelyformed at existing Christian environments. I will return below to consider someof the market factors related to the Christian higher educational enterprise.

What we are finding also is that many twenty-first-century college studentsare religiously or spiritually engaged and often either are open to exploring thesedomains of their lives as students or even choose to attend a religiously-basedinstitution in part for that reason.' But whether at secular or religious institu-tions, many students are attending to their spiritual quest.'' They are less likely todichotomize their religious and moral lives from their intellectual endeavors andmore conscious about seeking a holistic mode of interfacing these various domains.

In short, the secularization thesis appears to be suffering the same fatein American colleges and universities as in society at large. The prediction a

"See C. John Sommerville, The Decline ofthe Secular University (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 2006), who discusses the difficulty within the secular university context of definingthe human, discussing morality, engaging with religion, and providing any kind of viablevision of the future.'For example, Robert Benne, Quality with Soul: How Six Premier Colleges and UniversitiesKeep Faith with Their Religious Traditions (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: WilliamB. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001), discusses six colleges and universities fromacross the mainline Protestant, Roman CathoKc, and evangelical spectrum, while SamuelSchuman, Seeing the Light: Religious Colleges In Twenty-First-Century America (Baltimore,MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), noteworthy here because he is not himselfa Christian, assesses ten schools across a similar spectrum. See also Douglas Jacobsen andRhonda Hustedt Jacobsen, eds.. The American University in a Postsecular Age (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2008).'Alexander W. Astin, Helen S. Astin, and Jennifer A. Lindholm, Cultivating the Spirit: HowCollege Can Enhance Students' Inner Lives (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010).'See Naomi Schaefer Riley, God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Genera-tion are Changing America (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005), a journalist who visited Christian,Jewish, and even a Buddhist university to talk to students about their religious and spirituallives, and also Trent Sheppard, God on Campus: Sacred Causes and Global Effects (DownersGrove, IL: IVP Books, 2009), who discusses the Campus America prayer initiative. For acase study of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at a Canadian university that illuminatesthe fortunes of religious groups on secular university campuses, see Paul Bramadat, TheChurch on the World's Turf: An Evangelical Christian Group at a Secular University (Oxford andNew York: Oxford University Press, 2000).


182 generation earlier that with further modernization religion would be increas-ingly marginalized or even disappear is turning out to be wrong. The vitality ofreligious institutions of higher education indicates that the secularization thesisis not playing out in this arena. Rather, religious higher education appears to bevibrant and evangelical forms of such even more so. Even in the secular universitycontext, religious initiatives are flourishing.* This suggests that evangeUcal collegesand universities will have opportunities into the foreseeable future to supply thedemand sought by this generation of students. How will they respond?

Within the CCCU, the focus, especially in faculty evaluations, lies in threeareas: teaching, scholarship, and service, and usually in that order. The next threesections of this essay are devoted to each of these areas, broadly understood, inorder to explore tendencies that could foreshadow the shape of the evangelicaluniversity in light of the "revitalization of religion" thesis observed here. We willbegin v/ith scholarship, not necessarily because it is more important but becauseit has generated a disproportionate amount of literature in the field.

From the Scandal of the Evangelical Mind to (Scandalous!) EvangelicalScholarship

Even before appearance of his major work on the secularization of the univer-sity (discussed above), Ceorge Marsden had already begun asking the questionabout why there were no major universities within the tradition of evangelicalChristianity.' By the middle of the 1990s, he was joined by fellow evangelicalhistorian Mark Noll, who lamented what he called the "scandal of the evangeli-cal mind," namely that there was no evangelical mind as such, at least not onethat could sustain the kind of research agenda that universities were supposedto carry.'" The challenges that both Marsden and Noll outlined were numerous.Most concisely, the catch-22 that most Christian higher educators faced was thatthe more specifically Christian goals for education and the habits they broughtwith them to the educational task were at variance from the goals and methodsof advancing knowledge aimed for by modern research imiversities. Further, theapologetic dimension of Christian faith inevitably meant that given the natural-

'For example, as in the success reported by Harvey Cox in teaching a course on Jesus andethics at Harvard University: Harvey G. Cox, When Jesus Came to Harvard: Making MoralChoices Today (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004).'George Marsden, "Why No Major Evangelical Universities? The Loss and Recovery ofEvangelical Advanced Scholarship," in Joel A. Carpenter and Kenneth W. Shipps, eds.. Mak-ing Higher Education Christian: The History and Mission of Evangelical Colleges in America (St.Paul, MN: Christian University Press/Christian College Consortium, and Grand Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987), 294-304. Marsden's substantive responseto his question came ten years later, along with a constructive proposal for remedying thesituation, in George M. Marsden, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship (New York andOxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).'"Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. EerdmansPublishing Company, 1994).


ism prevalent especially in the major scientific disciplines, Christians found 183themselves having to argue against the scientism that pervades wide segments ofthe academic discussion, resulting in turn in a fideistic mentality in some circles.Last but not least, since most Christian scholars, scientists, and educators wereeducated in their disciplines and had little advanced study in the Christian faith,trying to bring explicitly Christian perspectives to bear on their scholarly workwas a major task. So even if Christians could agree that there were good reasonsfor engaging in specifically Christian forms of inquiry (whether apologetically orconstructively"), the question was how this was to be done in a way that engagedthe wider academic, scientific, and scholarly conversations.

The issues are even more complicated than the preceding outlines.'^ It mightbe meaningful at some general level to talk about specifically Christian scholarship,but there were few generically Christian or evangelical institutions; instead, therewere Reformed, Baptistic, Wesleyan, and even Pentecostal ones, and more. So didit make sense to talk even more specifically about Reformed, Baptistic, Wesleyan,or even Pentecostal Christian scholarship, and so forth? Part of the challenge was,as Noll diagnosed it, that pietist and revivalist Christian sensibilities worked inthe long run to inhibit development of the evangelical life of the mind. This as-sessment drew out responses from both Wesleyan and Pentecostal scholars whoacknowledged the challenge but also in some cases suggested that the scandal isless that identified by Noll (that there is no evangelical life of the mind) but thatthe norms for assessing the Christian life of the mind are going to be scandalousunless accommodated (by Noll or others) to the conventions of the world.'^ Yetdid not the postmodern deconstruction of the notion that there were objective,neutral, or universal perspectives invite even more concrete specifications of theevangelical mind, if indeed "one" was to be formed? Was it now asking for toomuch to say that there were even multiple Christian (not to mention Islamic,Buddhist, and so on) ways of engaging the task of religiously irif ormed, inspired,and faithful scholarship?

There are of course other challenges to the building of evangelical universi-ties. What about the fact that much research funding came from sources outside

"As summarized by Alvin Plantinga, "The Twin Pillars of Christian Scholarship," in SeekingUnderstanding: The Stob Lectures, 1986-1998 (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: WilliamB. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001), 117-161.'̂ As indicated by volumes such as Douglas V. Henry and Bob R. Agee, eds.. Faithful Learningand the Christian Scholarly Vocation (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerd-mans Publishing Company, 2003); Richard T. Hughes, The Vocation of the Christian Scholar:How Christian Faith Can Sustain the Life of the Mind, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI and Cam-bridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005); and Todd C. Ream and PerryL. Glanzer, Christian Faith and Scholarship: An Exploration of Contemporary Developments (SanFrancisco, CA: Wiley, 2007), also published as the ASHE Higher Education Report 33:2 (2007).'^See, for example, David Bundy, Henry H. Knight, III, and William Kostlevy in the Wes-leyan Theological Journal 32 (Spring 1997), and Cheryl Bridges Johns, "Partners in Scandal:Wesleyan and Pentecostal Scholarship," PNEUMA: The Journal of the Society for PentecostalStudies 21:2 (1999): 183-197.

Christian Scholar's Review184 the university? How would specifically evangelical institutions compete for such

funds or if not, how could other sources of research funding be generated? Lastbut not least, what about the challenges related to academic freedom at religiousinstitutions? Could exploratory research be fostered given not just the theologicaland doctrinal frameworks of such institutions but also their having to negotiaterelationships with ecclesial constituencies that are often more conservative (inalmost every respect) than are scholars and academics?

Evangelical scholars have begun to devote some concerted attention to sort-ing through these matters. At a fundamentally theological level, there is a grow-ing confidence that Christ-centeredness, a non-negotiable for evangelicals, hassubstantive meaning for the task of evangelical higher education.'^ Yet how doesthis translate meaningfully for Christians working in the sciences, the arts, andthe humanities? Re-enter Mark Noll to sketch the possibility of a Christologicalmodel that not only provides theological motivations for interdisciplinary researchand scholarship but also material principles to guide inquiry in these variousdomains.'^ In contrast to his earlier rather dour diagnosis about the evangelicalscandal, Noll is now more hopeful about the future. However, in the end, he optsto remain at the more generically Christian level, urging "Christian scholarshipby evangelicals more than evangelical Christian scholarship."'^

In many ways, however, discussion regarding the task of evangelical scholar-ship remains at the level of how individual faculty engage their various disciplines.Marsden's pondering at the beginning of this section regarding the absence ofevangelical universities remains to be answered definitely. One institution thathas made serious strides in this direction is Baylor Urüversity, a school profiled asexemplary in a number of the studies we have already mentioned so far. Recently,Baylor concluded its 2012 vision to transition into the ranks of tier-one researchuniversities,'^ and it remains poised to excel as an evangelical institution of highereducation. Interestingly, Baylor has not eschewed its Baptistic roots and history

"Already in the 1980s, the call had been issued by Charles MaUk, A Christian Critique of theUniversity, 2"'' ed. (Waterloo, ON: North Waterloo Academic Press, 1987), that if Christianhigher eiiucation did not revitalize its Christ-centered mission, then higher education ingeneral would continue to flounder. For a more recent restatement of this theme, see DuaneLitfin, Conceiving a Christian College (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: William B.Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), esp. chs. 3-5, and Bradley G. Green, The Gospel andthe Mind: Recovering and Shaping the Intellectual Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2010).'̂ Mark A. Noll, Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK:William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011); see also Mark A. Noll and James Turner,The Future of Christian Learning: An Evangelical and Catholic Dialogue, ed. Thomas AlbertHoward (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2008)."Mark A. Noll, Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind, 165. For another christological vision ofthe life of the mind, see Norman Klassen and Jens Zimmermarm, The Passionate Intellect:Incarnational Humanism and the Future of University Education (Grand Rapids, MI: BakerAcademic, 2006)."See the informative and in many respects inspiring account of this journey in Barry G.Hankins and Donald D. Schmeltekopf, eds.. The Baylor Project: Taking Christian Higher Educa-tion to the Next Level (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2007).


in favor of a blander Christian character, although it remains to he seen to what 285degree it will emhrace more intentionally a more explicitly Baptisfic vision ofhigher education going forward.'^ Baylor's success to date foregrounds the pos-sibility of more tradition-specific approaches that have implications not only forChristian scholarship hut also for teaching and pedagogical methods.

From Worldview Integration to Competing Faith Engagement andPedagogical Models

It is on this note that we turn to consider shifts in how teaching is understoodin evangelical higher education. The dominant model fuses scholarship andteaching under the lahel of faith-learning integrafion." This particular approachreflects the starting point of many if not most faculty in evangelical institutionsof higher education who ohtain their terminal degrees (that is, their "learning")from research universities and find themselves having to ask new questions (forexample, ahout their "faith") in engaging the task of Christian higher education.While what it means to "integrate" learning with faith and vice versa remainscontested, few who are committed to teaching in an evangelical context woulddisagree that this label describes an important process not only for the purposesof nurturing evangelical scholarship in the search for truth hut also for the sakeof students. Teaching has to involve engaging students with the advances inknowledge in any field.

In part hecause some of the initial spKDkespersons for faith-learning integra-tion were Reformed philosophers of repute like Nicholas Wolterstorff and inpart hecause those that led the way in modeling such integration were Reformedinstitutions like Calvin College, the integrationist project articulated in these ven-ues remained by and large an intellectual exercise.^" Part of the result of such anorientation was that the challenge was engaged primarily at the worldview level:Christian faith hrought with it an entire constellation of ideas that contrasted withthe values of secular viewpoints.^' Thus each discipline needed to be interrogated

'*The complex of issues, at least as unfolded in the 1990s, is presented by Larry Lyon andMichael Beaty, "Integration, Secularization, and the Two-Spheres View at Religious Col-leges: Comparing Baylor University with the University of Notre Dame and GeorgetownCollege," Christian Scholar's Review 29:1 (Fall 1999): 83-112."Initially articulated by Arthur F. Holmes, The Idea of a Christian College (1975; rev. ed.. GrandRapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987); see also Harold Heie and David L. Wolfe, eds.. The Reality ofChristian learning: Strategies for Faith-Discipline Integration (St. Paul, MN: Christian Univer-sity Press, and Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), and William Hasker, "Faith-LearningIntegration: An Overview," Christian Scholar's Review 21:3 (1992): 234-248.°̂A number of essays in Nicholas Wolterstorff, Educating for Shalom: Essays on Christian

Higher Education, eds. Clarence W. Joldersma and Gloria Goris Stronks (Grand Rapids, MIand Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), address this matter.'̂See, for example, Robert A. Harris, The Integration of Faith and Learning: A Worldview Approach

(Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2004), and Paul D. Spears and Steven R. Loomis, Educationfor Human Flourishing: A Christian Perspective (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009).


2 S6 to determine when secular assumptions were prevalent and also to identify whatare the more appropriate Christian presuppositions needed to foster and sustainauthentic Christian inquiry. Students are thus expected to be introduced to thetask of worldview analysis and then the application of specifically Christian per-spectives in their understanding.^^ These are intellectual tasks, requiring cognitiveengagement with ideas, their provenances, and their consequences. Educationaccording to this model is about the formation of evangelical student minds.

But is the Reformed model of faith-learning integration the best way forwardfor evangelical scholarship, teaching, and learning? To be sure, we have alreadynoted that Baylor University itself has been shaped as much by its Baptistic iden-tity (that is, an ethos that values soul-competency and the separate of church andstate), as by the integrationist approach, and there have been emerging graduallyarticulations of a wider range of models of Christian higher education includingdistinctively Catholic, Lutheran, Wesleyan, and even Anabaptist/Mennoniterenditions.^^ At one level, each of these can be understood to be engaged in thetask of integration, broadly conceived; at another level, however, the what andthe hov/ of integration differs in each case. While Lutherans may in some respectsresonate with the distinction between Christian faith and secular learning, RomanCatholics may be more inclined to see the former fulfilling the latter in some waywhile Wesleyans (and Pentecostals) are as interested in the formation of the heartand the hands, alongside that of the mind. '̂'

More recently, awareness has emerged even within Reformed circles that theclassical faith-learning model is oftentimes overly intellectualisfic to the (mostlyunintended) exclusion of engaging students holistically.^' There is a growing

^Currently InterVarsity Press publishes a Christian Worldview Integration series edited byJ. P. Moreland, a philosopher at Biola University's Talbot School of Theology, and FrancisBeckwith, a philosopher at Baylor University. There are, as of the time of this writing (sum-mer 2012), seven volumes in the series, on communication, business, literature, philosophy,education, political science, and psychology.^See, for example, Richard T. Hughes and William B. Adrian, eds.. Models for Christian HigherEducation: Strategies for Success in the Twenty-First Century (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge,UK: WiLiam B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997).^"Wesleyan formulations include Philip W. Eaton, Engaging the Culture, Changing the World:The Christian University in a Post-Christian World (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011),and Daniel Castelo, ed.. Holiness as a Liberal Art (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2012);note also that the predominant Anabaptist flavor of Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda HustedtJacobsen, Scholarship and Christian Faith: Enlarging the Conversation (Oxford: Oxford Univer-sity Press, 2004), is also suffused with a Wesleyan tinge. Coulter and I are working on aPentecostal response (see note 2).'̂See especially James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural

Formation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), and David I. Smith and James K. A.Smith, eds.. Teaching and Christian Practices: Reshaping Faith and Learning (Grand Rapids, MIand Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Pubhshing Company, 2011). See also Todd C.Ream, Jerry A. Pattengale, and David L. Riggs, eds.. Beyond Integration? Inter/DisciplinaryPossibilities for the Future of Christian Higher Education (Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian Uni-versity Press, 2012), for further reflections, partly in dialogue with Smith, about the need toexplore Christian higher education beyond the integration model, especially with the turn

Whence and Whither in Evangelical Higher Education?—A Review Essayrecognition that while a university education is certainly about the formation of 287minds, Christian education cannot neglect, and has historically almost alwaysemphasized, the heart and the hands. But the formation of these aspects of stu-dent lives requires other than merely cognitive methods of teaching and learn-ing. If human hearts include desires, affections, and hopes, how are such to benurtured? Part of the answer to this is that evangelical educators have to considerhow learning involves practice and this presents an open door to reconsideringhow the wide range of specifically historic Christian practices can be adapted forevangelical higher education. Another part of the answer is that there has to bemore of a seamlessness between curricular and co-curricular or extra-curricularactivities within the Christian university experience.^^

The point to be emphasized is not that there is or ought to be a diminishingemphasis on inculcating evangelical minds, but that the formation of heads, hearts,and lives has to be holistic, both in theory and in pedagogical and educationalpractice. In effect, evangelical schools have always recognized that there is moreto higher education than the intellectual and cognitive dimensions suggested bythe dominant research university model, and with the contemporary post-secularclimate, religious institutions in general and evangelical ones in particular mightbe well-positioned to take a leading role in modeling and theorizing about whata full-orbed educational experience looks like.

From the Facts-Values Distinction to the Renewal of Spiritual andMoral Formation

This leads to our consideration of service. Historically this has involved facultyroles in department-, school-, or university-wide committees, or other ways inwhich faculty have contributed to their churches, local communities, or profes-sional associations. I suggest that we think about these more mundane, if no lessnecessary, tasks of university life in terms of the values and goals of higher educa-tion that are intertwined with, rather than dissociated from, the quest for truth.For Christians, if not for people of religious faith, service involves the vocationaloutworking of their spiritual commitments and moral sensibilities. Hence servicerequirements, while a specified criterion for tenure and promotion considerationin many institutions, can be understood in part as an expression of the unifiedand holistically formed vocation.^'

Within the dominant secular and research university model, faculty certainlyalso have service requirements. However, such has often been instrumentalizedwith regard to what it contributes to the functioning of the university. In actuality.

to interdisciplinarity in scholarship.^'See V. James Mannoia Jr., Christian Liberal Arts: An Education that Goes Beyond (Lanham,MD: Rowman & Littlefleld, 2000), esp. part III.^'As articulated in Michael Robert Miller, ed.. Doing More with Life: Connecting ChristianHigher Education to a Call to Service (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007).

Christian Scholar's Review188 then, "service" refers to the functional aspects of university existence rather than

to its core aims: committees are essential to ensure the real work of the universitycan proceed - that of research, the promulgation of learning, and the cultivationof the intellect. Part of the secularization of the university over the course of thelate nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, involved distinguishingtruth (connected to research and free/open inquiry), from goodness (connectedto service and morality), not to mention beauty (associated with culture and thearts).^ The result was not only the marginalization of religion but also of moralitywithin the university context.

The research university has since been struggling to put back together whatthe development of especially scientific disciplinary specialization has fragmented.Thus more recent theorists have called for a reconsideration of the relationshipbetween education and spirituality, probing their confluence rather than dispa-rateness.^' Evangelical philosophers such as J. P. Moreland have also begun toaddress these matters more explicitly, albeit deploying categories from theologicalanthropology to make their case.™ Attending to the spiritual aspects of human lifefor Moreland involves not general discussion of spirituality but explicit attentionto the work of the Holy Spirit. This raises the question of whether overcoming thescandal of the (non-existent) evangelical mind might involve not only a robustChristological vision but also a pneumatically inspired one, and if so, what thatmight mean or look like.

Evangelical higher education has never abandoned attention to the spiri-tual and moral formation of its students in part because they have by and largeremained as teaching colleges rather than developed into research universities.Still, little explicit theoretical reflection on what this involves has appeared, untilmore recently.'' Such an emphasis surely is consistent with the goals not only ofancient píHíieífl but also of the liberal arts tradition, broadly conceived, which wasto form the moral character of students so that they could develop into citizenscapable of serving the polis. Yet the realization is that the cultivation of moralidentity cannot be limited to formal curricular activity since the virtues are more"caught" through imitation of exemplars than they are taught or learned throughreading and writing. Hence a more seamless approach to the curriculum is re-quired, one that provides an ethos or set of traditions of practice through whichexemplars can model and mentor the moral life. For Christians, the goal is not

^Julie A. Reuben, The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and theMarginalization of Morality (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996).'̂See, for example, Parker J. Palmer, To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Jour-

ney (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), who argues that there ought to be a morecohesive blend of the head and the heart.™J. P. Moreland, Kingdom Triangle: Recover the Christian Mind, Renovate the Soul, Restore theSpirit's Power (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007)."Leading the way are Douglas V. Henry and Michael D. Beaty, eds.. The Schooled Heart: MoralFormation in American Higher Education, Studies in Religion and Higher Education 4 (Waco,TX: Baylor University Press, 2007).


merely to produce sages but to transform "human animals into saints,"^^ in effect 189to redeem human identities.

Yet as Wolterstorff has incisively urged, the formation of moral agents oughtto be motivated by the more overarching Christian vision of a peaceful and justsociety. In a much-reprinted essay, "Teaching for Justice," Wolterstorff calls at-tention to what he calls "the wounds of humanity" and urges that an educationalenterprise that does not engage with these realities of a sinful and fallen worldfails its students, not to mention all connected to the educational task.^' Neededis a holistic model focused on nurturing human nourishing understood in termsof "people living in right relationships v/ith God, themselves, each other, andnature," and directed to the achievement of justice, viewed as "the ground ofShalom, and [for which] responsible action is its vehicle."** Higher education thatis Christian thus instills not only moral values but also a moral vision that inspirespursuit of the common good.̂ ^

The heart of this essay has overviewed some of the most pertinent literaturerelated to evangelical commitments to scholarship, teaching, and service in thewake of trends countering the secularization thesis in higher education. We haveobserved three accents in the conversation: discussions regarding the emergingcharacter of what Noll calls "the evangelical mind"; proposals for rethinkingwhat has traditionally been identified as faith-learning integration that has builton, but sought not to be constrained by, the worldview model; and a recovery ofpre-modern forms oipaideia that have emphasized both spiritual and moral forma-tion as part of a holistic educational program. It would appear that these are allimportant aspects of the contemporary education task and also that evangelicalsought to be primed to contribute to the conversation both within their own circlesbut also through engaging the wider academic conversation.

Whither the Future of Evangelical Higher Education?

Is the future for evangelical higher education as bright as the above pictureappears to portray? While not desiring to end on a pessimistic note, it is importantalso to highlight in this survey dispatches from the broader discussion. We willclose by briefly attending to three interrelated sets of concerns: regarding what itmeans for evangelical institutions of higher education to maintain a relationship

is the subtitle of the concluding chapter to Perry L. Glanzer and Todd C. Ream,Christianity and Moral Identity in Higher Education (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).''Nicholas Wolterstorff, "Teaching for Justice," in Joel A. Carpenter and Kenneth W. Shipps,eds.. Making Higher Education Christian: The History and Mission of Evangelical Colleges inAmerica (St. Paul, MN: Christian University Press/Christian College Consortium, and GrandRapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987), 201-216, at 209.^Wolterstorff, Educating for Shalom, xiii and xiv.''See also Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Educating for Life: Reflections on Christian Teaching andLearning, eds. Gloria Goris Stronks and Clarence W. Joldersma (Grand Rapids, MI: BakerAcademic, 2002), part rV.

Christian Scholar's Review290 with the church; the economic dimension of higher education; and the role of

media and the new technologies in an emerging glohal context. Again, we cannothe exhaustive in what follows, so only an outline of the issues will he sketched.

FiTSt, what does it mean to be a Christian university? Stanley Hauerwas isdoubtful that we are in a good position to answer this question in part becauseeducational institutions lack connecfions to churches that are capahle of engagingthem in a meaningful way.'' Put another way, the problem is that universifies areaccredited hy all sorts of non-Christian agencies even as the "ground rules" forhigher educafion have been established by liheral secular universities. In fact, then,while many evangelical institutions are church-related, they operate according toother norms that are oftentimes contrary to the values of the gospel. But is it pos-sible to reconstruct the contemporary Christian university on ecclesially-definednorms and values? How might this be accomplished without turning universitiesinto churches? Or to return to Hauerwas' quesfion: where are the churches thatcan come alongside and hoth support but also challenge Christian universitiesto be formed first according to the gospel rather than the world's standards ofconventions? The challenge for the present and future is how to articulate anecclesially-informed vision of Christian higher education that can he owned hythe church and Christian academia alike.'''

Second, however, the proliferation of private and even religious institutionsof higher education is possible only within a democratic capitalist political econ-omy. Hauerwas indicates that this challenge is the flipside of the preceding oneregarding the relationship hetween the university and the church; that in effect,modern universities are products of the modern nation state with its economicinvestments and thus are heholden to purposes related to the perpetuation of thepolitical and economic status quo.'* Hence the question concerns not only thesolvency of academic institutions hut their roles within the contemporary glohaleconomy." When we consider the market pressures that all institufions of highereducation are suhject to - evangelical ones not exempted - such as recruitmentand retention of students, the production of knowledge, the ever-present quest

^Starüey Hauerwas, The State of the University: Academic Knowledges and the Knowledge ofGod (Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008); see also Michael L. Budde and John Wright,eds.. Conflicting Allegiances: The Church-Based University in a Liberal Democratic Society (GrandRapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2004).^'What might come with a strong ecclesial identity is a more counter-cultural posture towardthe broader culture, including academic culture; with weakened ecclesial ties, religiousinstitutions are more liable to cultural accommodation - as noted by George Marsden inhis review of Burtchaell's lamenting the long history of institutional disestablishment fromtheir churches: Marsden, "Dying Lights - Review Essay," Christian Scholar's Review 29:1(1999): 177-181, esp. 180 - therein lies the tension.^In Hauerwas, The State ofthe University, passim.''See also Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades, Academic Capitalism and the New Economy:Markets, State, and Higher Education (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 2004), and James Engell and Anthony Dangerfield, Saving Higher Education in the Ageof Money (Charlottesville, VA, and London: University of Virginia Press, 2005).


for funding including access to the government's role in such, not to mention the 292emergence of "for profit" educational enterprises, it is clear that education hasbecome a commodity in many respects subject to economic agents and networksfar beyond the church. Evangelical higher educators will need to be vigilant inthinking through how immersion in the present neoliberal regime can potentiallyundermine theological commitments in the educational endeavor. Any responsewill need to maintain integrity in not pursuing all that is alluring but that liesoutside the institutional vision, mission, and agenda.

The third set of concerns and challenges are already foreshadowed in thepreceding discussion. Market forces are leading evangelical universities online andin search of other forms of expansion and revenue-production. The accessibilityof the Internet is slowly but assuredly transforming higher education,""' and mayeven threaten the concept of the residential campus in the not-too-distant future.Thus there is a real sense in which higher education is going global, not merelyin terms of education being a global phenomenon but in terms of institutionalprocesses involving global mediation, connecting people across national andregional borders to ideas and other educational commodities. Educational institu-tions are also exploding across the global South,"' with many already steeped inthe available media and technology even though they lack adequate theoreticaland conceptual rationales for engaging with these discerningly. Yet there is a realsense in which what is happening around the world is merely imitating trendsafoot in the northern hemisphere. North American evangelicals thus have an ob-ligation to lead the way in thinking clearly about the use of virtual technologiesin the educational enterprise even as they also need to consider what it means tobe educational in our newly emerging global context."^

Engaging matters across these various fronts will be challenging for evangeli-cal higher educators, but they are necessary for our time. If creatively addressedgoing forward, evangelical colleges and universifies will be more poised to providethe kind of global leadership for the twenty-first century to which they are called.This might even build up the church, a welcome development for churches thatare inclined to be invested in the task of Christian higher education."^

""See, for example, Alfred Rovai, The Internet and Higher Education: Achieving Global Reach(Oxford: Chandos Publishing, 2009)."'See Joel Carpenter, "Christian Higher Education as a Worldwide Movement," in NickLantinga, ed., Christian Higher Education in the Global Context: Implications for Curriculum,Pedagogy, and Administration (Sioux City, IA: Dordt College Press, 2008), 337-352."̂ I discuss some aspects of the latter in my article, "Evangelical Paideia Overlooking the PacificRim: On the Opportunities and Challenges of Globalization for Christian Higher Educa-tion," Christian Scholar's Review (under review), while Coulter and I will also be addressingthe challenges of virtual education in our Finding the Holy Spirit at the Christian University."'Much of the research for this article was done while serving as an inaugural fellow atBiola University's Center for Christian Thought in La Mirada, California, during the springsemester 2012. I am grateful to Center co-directors Gregg Ten Elshoff, Steve Porter, andThomas Crisp for the invitation, as well as to Center assistant director Todd Vasquez andgraduate assistant Evan Rosa for their assistance. Much appreciation is also due to dean


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Michael Palmer for granting physical leave from Regent for this opportunity, and to CSRreviews editor Todd Ream for wonderfully facilitating the article in so many ways. Last butnot least, Todd Ream and his co-editor Perry Glanzer, Dale Coulter, and Vince Le providedfeedback on a previous draft of this essay; but they are not to be held responsible for anyerrors of fact and interpretation that remain. Informal and formal conversations I had withmy fellow colleagues Jonathan Anderson, Dariusz Brycko, Brad Christenson, Natasha Du-quette, Elizabeth Hall, George Hunsinger, and Craig Slane touched on many of the topicsdiscussed above and have irijformed this article variously.

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