The faith community includes some of the most brilliant minds in academe. Yet many have felt compelled to check their faith at the doors of our educational institutions. Intimidated by a daunting amalgam of naturalism and postmodernism, they have been silenced by secularists insistence that faith has no place in the quest for knowledge.
In Faith and Learning on the Edge, David Claerbaut refutes this fallacy. He shows how those who espouse a values-neutral approach to knowledge and research fail to live up to their own standard. In capitulating to them by separating faith from learning, Christians abdicate their responsibility toward both higher education and the culture at large. Believers must reintegrate their faith as a crucial component of learning, insists the author, and he explores ways in which this can be accomplished.
Examining the worldviews that govern contemporary research and academe, Claerbaut unmasks the often vehement, sometimes subtle, disdain toward Christian thinking in both mainline universities and Christian institutions. More than that, he shows why believers who step in to fill the deep need for such thinking stand on firm intellectual groundÂindeed, have the advantage in terms of fact and reason. And he considers how to apply a faith-and-learning approach across a broad spectrum of disciplines in the physical sciences, the arts and humanities, and the behavioral sciences.
Praised by Protestant and Catholic scholars, Faith and Learning on the Edge looks at such issues as: Christian education versus "baptized paganism" Naturalism, postmodernism, and their impact The high-stakes politics of the academic mainstream The nature of "faith and learning" Being true to the role of learning in Christian scholarship The mindset of the Christian in the physical sciences Guidelines for the Christian artist Philosophy under a Christian lens Faith and the mental health models Sociology: faith in the eye of naturalism . . . and much more.
For provosts, academic administrators, professors, college and graduate students, and everyone interested in the state of education, Faith and Learning on the Edge offers insights that are illuminating, convincing, and convicting.
About the Author
David Claerbaut has taught at a variety of Christian and mainline research universities. Currently the president of Dr. David Claerbaut and Associates, a consulting firm, he has published numerous articles and is the author of more then ten books, including Urban Ministry, Social Problems, The Reluctant Defender, and Urban Ministry in a Global Age.
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Faith and Learning on the Edge Copyright by David Claerbaut Requests for information should be addressed to: Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Claerbaut, David. Faith and learning on the edge : a bold new look at religion in higher education / David Claerbaut. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 1. Church and collegeUnited States. 2. Postmodernism and higher educationUnited States. I. Title. LCC56 'dc22 This edition printed on acid-free paper. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version. NIV. Copyright , , by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. The website addresses recommended throughout this book are offered as a resource to you. These websites are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of Zondervan, nor do we vouch for their content for the life of this book. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Interior design by Beth Shagene Printed in the United States of America 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 /.DC/ 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 1 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION OR BAPTIZED PAGANISM? A Christian college at which I once lectured held an annual 'Festival of Faith' week. To heighten interest, the seven-day event often featured a unifying theme and a well-known guest speaker. Much was made of the week. Signage abounded, student volunteers facilitated the implementation of activities, and faculty members were enjoined to promote the events in their classrooms. Despite noble intentions, the week rarely proved to be a raging success. Sometimes this was due to the theme. A week focusing on what is now euphemistically termed 'racial reconciliation,' for example, engendered fierce, divisive controversy. One year the theme was 'Faith and Learning,' certainly an appropriate topic for a Christian college. The outcome was, in a word, calamitous. A cynical columnist offered a witty summation of the week in the student newspaper, writing something to the effect of 'Faith and learning met on campus last week, and they didn't hit it off very well.' Regrettably, this columnist's cryptic comment sums up much of my experience in higher education. My career has exposed me to nearly the entire spectrum of American higher educational institutionsconservative evangelical, mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, private nonsectarian, as well as the mainstream state university setting. If my experience is at all typicaland I fear that it isfaith and learning often do not hit it off very well on many campuses, even Christian ones. Faith and Learning: A Memoir Having graduated from a public high school, my faith-and-learning odyssey began in the late s at a Christian college that marketed itself without apology as one that taught its courses 'from a Christian perspective.' Apparently, most of that teaching occurred during classes I cut or slept through, because I recall scarcely a single class session devoted entirely to providing an overtly Christian perspective from which to view the material studied. I am not talking about the 'hard sciences' herechemistry, physics, mathematics, and the like. I am referring to English, psychology, and even philosophy classes. I was disappointed. And unprepared. Rebellious, agnostic studentsmany of whom had been forced by their parents to attend a Christian collegeboldly proclaimed their unbelieving views in dormitory bull sessions. 'There is no true altruism,' stated one cynical student in one late-night verbal free-for-all. His point was that all behavior is somehow self-motivated. Though specifically a theological point, he was taking a shot at the Christian notion of self-denial. Whether or not he was correct was not important at the time. What I recall was how immobilized I was by his ideological challenge. I felt intellectually unarmed, devoid of any ammunition to answer this and other examples of unbelief, from the nihilism of Nietzsche to the scoffing atheism of Marx. I would have settled for an occasional 'Why I'm a Christian' profession of faith from one of the learned faculty. Though hardly academic in nature, it would certainly have been helpful to have at least one of these genuinely impressive minds express the reason for his or her life commitment. No such testimonies were rendered in my hearing. In fact, issues of the faith were invariably dealt with in distancing, cognitive terms. It seemed the faculty members were uncomfortable with the faith side of the faith-and-learning nexus. The college's academic atmosphere, suffused with efforts to appear intellectually sophisticated, stood in sharp contrast to the institution's efforts to promote its Christian identity. Although terms such as 'world-and-life view' were tossed about, I do not recall one memorable personal or intellectual expression as to why these scholars had adopted a Christian perspective on reality. While I do remember a beloved English professor, who worshiped in the same church I attended, pointing out that Hemingway was a nihilist, I do not remember any Christian critique of this famous but depressing author. In fact, when in a term paper I attacked the celebrated author for feeding his readers 'the bread of despair,' the professor commented that I was perhaps being a bit unfair to Hemingway. Another English professor, a man whose dyspeptic disposition seemed more reflective of Hemingway's worldview than that of a grateful Christian's, made no secret of his disdain for 'come-to-Jesus talk' in the classroom. He found such testimonials anti-intellectual, even embarrassing, well beneath the elevated academic bar he proudly set for his classroom. This esteemed professor seemed far more comfortable chortling about how Chaucer's, Miller's, and Reeve's tales 'held up a mirror to human nature,' as he put it mirthfully, than examining the life philosophies of Chaucer and how they were expressed in his writings. Yet another professor seemed to glory in the bawdiness of Donne's early poetry but said little about the world-and-life views of the seventeenth-century poets under study. James Orr, in his book The Christian View of God and the World, claims there is a coherent, unified Christian view of reality clearly distinguishable from other theories and notions.1 If so, I would have liked to have such a worldview applied to literature. I wondered why certain basic questions were not addressed in such a self-proclaimed Christian college. For example, why should a Christian scholar study English? What seeming universal truths and symbols did the 'better' authors employ that could inform the Christian thinker? What cunning assumptions were kneaded into the literature of some of the most celebrated writers? What guidelines, if any, might a Christian follow if he or she aspired to become a novelist? The foregoing questions are merely suggestive. Other students, many of whom had to be experiencing their own crises of faith, almost certainly had some questions of their own. We remained silent, I suspect, out of fear of appearing simplistic and naive. The atmosphere simply did not seem to invite such blatant workings out of faith and learning. But it should have. I think it is reasonable to expect that an institution that proudly and unabashedly asserts that the instruction carried on within its walls is uniquely Christian would have engaged at least some questions of this nature. It was much the same in other classes.
