One clear realization to emerge from â?¦ Christianity and the Soul of the University â?¦ is that Protestants may actually have a more difficult time maintaining a meaningfully Christian university than Catholics. As Daniel Williams, a religion professor at Baylor, explains, â??antitraditionalist and antidogmatic perspectives are built into the Protestant religious ethos,â?? and an emphasis on private judgment and personal experience â??as an arbiter of ultimate meaningâ?? render articulable institutional boundaries elusive. This skepticism of tradition and community can leave Protestants rudderless on issues not addressed explicitly by Scripture, which may help explain why Protestant schools that do achieve a robust religious identity tend to rely on rigid codes of conduct.
Judging by the contributorsâ?? frequent invocations of John Paul IIâ??s Ex Corde Ecclesiae as a helpful statement of the Christian universityâ??s mission, Protestants may have realized that Catholics have some insight on how to weave the Gospel into the fabric of a community. But Catholics also stand to learn from Protestants, who can bring a fresh focus on the simplicity and centrality of the Christian story. In this regard Steven Harmon, a theology professor at Campbell University, urges academics to reclaim the story â??as the first-order foundation of Christian intellectual communityâ?? in order to provide â??common ground on which faculty from multiple denominational traditions and theological perspectives may stand together while making their own distinctive contributions to the second-order argument that the integration of faith and learning entails.â??
Perhaps the bookâ??s most helpful contribution is its identification of essential qualities that will mark an intellectual community founded on the truth claims of Jesus Christ. Three in particular stand out.
First, the Christian virtue of hospitality, according to Aurelie Hagstrom, a theology professor at Providence College, â??reflects a radically different and compelling alternative to tolerance.â?? While tolerance is a â??false sort of engagementâ?? given its tendency â??to trivialize what is most important to us,â?? hospitality demands â??a personal, authentic encounter that is self-emptying and open even to those with whom we have deep philosophical, theological, and political disagreements.â?? Under this view, the universityâ??s sponsoring religious community acts as host, and community members from other religious traditions are welcomed as guests. In todayâ??s hyper-egalitarian campus environment, attaching the â??guestâ?? label to non-Christians will smack of paternalism, but the host-guest paradigm may be inescapable if the Christian story is to have a privileged role as a shaper of the institution and its mission.
Second, if the personal engagement contemplated by hospitality is to be authentic, conflict must be embracedâ??even facilitatedâ??at a Christian university. Steven Harmon insists that Christian identity is hindered by a fear, â??not of communal theological reflection per se, but rather of the intellectual conflict arising from this much-needed conversation.â?? Borrowing from the work of the noted philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, Harmon reminds us that a vital tradition will embody continuing conflict, and that a tradition without conflict is a dead or dying one. This can help reframe our orientation. Passionate debates over the implications of a universityâ??s Christian heritage are too often taken as signals that the heritage is in jeopardy; instead, they may be signs of life.
Third, if the Christian story is to be at the center of the communityâ??s identity, Christian worship must be at the center of the communityâ??s life. Several contributors point out the feebleness of any Christian community that lacks a shared worship experience. Especially for a faculty that purports to be more than the sum of its parts, a regular opportunity to participate in worship together is an essential ingredient. A Christian intellectual community must build up more than the intellect.
Robert K. Vischer Review of Douglas Henry & Michael Beatty (eds) Christianity and the Soul of the University: Faith as a Foundation for Intellectual Community
And see also John Sommerville The Decline of the Secular University: Why the Academy Needs Religion
