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October 12, 2005
To those people who are now finding these musings...
The reason I keep the "real blog" these days on Moveable Type, and not on Xanga or LJ or any of those associated sites, is because I expect it'd be a bit easier for somebody who cared about such things to find an old post and reference it appropriately. And if I'm going to be arrogant enough to believe that My Words Actually Mean Something, I'm going to be equally arrogant enough to believe that somebody might want to read something I wrote six months ago in the light of current events.
Hence, I am so full of myself as to link back to this post I made when I first got this thing set up, because several of the observations in that post I feel are still as relevant at this point in our history as a college.
I'm still a young enough punk that I really don't fit well into anybody's camp here, and looking at both camps, I'm not thinking I really want to fit in either. I think it's important for me to ask my own questions about what my priorities are in setting out my academic path - one in which I put equal priority on academic excellence, care for students, and Christian ministry and mission. I don't want to be so independent as to "reinvent the wheel" - I acknowledge that not only have many people gone before me on this path, many people have gone before me on this path AT SHORTER COLLEGE - but I think there is a lot that will be more satisfying if I work it out for myself.
Watching what is going on right now in Christian academia - not just at Shorter, but at places like Baylor, Louisiana College, and others - is part of me working it out for myself. What are the schools' administrations trying to accomplish? What are they actually doing to accomplish it (and how productive/counterproductive is what they're doing)? What resistance are they meeting? Does it come from fear of losing academic collegiality, of losing academic integrity, of losing their Christian nature, of losing money or power?
I can't even honestly say that I've come to any overarching conclusions, except for overarching support for my original thesis (that evangelical Christians abdicated intellectual life about 100 years and change ago, and there still isn't a consensus in the broad population that this abdication was a Very Bad Thing, even as intellectual life has come to be dominated by people who care not one whit about religion and theology in general, to say nothing of evangelical Christianity, and evangelical Christians complain about this loudly but do nothing about it). But hopefully the observations made will help me be a better leader when that time comes (whether that's two years from now or twenty).
Holy crap, I meant for that to just be a link and not a new set of musings. Sorry about that.
Posted by Chuck at October 12, 2005 05:47 AM
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Comments
there is nothing to be sorry for. interesting and thought-provoking, as always. and otherwise, thanks for the linkage in the previous post... interesting reading material.
Posted by: Catie at October 12, 2005 10:36 AM