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August 12, 2006

Christian Higher Education

I never clean up well, because I always find things while cleaning up and wind up thinking. Thinking and cleaning up do NOT go hand in hand.

What I found on this round of cleaning out the office is an essay I printed out a year ago, and that is slapping me upside the head all over again. It's called Christian Academe vs. Christians in Academe, by Kenneth Elzinga, who teaches economics at the University of Virginia, of all places. It was thoroughly exciting to find it now because I've been getting comments lately about what it means for Shorter to be a Chrsitian school. It's a good question, honestly. It's a question that demands asking.

If you are interested in how Christians and education come together, you need to read the whole thing. It's not an argument that I can pull little bits here and there out and have them stand on their own; the whole thing is the argument. (Which is why I printed it out but never posted it anywhere. I couldn't post it without posting seven pages' worth!) But let me pull out two takes in particular.

First, I've gotten a lot of people grumbling around me about the morality of the students around them, and marveling that some students 'round here don't even go to church and believe, and what's up with that?

Elzinga tells you exactly what's up with that:

Christian higher education does not start with Christian students. That may surprise you. But I would hope Christian institutions do not have a Christian litmus test for students.

If students want to be a part of Christian higher education, they should be welcome. The Christian faith is defensible; the Christian faith is compelling; the Christian faith is true. So let unbelievers live and learn in the environment of Christian higher education and test the faith.

Jesus did not throw out Doubting Thomas. Christian higher education should be a place that welcomes Doubting Thomases, as students.

But Christian higher education should be dominated by a faculty who are followers of Jesus. The majority of faculty at a school of Christian higher education should be Christians. The institution makes no sense if that is not the case. Students are transients; they come and go. Christian higher education is defined by a core of faculty who believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:16), that every thought is to be made captive to Him and they are not ashamed of the gospel.

And second, if you were to ask me the one thing that I am proudest of in being at Shorter, it's that I see so much tangible evidence that we fulfill a vision of this sort:

I would expect Christian higher education to be full of professors who mentor students. Not just teach them chemistry and accounting; not just teach them biology and Spanish; but model out for them how to walk with Jesus. Not because these faculty members have mastered how to do this, but because they have been pilgrims longer, because they have experienced more often the consequences of sin and redemption.

I have been surprised, in my travels, at how few faculty members in Christian higher education mentor students. When I have asked why, the answer I have heard is: well, that’s for the Dean of the Chapel to do, or that’s the job of the Dean of Students office.

I am an economist, so I appreciate that answer. It is right out of Adam Smith; it appeals to what Adam Smith called the specialization and division of labor.

But I can restrain my enthusiasm for the answer. To me, it means that Christian higher education has professors who are not investing in the lives of students beyond teaching them chemistry and accounting and biology and Spanish.

But you can learn chemistry and accounting and biology and Spanish anywhere; and probably at less cost than in Christian higher education.

The implied answer, of course, is that some things are way more important than money. And may my own priority set never change.

Posted by Chuck at August 12, 2006 01:57 PM

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