Category Archives: Christian College

How the American Education System Became Anti-Family, Anti-Capitalist, Anti-White, Anti-Western, Anti-Christian, and Hopelessly Utopian: A Review of America’s Cultural Revolution (Part Three A)

Introduction

I come from a family of educators and have been involved with education as a student or a college professor for most of my life. I’ve thought a great deal about education and have written extensively about it on this blog. To an extent far beyond animals, human beings are capable of learning from their individual and collective experience and of passing this knowledge and skill to the generations that follow. Culture is that body of knowledge, skills, practices and creations accumulated and passed down through time. Human beings begin learning the minute they are born and continue the rest of their lives. Education is the process of “passing down” human culture to succeeding generations and is an intentional activity involving teaching and learning. Because acquiring the knowledge and skills available in one’s social world is necessary for survival and enjoying the goods of life available in a particular culture, education is valued by parents for their children and by individuals for themselves. For most people, individual and family interests are the driving forces for expending huge amounts of time, energy and money on education, kindergarten through college. But educational institutions often subordinate family and individual goals to other interests. This is especially true of institutions that are in some way (e.g., government funding) insulated from market forces and answerability to parents.

The state has always had an interest in education, and its interests are determined by its understanding of its scope and goals. There is no guarantee that the interests of the state will coincide with those of parents and individual students. As the United States of America transitioned from an agricultural to an industrial, and finally to a technological society, the government’s economic interest in education changed accordingly. But producing skilled workers for industry and technology is not the only reason for state involvement in education. Producing “good” citizens has always been a major goal, and a “good” citizen is defined as one that accepts and supports the basic values that the state holds necessary to its stability and to the general welfare. State funded and administered schools have never been value neutral.

If government schools champion values that are widely held, traditional, and limited in scope, most people hardly notice, because they, too, hold them. A list of such values might include individual civil liberties, economic freedom, hard work, respect for law, social peace, reward for merit, majority rule accompanied by minority rights, respect for marriage and family, religious liberty, etc. There have always been minority groups that dissent from many values held by the majority of people, and in response they’ve founded Christian and other private schools or educated their children at home. But what if the government with its vast system of bureaucracies gets captured by a small group that champions a value system very different from that held by the vast majority of people? What if the American educational system came to be controlled by a philosophy that taught that the value system that privileged individual civil liberties, economic freedom, hard work, respect for law, social peace, reward for merit, majority rule accompanied by minority rights, respect for marriage and family, and religious liberty was systemically racist, heterosexist, homophobic, colonialist, and sexist? And what if the new education regime taught that the only way to reform this corrupt society was to transform all the values that legitimate it by subordinating them to the New Left’s Neo-Marxist values of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Moreover, what if these transformed values were taught to every child in America from kindergarten through graduate school by means of a method called “Critical Pedagogy”?

Dystopian? Nightmarish? Orwellian? Agreed!

But according to Rufo, this nightmare is now our new reality. Whether you send your child to kindergarten or to college, you can expect that your values—the ones mentioned above—will be attacked, subverted, and if possible, replaced by values of the New Left.

Next time we will let Rufo tell us how the nightmare became a reality, how a small group of Neo-Marxists gained almost total control over the American educational system.

Academic Freedom and Christian Education (Part Three)

1 Reply

This essay concludes my series on academic freedom in American universities and colleges. I posted earlier instalments on July 15, 2023 and August 28 2023. As we discovered in the first two essays, academic freedom is a contested concept. Simple appeals to academic freedom soon find themselves mired in disputes about the nature and limits of such freedom. Even in public and private secular colleges the idea is a bone of contention. And this dispute expands inevitably to disagreements about the nature of the teaching profession, the academic ideal, and the place of the university in society. Your stance on these subjects determines how you understand academic freedom. Not surprisingly, then, the nature of academic freedom is also disputed within self-designated Christian colleges and between Christian colleges and secular colleges.

Diversity Among “Christian” Colleges

Great diversity reigns among “Christian” colleges. We must map this diversity before we examine the distinction between academic freedom in Christian colleges and academic freedom in secular colleges. I spoke above of “self-designated” Christian colleges. I did so because there is as much diversity among Christian colleges as there is among “Christian” churches and individual Christians. Some church related colleges have so assimilated to the national culture that only vestiges of Christianity remain. Perhaps they require a course or two in religion, maintain a chapel on campus, and employ a chaplain, but otherwise they differ little from their secular counterparts. Their religious studies departments are very progressive, and there are no confessional requirements for students or faculty. The scope of academic freedom in these colleges tracks perfectly with secular schools.

At the other end of the spectrum are colleges that require administrators, board members, faculty and students to adhere to a list of orthodox beliefs. Christian symbols permeate the campus, occasions for worship are numerous and attendance is mandatory, and faith-affirming classes in Bible and theology are required. Expressions of faith and prayer in the classroom are encouraged. Strict moral conduct by students and faculty is expected. Continued employment is contingent on abiding by these rules in life, teaching, and research. Confessional boundaries determine the limits of academic freedom.

Between these two extremes lies a spectrum of self-designated “Christian” colleges. In his book Quality With Soul: How Six Premier Colleges and Universities Keep Faith with Their Religious Traditions (Eerdmans, 2001), Robert Benne lists four types of “Christian” colleges: Orthodox, Critical-Mass, Intentionally Pluralist, and Accidentally Pluralist (p. 49).

The question whether or not a particular college that self-designates as Christian really is Christian is open for debate in the same way a church’s or an individual’s claim to be Christian is open for debate. I am willing to admit that various models of the Christian college are possible, just as I am willing to accept some flexibility of belief among churches and individual believers. But there are limits. Outright denial or malicious neglect of core Christian doctrine or abandonment of Christian morality belie claims to Christian character. A college that designates itself as Christian should maintain a constant internal debate about the meaning of that designation.

When a person claims to be a Christian it is reasonable to assume that they sincerely hold the central beliefs proclaimed in the New Testament and wish to be an active and faithful disciple of Jesus Christ. Likewise, when an institution advertises itself as “Christian” it should embody this very same confession in its institutional mission, policies, and code of conduct. The Christian faith encompasses every dimension of life. It is a way of thinking, feeling, and living. Compatibility with the Christian mission of a Christian college should be a determining factor—equal to technical competence—in administrative, faculty, and staff hiring, and in retention, tenure, and promotion decisions. It is relevant to curriculum, co-curriculum, teaching, and research.

Christian Colleges Contrasted with Secular Colleges

If a self-designated Christian college adheres to the above essential marks of a Christian college, its concept of the nature and limits of academic freedom should differ markedly from that employed in state or private secular, or nominally Christian colleges. To grasp those differences let’s examine ways Christian and secular colleges differ.

The Reason to Exist

As a matter of historical record, at least from 1900 onward, Christian colleges (Protestant) were founded as alternatives to secular colleges and universities. The older private colleges and newly established state schools had come first to tolerate and then promote agnosticism, secular humanism, atheism, social Darwinism, pantheism, and religious indifferentism. The founders of Christian colleges rejected as laughable the claim that these secular colleges were “nonsectarian” or neutral on matters of religion. Christian colleges aimed to protect young minds from being led astray by persuasive presentations of these anti-Christian ideologies. This sentiment is expressed clearly by William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) in a speech at Taylor University in Upland, IN:

Parents all over this nation are asking me where they can send their sons and daughters to school knowing that their faith in God and in morality will not be destroyed. I find that this is a college where they teach you the Bible instead of apologizing for it, and I shall for this reason recommend Taylor University to inquiring Christian parents [Quoted in William Ringenberg, The Christian College: A History of Protestant Higher Education in America (Baker,1984, 2006) p. 171]

The Christian worldview served as the intellectual and moral framework to give coherence to institutional policies, curriculum, and co-curriculum.

Christian colleges were not founded as research universities or as instruments to serve the national interest in agriculture, industry, and defense. It was not their purpose to change or preserve the national culture. Their aim was much less grandiose, being a direct extension of the aspirations of churches and Christian parents. It was to educate young people for living as Christians in their chosen professions, as ministers, missionaries, teachers, and others. Christian colleges transforming themselves into research universities and touting their service to the nation is a recent development. This transformation seems always to be accompanied by a loss of Christian identity.

The Profession

As we learned in previous articles in this series, the founding of the American Association of University Professors (1915) was part of an effort by leading professors at America’s elite research universities to consolidate the growing demand for greater professionalization of the professorate. Among their goals were creating nation-wide standards and a nation-wide culture for the profession. Not surprisingly, their professional standards and culture were those most congenial to the secular research university and the self-interests of the professors who teach there. They wished to nationalize and standardize the image of professors as secular saints devoted to discovering truth—courageous, unbiased, and free from all external loyalties that would constrain their judgment.

Teachers that embrace fully the founding purpose and mission of the Christian college do not fit the image of the professor whose highest loyalty is to the profession as secular universities understand it. Ideally, Christian college professors would possess technical mastery of their subject area equal to that of professors in secular universities. Yet they would remain critical of ways in which secular professors in these fields import alien frameworks and anti-Christian philosophical, moral, and political beliefs into their research and teaching. For example, a Christian professor would deny that to be a good physicist, chemist, or biologist one must assert that these sciences refute belief in God and creation. Christian professors see clearly that the social and psychological sciences—insofar as they are truly scientific— have nothing to say about morality. However, because holding such secular views seems to be a requirement of the profession, Christian professors may feel like strangers within the profession.

The Academic Ideal

As we learned in previous articles, even secular colleges debate the nature and purpose of academia: Should academia be driven by the cool, objective search for truth regardless of its practical application? Or, should its goal be to reform society in a mood of urgency and advocacy? Advocates of the truth-seeking approach accuse the cause-advocating group of abandoning reason for political advocacy. In response to this charge, the cause-advocating group accuses the truth-seeking group of hypocrisy. Their high-flown rhetoric of disinterested science hides their intellectual assumptions and socioeconomic agendas. Perhaps these two alternatives are not mutually exclusive. Even so, thoughtful Christian academics will not combine them in the same way that secular academics do. Christian professors value reason and truth-seeking highly and they prize fairness in critical evaluation. In this, they resemble the truth-seeking ideal. But they do not pretend to take a neutral attitude toward the Christian understanding of God, the world, humanity, and morality. This stance of advocacy they have in common with the cause-advocating academics.

The real difference, then, between Christian academics and truth-seeking secular academics is not that the latter value reason and truth and the former do not. They differ, rather, in the guiding assumptions and presuppositions each makes. Likewise, Christian academics and cause-advocating academics do not differ in that one serves non-academic causes and the other refrains from serving any cause outside of academia. They differ in the causes they serve.

Academic Freedom

Academic freedom is about the freedom to teach and learn within the limits clearly defined by an academic institution. This description applies both to secular and Christian colleges. The limits on academic freedom differ according to the ways each type understands the mission of the college, the character of the profession, and the nature of academia. Secular colleges grant professors freedom to teach and advocate agnostic, atheist, immoralist/libertine, and other views incompatible with Christian faith but deny them freedom to teach and advocate Christianity. In contrast, Christian colleges deny (or should deny) professors freedom to teach atheist, agnostic, immoralist/libertine, or any other view it regards as anti-Christian.

Understandably, professors want maximum freedom and secure employment. But there is no college that allows unlimited academic freedom and unconditional tenure. If professors want freedom to teach unbelief and immorality and recruit young people for those causes, they should seek employment where they have freedom to do this. Similarly, if professors want freedom to argue that Christianity is true, good, and beautiful, they may be happier in a Christian college, which allows and encourages such advocacy.

If private and public secular colleges wish to teach anti-Christian views, this is a decision for those institutions and their stakeholders to make. And if Christian colleges and their stakeholders decide that anti-Christian views and values must not be taught and practiced, this is their prerogative. There is no rationally self-evident or divinely revealed law of academic freedom, and there is no academic supreme court to settle disputes among different views. Institutions must discover through dialogue and debate among the interested parties a balance that works best for them.

“Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain” Or Demystifying Academic Freedom and Professorial Privilege

4 Replies

In my previous essay on academic freedom (July 15, 2023), I reviewed Daniel Gordon’s recent book, What is Academic Freedom? A Century of Debate–1915 to the Present (Routledge, 2022). Gordon argues convincingly that no single definition of academic freedom commands universal assent within American academia. In this essay, I will explore the implications of Gordon’s thesis and lay a foundation for constructing a view of the nature and limits of academic freedom in Christian colleges and universities.

Academic Freedom: Universal Right or Elitist Privilege?

Knowledge is Power

Every ancient society treasured its wisdom, technical skills, and bodies of knowledge. Prophets, priests, and philosophers mastered the received tradition and taught it to the next generation. Some speculated about God and the heavens and others dealt with humanity and earth. But from Solomon to Socrates, Descartes to Darwin, and Newton to Nietzsche thinkers were admired and despised, immortalized and martyred. One person’s saint is another’s heretic. Why would the same thinker be hailed as a savior and persecuted as a traitor? How could an idea be received as light from heaven by some and condemned as infernal heresy by others?

Francis Bacon may have put his finger on the reason: “Knowledge in itself is power.” Technical knowledge enables us to do things that we could not do otherwise. Knowing how to speak and write well may enable you to persuade other people to buy your product or join your cause. Learning the sciences of mathematics, physics, chemistry, or biology opens doors to respected and well-paid professions. If people think you know how to fix the economy or win wars, they will place you in high office and put their collective power at your disposal. No wonder professions, unions, and guilds jealously guard their trade secrets and defend their privileges by requiring degrees, accreditation, licensure and sometimes by resorting to intimidation and violence!

Ideas are Dangerous

Knowledge can be used for good or evil, to build or destroy. Ideas, even if they are true, are dangerous things. To a politician that maintains power by perpetuating falsehoods, truth is dangerous and one who speaks it is an enemy. Lies, too, can destroy lives and livelihoods. So can fancies, superstitions, and other expressions of ignorance and conceit. Prophets, liars, and charlatans wield the dangerous weapon of speech.

We should not be surprised, then, that societies from ancient to modern times feel the need to regulate the knowledge industry, that is, to have a say about what counts for knowledge and who is recognized as a reliable teacher. Sometimes that regulation was enforced with a heavy hand, as in the cases of Socrates, Jesus, and Galileo, and at others, through the subtle power of social disapproval. In any case, for most of human history, those who dared speak their minds understood that they risked losing freedom, livelihood, and life itself.

The Price of Privilege

The modern doctrines of academic freedom and professorial self-governance were designed to buck the trend of history and exempt university professors from hazards braved by their courageous predecessors. But I wonder, can “truth-to-power” speech be institutionalized without losing its prophetic edge? What price must be paid for these privileges? The modern professorate is a self-perpetuating, highly selective group, and the fee for admission is steep. No charlatans and liars, purveyors of fancies and superstitions are allowed to join. But who are the gatekeepers, the ones that decide who is in and who is out? Who determines what ideas are fanciful and superstitious and who the charlatans are?

At the risk of sounding more cynical than I already have, I have to ask a further series of questions: Was professionalizing the professorate and adopting the modern doctrine of academic freedom just a less obvious way for progressive society to regulate the knowledge industry? Might not excluding some thinkers as “charlatans and purveyors of fancies and superstitions” be the way the “profession” colludes with its powerful patrons to shield them from scrutiny? Is “professionalization” a euphemism for “cooptation”?

Even the casual reader of the AAUP’s 1915 General Declaration on academic freedom can catch the disdain in which its authors held “proprietary” colleges, a category that includes any school dedicated to advancing particular political, philosophical or religious causes. As “proprietary types,” devoted to their “propagandist duties,” denominational colleges, seminaries, and what we now call “Christian” colleges, do not rise to the high standards of universities devoted to the “public” good. By making themselves the arbiters of what counts as the common good, the authors of the General Declaration in effect institutionalized their (progressive) political, philosophical, and religious causes as if they were the rationally self-evident norms of academic excellence.

The Profession: Self-Governance or Self-Service?

Who Guards the Guardians?

The modern concept of academic freedom goes back at least to the founding of the University of Berlin (1810). Thousands of Americans studied in Germany during the nineteenth century, and they returned to America eager to raise American universities up to German standards. Establishing the professorate as a self-governing profession protected by complete academic freedom was among the first tasks they undertook. The 1915 AAUP General Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure is the classic American statement on academic freedom. The Declaration argued that as a profession constituted by a specialized body of skills and knowledge and dedicated to the public good, the professorate has earned the right to self-governance in all academic matters, that is, the qualifications of teachers, tenure decisions, the curriculum, and the range of theories worthy of consideration within each discipline. The original AAUP statement and all later iterations insist that faculty should be free from all external regulation in matters of academic judgment. According to the Declaration, faculty should not be treated as “employees” as are the grounds keeping staff but as “appointees” in analogy to federal judges.

As an insider to the profession, I understand wanting freedom to write and teach as I please. I understand why professors want the public to think that their work is vital to the common good and that academic freedom and tenure, good pay, a light teaching load, and time to study and research are necessary to that end. I can make a good case for all of this. But the AAUP’s General Declaration paints professors with an aura of sainthood. They are portrayed as incorruptible guardians of knowledge and unselfish benefactors of society. In its rhetoric about the glories of the vocation, professors walk on water and open the eyes of the blind, but in reality they stumble along in the same muddy stream as do other human beings. The nobility of the professorial calling must not be carelessly attributed to practitioners of that vocation. In my experience professors can be just as petty, jealous, narrow, envious, hypocritical, greedy, and ambitious as politicians, business leaders, and the cleaning crew. Of course they want complete self-governance in matters of academic freedom and tenure! I want it too!

But who will guard the guardians? The General Declaration assumes that, even if a few of its members abuse their privileges, “the profession” will remain pure; it can police its members. But the history of other associations and organizations makes this assumption dubious. Should we believe that the professorate can escape the gravitational pull of mundane self-interest, ideological orthodoxies, and nepotism when the clergy, labor unions, and police departments have not been able to do so? Shall we, then, appoint an elite group of superguardians to guard the academic guardians? But who would guard them?

There is no substitute for checks and balances that can serve as counterweights to tyranny arising from outside or inside the university. The faculty can be as tyrannical as the government or the administration or the board. Universities exist as cooperative efforts on the part of many interested parties, all of them necessary to the existence and functioning of the school: founders, donors, boards of regents, alumni, students, administrators, the public, and faculty. There is no escaping the messy business of negotiating, if not harmony, at least some acceptable compromise among these parties. The guardians must guard each other in an unbroken circle of accountability in which no one and no area is exempt from the scrutiny of all.

What is “the Profession” and Who Speaks for it?

The General Declaration speaks as if there were a real entity called “the profession.” This way of speaking leaves the impression that every competent college teacher shares the same view about the aims of higher education and agrees on the methods and resources needed to accomplish these goals. This was not true in 1915, and it is not true today. Is the purpose of higher education to pass on the wisdom accumulated by generations past or to train researchers to engage in discovery of new knowledge? Should professors in their research and teaching seek disinterestedly for truth or work to change the world? Professors were divided then, and they are divided now on these questions. Implied in this second dichotomy are two very different views of academic freedom and the professor/student relationship, which we see today in the conflict between the postmodern activist and the anti-political professional views.

Professors in Christian colleges and universities often find themselves on different sides of this debate. But more importantly, thoughtful Christian professors, especially those teaching in Christian schools, understand that they do not fit comfortably in either camp. For they are committed to doing their research and teaching guided by the Christian worldview. In the final article in this series, I will take up how this institutional and professorial commitment to the truth of Christianity changes the way we think about academic freedom and professorial self-governance.

Freedom of Speech II

My Agenda

Perhaps I should tell you why I am discussing freedom of speech in such general terms and outside the bounds of my expertise. I am working my way toward addressing this question: Is a Christian school possible in the United States of America? Can an institution possess both the qualities that are expected of K-12, college, or university education and be thoroughly Christian? Or have government law and regulation, the courts, lack of qualified faculty, accrediting bodies, and progressive culture made it impossible?

Defining Freedom of Speech

What is freedom of speech? Clearly, this First-Amendment right does not merely point out that we have the power to speak, to say something in front of others. This mistaken view lies in the background of such statements as this: “Well, you have freedom of speech, but you have to take the consequences.” No, in the context of the First Amendment, “freedom of speech” means first that you have a right to speak without fearing consequences emanating from the Federal Government. The Federal Government will not suppress speech within its sphere of authority. Second, the government will not allow any private person or entity to forbid or punish speech within public spaces. The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) applied all the rights mentioned in the Bill of Rights to the states. Hence the right to freedom of speech applies to all spaces regulated by governmental authorities, federal, state, and local.

Limiting Speech

Not being a constitutional lawyer, I do not want to venture too deep into the legitimate limits that the courts have established on speech: libel, sexual harassment, conspiracy, incitement to violence, yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, etc. The courts do not think the kinds of speech covered by the First Amendment is limitless. However, it seems that for the most part governments at all levels limit speech that is inextricably associated with or used as a means for carrying out acts that are crimes considered apart from speech. The Bill of Rights does not cover such acts. But as the recent controversy over “disinformation” concerning COVID, election fraud, and climate change demonstrates, any attempt to limit speech opens the door to censorship, suppression, or cancelation of speech. Who decides what disinformation is and when it merits criminalization?

Duty to Listen?

Clearly, your right to speak freely does not entail a duty for others to listen or to remain silent while you speak. No one who gives a talk in a public space should expect the government to punish people who refuse to attend or walk out angrily or Boo or in some other way protest. Government must protect the personal safety of the speaker, but it cannot guarantee the respect of the audience. For freedom of expression applies to audiences as much as it does to speakers. The right to speak can be granted, but the right to be taken seriously has to be earned.

Free Speech in Private Spaces?

I want to emphasize strongly that freedom of speech applies only to forums legitimately regulated by government and only to government action. The First Amendment does not guarantee your right to say what you please in wholly private spaces. (It does, however, protect you from acts that cause bodily harm, from robbery, theft, etc., even in “private” spaces.) As the clearest case, consider how things work in your private dwelling. We expect to be able to invite guests into our houses according to our personal preferences and refrain from inviting those with whom we do not wish to associate. We demand freedom to invite only people with whom we agree politically or religiously. If someone we invite into our homes begins to speak in ways that we do not like, we claim the right to ask them to stop or leave our house. In doing this we have not “abridged” their freedom of speech, because this First Amendment right applies only to public spaces and restricts only government action.

I think most people would agree that common spaces—such as courthouse steps, public sidewalks, town hall meetings, public parks, and other publicly owned areas—should provide maximum freedom of speech. In contrast, in wholly private spaces—private dwellings, churches and other spaces owned by private associations—speech may be regulated by the private entity that owns and regulates that space. In these spaces, governments may neither abridge nor protect speech.

The In-between Spaces?

What about all the spaces in between the town hall and your house, the quasi-private, quasi-public spaces? What about businesses, educational institutions, political parties, political action committees (PACs), clubs, guilds, labor unions, churches, religious and non-religious non-profit organizations, and a host of other corporations, institutions, and associations?

I think I am safe in assuming that the right to freedom of speech applies to corporate entities in the same way it does to individuals. After all, in addition to “freedom of speech,” the First Amendment declares that the people have the right “peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” A corporate entity may speak freely in its bylaws, policies, constitution, advertisements, code of ethics, declaration of principles, or statements of political and religious or moral advocacy. The government must protect the corporate entity’s speech from violent suppression by the public and refrain from abridging its speech by threatening or enacting punitive government measures.

One huge difference between corporate entities and individuals affects the way the right to freedom of speech applies to them. An association, a club, or an educational institution usually contains many individual members. Do those individuals possess the First-Amendment right to free speech inside the space controlled by the corporate entity? Or, does the school or business or club have the right to control speech within its own space? As examples, does the First Amendment apply to students while on campus, employees in the workplace, or individuals present at club meetings? How far can the government go in regulating the internal affairs of a private association?

The Ever-Expanding Government

Since the end of the American Civil War (1865), the federal government has steadily expanded its reach into daily life and hither to private corporate spaces. The pace of expansion quickened in the twentieth century and reached warp speed after WWII. The civil rights laws passed in the 1950s and 60s dealt primarily with race, but they have been steadily expanding so that today the list of protected groups, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), includes, “race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity), national origin, age (40 or older), disability and genetic information (including family medical history).” Federal, state, and local governments have grown quite creative in finding ways to bring ostensibly private associations under its anti-discrimination, free speech, anti-harassment, and other regulations. It seems that almost any interaction an association has with a government entity or the space it regulates provides an excuse to regulate that association. Of course, it is impossible to exist in the world as an association or even as an individual without interacting with government-regulated spaces!

If it were not for the First Amendment no space would be off limits to government regulation. Let’s read it again:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Applying the Bill of Rights to Associations

As I argued above, these rights apply to corporate entities as well as to individuals. The corporate application is obvious in the establishment and free exercise clauses. But it is also clear in the references to freedom of the press and of assembly and of the right to petition the government. Except for freedom of speech, these protected activities are most naturally exercised by associations—churches, publishers, trade unions, and corporate entities of many kinds. The tension between individual rights and corporate rights is deeply embedded in the history of moral and political thought. And much of that history has been taken up with seeking the proper balance between the two.* It seems to me that since WWII the American public, politicians, legislators, and the courts have tilted the balance toward individual rights to the point of almost destroying the rights of private associations, businesses, clubs, and educational institutions to create and maintain their distinct identities and pursue their unique missions.** Indeed, most people are so focused on individual rights that it would never occur to them that the Bill of Rights applies to associations as well as to individuals.

As I stated above, my concern in this series is with the question, “Is a Christian school possible in the United States of America?” The American government’s war against private associations’ discrimination toward individuals on the basis of the characteristics listed above—race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, and genetic information—has had the effect of disempowering Christian schools and other Christian non-profit organizations of the ability to craft a distinctive Christian identity, govern their internal affairs, and pursue their mission energetically. At some point, those students and faculty that are no longer committed to the Christian identity and mission of the school insist that their individual rights take priority over the institution’s rights to maintain its Christian identity and mission even if their insistence destroys the institution. And the government, the public, and the courts always take their side in this struggle. It is almost as if destroying Christian institutions is the goal. Perhaps it is.

*I am now reading an excellent history of moral and political philosophy that details this story from around 1610 (Grotius) to 1800 (Kant): J.B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy (Cambridge, 1998).

**Some readers may object that we live in an age of group rights in opposition to individual rights. I do not believe this is the whole truth. Indeed, individuals are often treated as members of a protected group when being considered for admission to a college or for employment. This factor sometimes outweighs scholastic achievement, experience, or other merit-based considerations. Still, members of protected groups are treated as individuals who possess certain traits on the basis of which schools and employers must not discriminate and to which they may even give preference for the sake of equity. They are not treated as associations, clubs, corporate entities. Hence my point stands: in contemporary society individual rights trump corporate rights.

To be continued…

Academic Freedom in Context

2 Replies

Introduction

I wrote this document to clarify my ideas on matters being discussed in the college where I teach. Your observations on how I could improve it are welcome.

Human Freedom—Conceptual and Practical

Freedom is primarily a negative concept. It names the absence of a determining, coercive, or deceptive force that channels human action to a particular end.

The concept of freedom does not contain within itself any evaluation of the ends toward which human action is obligated or desires to move. In other words, the bare concept of freedom contains no information about what is right or good. Freedom is of value only as a means to right or good ends. And freedom is of value to a particular individual only as a means to ends that that individual desires or feels obligated to seek. Hence freedom cannot serve as an end in itself; it is not a freestanding value.

Freedom is openness for action or inaction with other ends in mind. Freedom is meaningless (that is, without purpose as a means) unless the action it permits is directed by compelling ends. But to direct an action to an end is simultaneously to negate other possible actions. Hence freedom cannot be a means to any particular end apart from limits that exclude other possible ends. Interestingly, then, freedom, that is, unlimited openness for any logically and physically possible action, is useless (as a means) apart from limits!

Does the concept of limit, then, contradict the concept of freedom? Of course, unlimited freedom cannot coexist with limits. But we must remember that freedom is not an end in itself. It is a good only insofar as it enables an agent to act toward a good or right end. And freedom is a good to a particular agent only as it provides the conditions under which that agent is enabled to work toward an end that seems good or right to them. Hence an agent’s decision to limit its action to achieve particular good and right ends does not contradict the concept of freedom-as-a-means; it contradicts only the concept of freedom-as-an-end-in-itself.

Human Freedom in Community

As we concluded above, even considered solely as individuals—at least in a world like ours in which not all actions are good or right—to be a value freedom must be limited by the directing power of worthy ends. But we also live in a world with other agents. And other individuals have differing conceptions of good and right and of what ends to seek. Hence arises the possibility of another type of limit on freedom. When conceived as the freedom of multiple particular agents acting simultaneously, freedom may even contradict and limit itself; because the space in which these agents act overlaps. A new problem then arises: how may we harmonize the freedom of many individuals. Perhaps we could dream of a utopia where the desires and consciences of everyone are in complete harmony and everyone could pursue their desires without being limited by others’ pursuit of theirs. But that is not the world we live in. In the world in which we live the freedom of an individual is limited not only by the ends we seek and limits we impose on ourselves but by the freedom of others to do the same.

To live in our world we must live in community, that is, in some mode of harmony achieved by coming to a common understanding of the good and right ends to which freedom is a means. Through long-term experience we learn how to give and take, compromise, care, share, and otherwise enjoy the benefits of living cooperatively with others as compensation for the limits on freedom of action. These arrangements and rules are institutionalized and codified in tradition and law. The optimum balance of freedom and limits is called justice.

Academic Freedom in General

Just as we can consider human freedom as an abstract concept or as it applies to life in community in general, we can also consider the concept as it applies to a particular sphere of institutionalized social activity. The concept of academic freedom can be considered as abstracted from any particular academic institution. Drawing on our analysis above, we can say without extensive argument that academic freedom is a means to an end and not an end in itself. Whereas the concept of absolute freedom is not self-contradictory in itself, unlimited academic freedom is a contradiction in terms. For the modifier “academic” limits the word freedom. That’s what modifiers do. “Academic freedom” by definition directs—and therefore limits—freedom to serve the end of the academic enterprise, whatever that may be.

What is the end of the academic enterprise? The proper end of academia can be, has been, and (from my perspective) should be a matter of continuous enquiry. Historians of education often point to two master paradigms of education: (1) one focused on traditioning, character building, and moral training. This view may be called the classical paradigm, and it dominated education in the western world until recently. (2) The other paradigm directs its energy toward discovery of new knowledge, critical thinking, and developing skill in research methods. This view is relatively new, and some see its origin in 1810 with the founding of the University of Berlin. It has been called a never-ending, never-arriving “search for truth.” The clash of these two very different paradigms explains much of the contemporary debate about the scope and limits of academic freedom. If the end of the academy is traditioning, character formation, and moral training, academic freedom will be directed to whatever promotes those ends and exclusive of whatever thwarts achieving those ends. Similarly, if the end of the academy is the production of new knowledge and bold researchers, academic freedom will be directed to whatever activities promotes those ends and exclusive of whatever thwarts achieving them. An institution that attempts to work toward both ends will inevitably be involved in constant tension over the scope and limits on academic freedom.

Academic freedom, then, must be conceived as a means to a particular conception of the nature and end of the academic enterprise. The precise articulation of a theory or a policy on academic freedom must be accompanied by an implicit or explicit understanding of the ends of the academy. Discussing academic freedom without also seriously discussing the ends of the academic enterprise will produce nothing but a clash of subjective opinions and wishes determined as much by private interests as by rational discussion. And agreement on the one demands agreement on the other.

Academic Freedom in Individual Institutions

Drawing on our reasoning above, we know that the scope and limits on any coherent theory and policy of academic freedom must be based on a clear understanding of the nature and ends of the academic enterprise. Since there is no universally accepted understanding of the end of higher learning, there are bound to be differences among theorists on the end of the academy. And those different understandings have produced differences among institutions. In turn, those differences produce different understandings of the nature and scope of academic freedom, which will be reflected in policy. A research institution will naturally have a different understanding of academic freedom from that of an institution that conceives of its end as traditioning, character building, and moral training. It makes no sense for one type of institution to criticize the other for its policies on academic freedom. They are living from incommensurable paradigms. Let Providence be the judge of which institution has chosen the better end.

Academic Freedom in Christian Educational Institutions

What can we say about academic freedom in Christian institutions of higher learning? Much of what to say can be easily drawn from the line of reasoning developed above. Christian institutions of higher learning—if the designation “Christian” is not to be a meaningless holdover from another era—conceive their ends as determined by the truth, wisdom, and moral vision of the Christian faith. It makes sense that most Christian institutions of higher learning lean heavily on the classical (traditioning-character building-moral training) view of the end of education. After all, most Christian colleges were founded to defend, explain, and pass on the truth, wisdom, and moral vision of the Christian faith. And the concept of academic freedom that fits an institution devoted to research and production of new knowledge will not fit a Christian institution devoted to the ends I described above. Nor, of course, would it fit with any program of classical education.

In the past, from about 1880 to about 1980, Christian colleges were criticized by the dominant academic culture because they supposedly stifled the disinterested search for truth and the advance of knowledge in deference to their religious commitments. They limited the questions and answers researchers could pursue. Christian colleges were at fault for not accepting the view of academic freedom demanded by the dominant understanding of the ends of the academy. The academic enterprise should be carried on, they contended, according to its own internal rules rather than having to consider external authorities. Recently, however the dominant academic culture has begun criticizing both the Christian understanding and the older value-neutral research understanding of the ends of higher education and consequently it has begun to limit academic freedom in new ways. I am speaking of course of the rise of the political correctness, leftist politics, and wokeness that now dominates many institutions of higher education. The rise of political correctness signals a return to the traditioning and character-forming model of education but with a different tradition to pass on, a different moral vision to inculcate, and a different vision of how character should be formed. These institutions now openly suppress academic freedom in view of their new orthodoxy in ways they imagined Christian colleges did in the past in service to Christian orthodoxy. Measured by a classical liberal view of the social order and its value-neutral understanding of the search for truth the new orthodoxy is illiberal, intolerant, and unscientific. And so Christian institutions of higher learning must fight on two fronts to maintain their liberty to teach and learn according to their understanding of their ends.

If a Christian institution understands its reason for existence to be producing good human beings as measured by the Christian faith, if that is its non-negotiable end, then it will not accept any view of academic freedom that allows teachers to thwart achieving that end—either by restricting academic freedom to suppress politically incorrect speech or expanding academic freedom so as to undermine the Christian purpose of the college. Each particular Christian institution will have to define the scope and set the limits for academic freedom in its own way and according to its understanding of what activities help it achieve its ends or prevent it from doing so. But one thing is certain: the scope and limits of academic freedom in a Christian college must be determined not by an abstract concept of freedom, not by a general concept of academic freedom, not by a disinterested research ideal of academic freedom, and not by the new limits on academic freedom imposed by the politically correct academic establishment but by a clear and unapologetic understanding of the ends the institution holds dear.

A Timely Message to the World, Church, American Academia, and Christian Colleges

1 Reply

Dear Readers:

This post is an edited and compiled version of my last six essays. Together they present a message I believe is sorely needed among educators, colleges and churches. Please pass it on to anyone you think could benefit from reading it. I want it to be read far and wide by people who know me and by those who do not. Ron Highfield.

To the World

Dear World:

Everyone agrees that you are messed up and need to change, but this is where the agreement ends. Is the problem the disparity between rich and poor? Do we need freer markets or more regulation? Do we need higher taxes and greater government expenditures or lower taxes and a smaller government? Are racism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, and other prejudices the source of your ills? Or, is the problem moral laxity and cultural decadence? Is the greatest problem faced by humanity climate change? War? Corporate greed? Police brutality? Systemic racism? White privilege? Capitalism? Marxism? Or Socialism?

How Do You Stand Before God?

I have a message for you. It is the message Jesus Christ proclaimed and that his apostles continued to teach. It is the only message that the Christian church has been given authority to proclaim to you. Apart from this message, I have no advice to give: You are indeed messed up, and need to change. But the diagnoses and solutions listed above do not get at your most fundamental problem. The root problem is not economic, social, or political. No solution to the real problem will be found from these quarters. Your problem is theological. You have forgotten that the most important issue is how you stand with God, “the Judge of all the earth” (Gen 18:25). Compared to this question everything else fades into insignificance. And as long as you think that the most important challenges you face are economic, social, and political, you demonstrate that you are not right with God. Indeed you show that whereas the Thessalonians “turned to God from idols” (1 Thess 1:9) you have turned from God to idols. For you look to worldly powers and goods rather than to God for your well-being and salvation.

My message is not a message about how to gain wealth or political power or freedom to do as you please. It is not a formula for world peace or social justice or psychological health or long life. These things matter only as long as you are alive. And today or tomorrow, sooner or later, you will die. Your nation will die. Your planet will die. Then what? In the end, how you stand with God is all that matters. And if this will be true in the end, it is true now. Your most urgent task is to seek God and make sure you align your life with his will and character.

Be Reconciled to God

I have a message for you. It did not originate with me. I received it and embraced it. Now my task is to pass it on to you unchanged: Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God (Col 1:5). If you want to see God and learn how to get right with him, you must look to Jesus. Jesus is the Word of God (John 1:1-4). If you want to hear the voice of God, “listen to him” (Mark 9:7). The “rulers of this age” crucified him (1 Cor 2:6), but God raised Jesus from the dead. In the resurrection, God declared Jesus to be Lord and Messiah (Rom 1:4; Acts 2:36). You owe him your allegiance, and you will give it sooner or later (Phil 2:10-11). Jesus Christ is the only Savior (Acts 4:12). Trust him and you will set yourself on the path to salvation and eternal life. Reject him and you will continue on the path to destruction of both body and soul. Whatever honor, glory, wealth, and power you gain in this life, unless you gain God’s approval, death, obliquity, obscurity, and nothingness await you.

I have a message for you. I have no authority to command you, but I am under authority to warn you. Stop cursing, hating, worrying, fighting, fretting, shouting, and despairing about the state of the world. Do not blame the stars, fate, chance, your ancestors, or the system. Stop talking about the sins of others, and look in the mirror. You are wholly responsible for that person, and you will answer for their sins and theirs alone. So, the message I have for you is the same one Paul and the other apostles had for the world of their day: “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20).

Sincerely,

Ron Highfield

To a Forgetful Church

Dear Church:

I would like to remind you of something. I have no authority to made demands, and I offer no new revelation from on high. I cannot read minds or infallibly discern hearts. My message is more an expression of longing than of prophetic denunciation: I want you to live up to your better self. I want you to remember who you are and why you are in this world. I want you to be free, fearless, and determined. I want you to be clear and confident.

You are God’s People

You are not like other people. You are different. You were chosen by God, assigned a mission, and empowered for a task. You know something other people do not know. Your sense of identity stretches backward before the world began and forward into eternity. The meaning of what you do daily is determined not merely by its immediate causes and effects but by its relationship to God.

When you think of yourself you must not think first of your national, social, or ethnic identity. You are not first male or female, black or white, rich or poor, or educated or uneducated. Like Paul, we must consider all these marks of identity and distinction “garbage” compared to knowing Jesus Christ (Phil 3:8). We are the person God chose us to be in Christ.

Church, please rise above these distinctions. Do not fall into the pattern of contemporary society by giving these distinctions the importance nonbelievers give them and allowing them to cause divisions within God’s people. Nonbelievers, of course, have their identity in the world. That is all they know. But we know of another homeland and another family. I am not speaking here of mere politeness while you are at a church assembly. I am talking about what goes on in the deep recesses of your hearts. Know with clarity and in the depth of your soul that you are a child of God. Let that knowledge free you from the bonds of other identifiers.

Bear Witness to Jesus

Why did God choose, call, and empower you? You have one task, that is, to bear witness to the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ. You are obligated to point people to him as Lord and Savior. You are supposed to manifest to everyone the power and quality of life that Jesus lived. Jesus must live in your entire life, in every dimension, in every relationship, for every moment, and into and throughout your soul. Paul again speaks the word we need to hear: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20).

Bear witness to Jesus in the way you speak. Bless and never curse. Turn away from anger and offense. Do not retaliate for evil done or insults given. Do not do it on social media, in your car, at work, or in your heart of hearts. When nothing good can be said or done, keep silent. Bear witness to Jesus in how you act toward others. Never act unlovingly or unjustly toward anyone. Help those in need. Be faithful, loyal, and truthful. And when someone asks you why you live as you do, tell them how Jesus changed you.

I Worry About You

Church, I am worried about you. Please keep your divinely given mission close to your heart: your charge is to witness to Jesus by living as he lived. Do not import worldly agendas into your life. How tempting it is to adopt contemporary social causes as if they were divine obligations! After all, these causes seem to be working for good ends. Should not the church stand against injustice, poverty, oppression, abuse of the environment, inequity, and racism? Should not the church call out immorality, irresponsible behavior, and envy? Many contemporary believers find this argument unanswerable. For the church also considers these things to be sinful and would happily see them removed. Indeed it would, but not by the world’s methods.

Church, you must never let any part of your moral vision be disengaged from a complete vision of life in Christ and from the call to repent and believe in Jesus. That is what politicians and social activists want you to do. They want to channel the energy of the church into secular political causes, but they care nothing for the gospel and the life of discipleship to Jesus. Do not be fooled. Do not join their causes—right, left, or center—no matter what evil it fights or what good it proposes. Their solutions to evil are intimidation, law, violence, rudeness, slander, obscenity, persecution, protest, coercion, and police action. Such activities cause strife and division among believers and between believers and nonbelievers. You must follow a different path. You must preach the gospel, do good works in the name of Jesus, and set an example of a comprehensively good life, individually and communally.

With affection and concern,

Ron Highfield

To American Academia

Dear American Academia:

Except for a few years between degree programs, you have been my home for my whole life. After age eighteen, I spent thirteen years in college and graduate school. Since receiving my PhD in 1988, I have given thirty-two years to teaching in colleges and universities. I have been through the tenure process, published several books, participated in national and international professional academic societies, and achieved the rank of full professor at a prestigious university. I think I know you pretty well. And it is from my experience that I write.

Your Sense of Self-Importance

I get it, you think you are an important social institution. You present yourself to the larger society as the champion of science, the engine of technological innovation, and the guardian of civilization. You market yourself to potential students as a four-year rite of passage into the professional class. I do not deny that much of what you say is true. My life testifies to that. Becoming a professor was my dream from age eighteen onward, and I am still amazed that my dream came true. I would not accept anything in exchange for what I have learned from my teachers and students. I could not have written the books I have authored were I not a professor paid to teach and research. But I am not writing to praise you. Nor do I write to bury you. I write to admonish you and warn those who accept uncritically your rhetoric of self-importance.

Hidden Motives

The inviting narrative created by your public relations offices and published on your websites and in glossy brochures does not tell the whole story. Whatever your value to the common good, you are but one sector within a larger society encompassed by concentric circles of government power. Well hidden among your noble motives lie the most primitive of all drives: instinct for survival, desire for autonomy, and yearning for honor, security, and economic well-being. I could write an essay on each of these motives. But I want to focus on your quest for autonomy.

I believe your desire to become and remain self-determining is the driving force, the systemic ethos, of your behavior. Autonomy allows you to pursue your self-interest without interference from external factors. It is your most cherished possession, and losing it is your greatest fear. The story is too long to tell here, but you view the history of American higher education as the struggle to free academia from the oppression of what you perceive as its two greatest enemies: right-wing politics and orthodox Christianity. And you tend to combine the two, although they are not natural allies.

Orthodox Christianity

You are driven by fear and hatred of these two enemies. You see them as sinister forces ever conspiring to bring you back under their control. You fight orthodox Christianity by attacking its truth and goodness and naively embracing almost any ideology, superstition, moral philosophy, or religion that criticizes it. Your reaction is a perfect illustration of the old saying, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” You consider any enemy of Christianity your ally. In your narrative, orthodox Christianity is anti-scientific, superstitious, imperialistic, historically unfounded, metaphysically absurd, morally oppressive, and, well, just plain evil.

Right-Wing Politics

Right-wing politics plays the second villainous role in your narrative. You interpret every voice on the right as an echo of the National Socialist (NAZI) takeover of German universities, or of Joseph McCarthy’s attempt to root out communists from the entertainment industry and academia, or of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. You fear a right-wing takeover to the point of paranoia. And your fear is compounded by the fact that you have no power of your own with which to resist such a takeover. Hence you seek powerful friends to protect you. To fight the Right you made friends with the Left. To escape the eagle’s nest you fled to the bear’s cave. You are like ancient Israel in the Seventh and Sixth Centuries, BC, a weak vassal state set between two giant empires. In fear of Assyria and Babylon, you seek the protection of Egypt. For you must serve one devil or the other. Over a hundred years ago, when the Right and Christian orthodoxy were much stronger than they are today, you decided that the left-wing empire would give you more autonomy than a right-wing master would allow. And you have kept to that policy right up to the present time.

You have adopted another famous saying as your guiding light: “There are no enemies on the left.” To resist the Right, you embrace any and every cause that weakens it. It has been said in jest that the only thing that unites the modern university is the electrical and heating systems. No ideal, no mission, no philosophy, or moral imperative commands the loyalty of all the factions that congregate on your campuses. But I make no joke when I assert that the unity of the modern university is forged by one thing only: hatred of your common enemies, orthodox Christianity and right-wing politics.

Why do you, the modern university, put such emphasis on ethnic, racial, and gender identity and embrace anarchic, disruptive, and violent movements? Why target white privilege and systemic racism so vociferously? Why celebrate transgression of all traditional moral distinctions? It is not because of your love of humanity. It has little to do with a coherent philosophy of human dignity. Are you a champion of the oppressed? Not really. Are you motivated by your commitment to tolerance? I do not think that is plausible. Do you love justice? No. That’s not it. I know you too well. These causes and movements weaken the Right and Christian orthodoxy. That is the reason you embrace them so fanatically. No enemies on the left! Your autonomy is all that matters to you. And your autonomy is a means to your selfish ends.

The Magic Mirror

Your fear drives you into hatred, suppression, and violence toward your enemies, whom you hate because you think they are bent on your destruction. You suppress speech in the name of free speech! You persecute dissenters in the name of compassion. You do violence in the name of peace. You preach superstition in the name of science. You demand conformity in the name of diversity. You deny truth for the sake of ideology. You exclude in the name of inclusion. If your enemy praises it as a virtue, you condemn it as a vice. If your enemy condemns it as a vice, you praise it as virtue. You are as closeminded and dogmatic as any “fundamentalist” who ever “thumped a Bible.”

Look in the mirror! The magic mirror of your conscience! There you will see everything you hate in your enemies, down to the last eyelash. Everyone who loves brightens the world in their own distinct way. But all who hate look alike in the gray shadows they cast.

Let Me Count the Ways

Do I write these harsh things because I hate you? No. You are a second mother to me! I write them because I love you. Or to be precise, I love you for what you could be: a place where friends meet to sharpen each other’s understanding. A symposium in which we explore the meaning of our humanity. A laboratory in which we implore nature to reveal her secrets. A cathedral where everyone worships at the altar of truth and reality. A hall where hypotheses are tested in the furnace of respectful debate. A town square where no one who speaks in the voice of reason is silenced because of what they say. Do not fear that reason is too impotent a power to defend goodness, truth, and beauty against the crude designs of the eagle and the bear. Eventually, reason’s clear, sonorous voice will distinguish itself from the cacophonous babel of party interests.

With much affection and not a little grief,

Ron Highfield

To Christian Colleges and Universities

About My “Harsh” Letter

As you know, recently I wrote a letter to American academia. Some readers thought it was too harsh and sweeping. Others took it personally. And still others thought my criticisms were aimed at Christian as well as secular higher education. Allow me, then, to correct those misperceptions. As to its harshness, I do not think I can satisfy those who thought it was too harsh. I thought about softening it somewhat, but I decided not to do so lest its impact be lessened. Concerning its target, the letter was aimed at the dominant culture of academia, not at any one person within it. Many wonderful professors, administrators, and staff—some of them sincere Christians—work within this system. They care about students and value reason. My criticisms were directed not at them but at the system that, regardless of the beliefs of any individual, harbors irrational bias against orthodox Christianity and lives in dread of a right-wing takeover. I described it as systemic animus, and I stand by that assessment.

Nor did I have you in mind. You do not fit the pattern of the dominant academic culture. Indeed, your only reason for existence is to protest against that culture and provide a clear alternative. But now I am writing to you. I want to warn you, encourage you, and, yes, advise you about how to guard your identity as a light in darkness.

A Little History

There is so much to say! We go back a long time, and you predate me by hundreds of years. I would love to rehearse your entire history from Colonial America to today. We could learn so much from that story. I will indulge myself, however, with only a few historical observations. Nearly every college founded in the United States between 1636 (Harvard) and 1900 was begun by a Christian denomination. They did not need to call themselves “Christian” because all the colleges were Christian in some sense. However, between 1875 and 1925 many American Colleges began to call themselves “nonsectarian,” meaning generic or cultural, as opposed to confessional Christianity. The case of Johns Hopkins University is instructive. America’s first research university, founded in 1876, JHU labeled itself “nonsectarian” from the beginning. Toward the end of his founding address, the University’s first president Daniel Coit Gilman turned to the Board of Trustees and addressed them in these words:

Before concluding, I repeat in public the assent which I have privately made to your official overtures. In speaking of your freedom from sectarian and political control, you expressed to me a hope that this foundation should be pervaded by the spirit of an enlightened Christianity… I now as then express my cordial and entire concurrence.” https://www.jhu.edu/about/history/gilman-address/.

Only in the Twentieth Century, after the majority of colleges and universities in America had finalized the transition from “enlightened Christianity” to complete secularity, did “Christian” colleges begin thinking of themselves as a group in distinction from the secular majority.

What Makes a College “Christian”?

I am writing to colleges and universities that wish to be known as “Christian” and market themselves to students, donors, and alumni as such. My first question, then, is this: when you say you are a “Christian” college or university, what do you mean? More importantly, what should you mean?

The Individual “Christian”

I have to ask this question because calling yourself Christian does not make it so for an institution any more than it does for an individual. The New Testament book of Acts reports that “the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch” (Acts 11:26). In the course of history there have been many reasons why people called themselves Christians. But the only reason I will acknowledge as legitimate is that you confess and live by the same faith that the disciples in Antioch held and that Paul, Peter, and John preached: “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised from the dead on the third day…” (1 Cor. 15:3-8). Paul says in another place,

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved (Rom 10:9-10).

There is more to say about what it means to be a Christian, but at minimum professing to be a Christian should be a clear sign that you believe that Jesus is Lord and Savior, crucified and risen from the dead. It should also go without saying that you are committing yourself to live according to Jesus’s and his apostles’ teaching.

The “Christian” College

In the same way, for a college or university to designate itself as “Christian” should mean at minimum that it confesses the same faith that believers in Jerusalem, Antioch, Corinth, and Rome, under the guidance of the apostles, confessed: Jesus is Messiah, Lord, and Savior, crucified and raised from the dead. A Christian college must live out its institutional life under the guidance of this faith. I will not acknowledge as genuinely Christian any college that will not make this confession before the world and conduct its affairs on this basis. There are, of course, differences between the ways Christian colleges and individual Christians live out their faith. Universities do not have hearts with which to believe or mouths with which to confess that Jesus is Lord. As corporate entities, universities exist in and act on the basis of their charters, policies, mission statements, codes of conduct, and desired outcomes. In Christian universities, these institutional identifiers must affirm the Christian faith clearly at every level, from charter to desired outcomes. Moreover, these commitments mean little unless they are taken seriously in hiring, retention, curriculum, teaching, and student life. Christian colleges must remember that their existence makes sense only as a protest and an alternative to the dominant culture of academia.

With affection and hope,

Ron Highfield

To Christian Colleges and Universities (Part Two): Can They be Academically Sound?

Dear Christian Colleges:

In my previous letter I addressed the issue of what makes a college Christian. It is now time to tackle the issue of what makes a Christian institution a college.

A Christian College?

There many kinds of institutions and associations that call themselves Christian: Churches, legal societies, charitable organizations, mission societies, adoption agencies, and hundreds of others. And each of these associations can legitimately designate itself “Christian” as long as it confesses and lives by the faith set forth in the New Testament. Each group also claims to be an institution of a certain sort that does the kind of work appropriate to its type. What would you think of a charitable organization that never helped anyone in need, or an adoption agency that never placed a child with loving parents, or a legal society that focused exclusively on raising chickens?

In the same way, Christian colleges must do the essential work that colleges exist to do, or they should cease calling themselves colleges. But here we face our first difficulty. There is no authoritative blueprint defining the nature and work of a college. Nor does any accrediting body or government agency have an intrinsic right to create such a blueprint. What we have instead of such an authority is a history of associations that called themselves “colleges.” As educational endeavors, colleges organize themselves as societies of teachers and students whose purpose for coming together is advanced learning, which involves seeking to understand the best intellectual achievements a society has to offer. This core meaning has remained constant throughout all the changes within the history of higher education. Hence a Christian college, if it wishes to identify itself with this history, must at minimum constitute itself as an association of teachers and students whose purpose is higher or advanced learning.

What Counts as Advanced Learning?

Tradition Dependence

What, then, counts as advanced learning? Again we face a difficulty not often acknowledged. There is no unchanging and authoritative blueprint that determines what should be taught in institutions of advanced learning. Every society teaches its young what it judges to be the best wisdom, securest knowledge, and most useful skills. No society would teach its children what it knows to be foolish, erroneous, and useless. But judgment about what is true and useful differs from society to society and from age to age. What counted as advanced learning in Ancient Greece differs from that in fifth-century Rome, thirteenth-century Paris, nineteenth-century Berlin, or twenty-first century Los Angeles.

No society is monolithic in its understanding of what is wise, good, true, and useful. Certainly not contemporary American society! From the beginning, American society has been composed of many competing traditions with differing views on the nature of education in general and of advanced learning in particular. Historically, the pluralism in American higher education has mirrored regional, philosophical, political, and denominational differences. Educational traditions compete with each other for dominance. Ideally, a tradition would support its claim to superiority with rational arguments designed to persuade. However, those seeking power rarely limit themselves to rational persuasion.

The Secular Progressive Tradition

In a story too long and complicated to tell here, the secular progressive tradition of academia, about which I wrote in my letter to American academia, gained dominance over other traditions through a variety of means: championing the latest natural science, allying itself with industry and government, and riding a wave of progressive social and moral thought. It presents itself to the public as the standard that defines the meaning of advanced learning. It considers traditional Catholic, denominational, evangelical, and other conservative colleges to be unenlightened and culturally backward. Lately, one even hears Christian colleges referred to as breeding grounds for racism, colonialism, homophobia, and other moral evils.

The Christian Tradition of Advanced Learning

Advanced Learning as a Contested Idea

Despite its arrogant claims, the secular progressive tradition of academia possesses no divine right to set standards for advanced learning. Reason is not its exclusive possession. Its ever-changing vision of what is wise, good, true, and useful can be contested. Hence Christian colleges and universities need not accept its definition of what makes a college academically sound as a pattern to emulate. No external authority has the right to dictate what a college should teach and how.

In fact, orthodox Christians contest secular progressive academia’s vision of what is wise, good, true, and useful. We understand God, creation, human nature, the human condition, human destiny, and morality, and a thousand other things very differently. We do not share the same vision of human good or of what constitutes a good human being. To love God above all things is the most profound of human obligations. In contrast, idolatry, that is, worshiping anything other than God, is the most profound abandonment of duty and the wellspring of manifold evil (Rom 1:18-32).

The Christian Vision of Advanced Learning

For us, the events of the cross and resurrection of Jesus are the most significant events in human history. Because we believe that God raised Jesus from the dead, we also believe that Jesus Christ reveals the true nature, identity, and destiny of humanity (Rom 8:29; 1 John 3:2). Jesus is the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15). He is the Lord and only Savior. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). He is the “power of God and wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:24). In Christ “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2:3). Orthodox Christians do not believe that an education that omits or rejects these truths and this vision of human life can provide a foundation for a good life. Much of what American academia considers wise, good, true, and useful we consider foolish, bad, false, and useless. In view of the wisdom revealed in Christ, we confidently apply to our own age Paul’s rhetorical jabs given to the “wise” of his age:

Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe (1 Cor 1:20-21).

And this is our rationale for creating and maintaining Christian colleges.

With Much Love,

Ron Highfield

To Christian Colleges (Part Three): Where Christian Colleges Go to Die

Dear Christian College:

Faith and Beginnings

As you know, most Christian colleges were founded by people of great faith. The original faculty and administrators believed wholeheartedly in the Christian mission of the college as the decisive reason for its existence. Many colleges founded within the last hundred years began as a protest and an alternative to the dominant culture of academia. Students, faculty, and donors were attracted to these colleges because of their distinctive Christian identity. They unhesitatingly confessed Jesus as Lord and Savior, crucified and risen from the dead. And they expected every teacher and administrator to adhere to this faith and to live consistently with this confession. Students, too, were required to attend worship and to live by the community’s moral code. Beyond this basic evangelical confession, some colleges required adherence to denominational confessions or expanded evangelical confessions, and they expected community members to live according to a strict moral code. Why, then, do so many of these colleges fall away after such a faith-filled beginning?

The Logic of Survival

Warnings from Scripture

“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever” (1 John 2:15-17).

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matt 4:1-4).

The Struggle for Survival

Christian colleges face many of the temptations individual Christians confront. Of course, just as colleges do not have hearts and tongues with which to believe and confess, they do not experience bodily lusts that can lead them astray. However, colleges have a character formed by a combination of its tradition and its current community. It is a kind of collective personality we can call a “soul.” And this soul can be tempted by certain threats and allurements to abandon its founding principles. Holding true may prove costly:

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul” (Mark 8:34-36).

The instinct for survival is basic to every human being. When the Lord bragged about Job’s faithfulness, Satan replied, “Skin for skin! A man will give all he has for his own life. But now stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face” (Job 2:4-5). Christian colleges, too, want to survive, and that urge can drive them to compromise their Christian mission. Colleges are expensive operations, and the roadside of history is littered with bankrupt colleges. They need tuition-paying students and gifts of money and property. In its efforts to attract students and resources, it will be tempted to broaden its base of support to include people whose priorities do not align with the Christian mission. The college survives but at the cost of its soul.

Ambition and Assimilation

Jesus warns against the common human desire for approval: “Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets” (Luke 6:26)

If a Christian college survives, it faces a second temptation. Colleges are driven by ambition to achieve ever greater prominence. They move beyond the narrow circle of their denominations to gain a regional reputation, and then, they set their sights on national prominence. How does a college gain national prominence? Of course, a college can become well known for its winning athletic teams or its beautiful campus. But I am speaking about its academic ranking. Many factors contribute to academic standing, but one stands out as essential: the academic accomplishments of its faculty. Colleges ambitious to climb the rankings ladder must recruit highly trained, talented faculty and provide them with time and resources to conduct research that gets noticed nationally and internationally. Accomplishing this goal requires a change of priorities. (1) Academic potential becomes the number one qualification for faculty recruitment and retention. Colleges with national ambitions cannot hire and tenure Christian teachers if they are mediocre researchers. (2) It requires lots of money. Nationally ranked colleges and universities must build huge endowments to support reduced teaching loads and research. Seeking grants from government agencies and industry becomes part of faculty job descriptions. (3) The research that faculty members produce must be impressive to the national and international community of scholars working the same fields.

Unholy Embarrassment

These academic changes will produce a dramatic transformation in college culture. The outstanding faculty will demand the freedoms and privileges enjoyed by their colleagues at “peer” and “aspirational” universities: virtually unlimited academic freedom, near unconditional tenure, and complete control over the curriculum. Having been recruited and tenured for their research prowess or in the name of diversity, they do not devote their primary loyalty to the Christian mission of the college but to their disciplines and their peers in the academy. Hence they find themselves embarrassed by remnants of the old Christian college culture that still remain, which, when measured by the ethos of the national academic culture, appear quaint, unenlightened, narrow, and a host of other less polite adjectives.

But Jesus warns us to be on our guard against embarrassment over him and his way of life: “If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels” (Mark 8:38)

The Kingdoms of the World

The Deal

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only’” (Matt 4:8-10).

The Loss

The college’s new national profile will expose it to scrutiny by the dominant academic culture. Gradually, social pressure from without and from within will force it step by step to conform to the national culture. What began as a protest and an alternative to secular academia becomes celebration and assimilation to that culture. Politics replaces faith, social activism displaces evangelism, and self-expression crowds out moral conscientiousness. The college has gained the world but lost its soul. A poor bargain indeed!

Anxiously awaiting your positive response,

Ron Highfield

Where Christian Colleges Go to Die

3 Replies

Faith and Beginnings

Most Christian colleges were founded by people of great faith. The original faculty and administrators believed wholeheartedly in the Christian mission of the college as the decisive reason for its existence. Many colleges founded within the last hundred years began as a protest and an alternative to the dominant culture of academia. Students, faculty, and donors were attracted to these colleges because of their distinctive Christian identity. They unhesitatingly confessed Jesus as Lord and Savior, crucified and risen from the dead. And they expected every teacher and administrator to adhere to this faith and to live consistently with this confession. Students, too, were required to attend worship and to live by the community’s moral code. Beyond this basic evangelical confession, some colleges required adherence to denominational confessions or expanded evangelical confessions, and they expected community members to live according to a strict moral code. Why, then, do so many of these colleges fall away after such a faith-filled beginning?

Warnings

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever (1 John 2:15-17).
Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matt 4:1-4).

The Logic of Survival

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul” (Mark 8:34-36).

The instinct for survival is basic to every human being. When the Lord bragged about Job’s faithfulness, Satan replied, “Skin for skin! A man will give all he has for his own life. But now stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face” (Job 2:4-5). Christian colleges, too, want to survive, and that urge can drive them to compromise their Christian mission. Colleges are expensive operations, and the roadside of history is littered with bankrupt colleges. They need tuition paying students and gifts of money and property. In its efforts to attract students and resources, it will be tempted to broaden its base of support to include people whose priorities do not align with the Christian mission. The college survives but at the cost of its soul.

Ambition and Assimilation

Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets (Luke 6:26)

If a Christian college survives, it faces a second temptation. Colleges are driven by ambition to achieve ever greater prominence. They move beyond the narrow circle of their denominations to gain a regional reputation, and then, they set their sights on national prominence. How does a college gain national prominence? Of course, a college can become well known for its winning athletic teams or its beautiful campus. But I am speaking about its academic ranking. Many factors contribute to academic standing, but one stands out as essential: the academic accomplishments of its faculty. Colleges ambitious to climb the rankings ladder must recruit highly trained, talented faculty and provide them with time and resources to conduct research that gets noticed nationally and internationally. Accomplishing this goal requires a change of priorities. (1) Academic potential becomes the number one qualification for faculty recruitment and retention. A college with national ambitions cannot hire and tenure Christian teachers if they are mediocre researchers. (2) It requires lots of money. Nationally ranked colleges and universities must build huge endowments to support reduced teaching loads and research. Seeking grants from government agencies and industry becomes part of faculty job descriptions. (3) The research faculty members produce must be impressive to the national and international community of scholars working the same fields.

Embarrassment

If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels (Mark 8:38)

These academic changes will produce a dramatic transformation in college culture. The outstanding faculty will demand the freedoms and privileges enjoyed by their colleagues at “peer” and “aspirational” universities: virtually unlimited academic freedom, near unconditional tenure, and complete control over the curriculum. Having been recruited and tenured for their research prowess, they do not devote their primary loyalty to the Christian mission of the college but to their disciplines and their peers in the academy. Hence they find themselves embarrassed by remnants of the old Christian college culture that still remain, which, when measured by the ethos of the national academic culture, appear quaint and unenlightened.

The Kingdoms of the World

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”
Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only’” (Matt 4:8-10).

Series Ends. Although there is more to say, this post concludes the four-part series on “open letters” to higher education. I will probably feel the need to revisit the topic, since I have spent all my adult life studying or teaching in colleges and universities.

Christian Colleges and Universities: Can They be Academically Sound?

A Christian College?

In the same way, Christian colleges must do the essential work that colleges exist to do, or they should cease calling themselves colleges. But here we face our first difficulty. There is no authoritative blueprint defining the nature and work of a college. Nor does any accrediting body or government agency have an intrinsic right to create such a blueprint. What we have instead of such an authority is a history of associations that called themselves “colleges.” As educational endeavors, colleges organize themselves as societies of teachers and students whose purpose for coming together is Advanced learning, which involves coming to understand the best intellectual achievements a society has to offer. This core meaning remains constant throughout all the changes within the history of higher education. Hence a Christian college, if it wishes to identify itself with this history, must at minimum constitute itself as an association of teachers and students whose purpose is higher or advanced learning.

What Counts as Advanced Learning?

Tradition Dependence

What, then, counts as advanced learning? Again we face a difficulty not often acknowledged. There is no unchanging and authoritative blueprint that determines what should be taught in institutions of advanced learning. Every society teaches its young what it judges to be the best wisdom, securest knowledge, and most useful skills. No society would teach its children what it knows to be foolish, erroneous, and useless. But judgment about what is true and useful differs from society to society and from age to age. What counted as advanced learning in Ancient Greece differs from that in fifth-century Rome, thirteenth-century Paris, nineteenth-century Berlin, or twenty-first century Los Angeles.

The Secular Progressive Tradition

In a story too long and complicated to tell here, the secular progressive tradition of academia, about which I wrote in my letter to American academia, gained dominance over other traditions through a variety of means: championing the latest natural science, allying itself with industry and government, and riding a wave of progressive social and moral thought. It presents itself to the public as the standard that defines the meaning of advanced learning. It considers traditional Catholic, denominational, evangelical, and other conservative colleges unenlightened and culturally backward; lately, one even hears Christian colleges referred to as breeding grounds for racism, colonialism, homophobia, and other moral evils. See George Marsden, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief, for insight into this story.

The Christian Tradition of Advanced Learning

In fact, Orthodox Christians contest secular progressive academia’s vision of what is wise, good, true, and useful. We understand God, creation, human nature, the human condition, human destiny, and morality, and a thousand other things very differently. We do not share the same vision of human good or of what constitutes a good human being. To love God above all things is the most profound of human obligations. In contrast, idolatry, that is, worshiping anything other than God, is the most profound abandonment of duty and the wellspring of manifold evil (Rom 1:18-32).

For us, the events of the cross and resurrection of Jesus are the most significant events in human history. Because we believe that God raised Jesus from the dead, we also believe that Jesus Christ reveals the true nature, identity, and destiny of humanity (Rom 8:29; 1 John 3:2). Jesus is the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15). He is the Lord and only Savior. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). He is “power of God and wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:24). In Christ “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2:3). Orthodox Christians do not believe that an education that omits or rejects these truths and this vision of human life can provide a foundation for a good life. For us, much of what American academia considers wise, good, true, and useful we consider foolish, bad, false, and useless. In view of the wisdom revealed in Christ, we confidently apply to our own age Paul’s rhetorical jabs given to the “wise” of his age:

Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe (1 Cor 1:20-21).

And this is our rationale for creating and maintaining Christian colleges.

An Open Letter to Christian Colleges and Universities (Part One)

3 Replies

About My “Harsh” Letter

Nor did I have you in mind. You do not fit the pattern of the dominant academic culture. Indeed, your only reason for existence is to protest against that culture and provide a clear alternative. But now I am writing to you. I want to warn you, encourage you, and, yes, advise you about how to guard your identity as a light in darkness.

A Little History

Before concluding, I repeat in public the assent which I have privately made to your official overtures. In speaking of your freedom from sectarian and political control, you expressed to me a hope that this foundation should be pervaded by the spirit of an enlightened Christianity… I now as then express my cordial and entire concurrence.” https://www.jhu.edu/about/history/gilman-address/.

Only in the Twentieth Century, after the majority of colleges and universities in America had completed the transition from “enlightened Christianity” to complete secularity, did “Christian” colleges begin thinking of themselves as a group in distinction from the secular majority.

What Makes a College “Christian”

The Individual “Christian”

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved (Rom 10:9-10).

There is more to say about what it means to be a Christian, but at minimum professing to be a Christian should be a clear sign that you believe that Jesus is Lord and Savior, crucified and raised from the dead. It should also go without saying that you are committing yourself to live according to Jesus’s and his apostles’ teaching.

The “Christian” College

In the same way, for a college or university to designate itself as “Christian” should mean at minimum that it confesses the same faith that believers in Jerusalem, Antioch, Corinth, and Rome, under the guidance of the apostles, confessed: Jesus is Messiah, Lord, and Savior, crucified and raised from the dead. A Christian college must live out its institutional life under the guidance of this faith. I will not acknowledge as genuinely Christian any college that will not make this confession before the world and conduct its affairs on this basis. There are, of course, differences between the ways Christian colleges and individual Christians live out their faith. Universities do not have hearts with which to believe or mouths with which to confess that Jesus is Lord. As corporate entities, universities exist in and act on the basis their charters, policies, mission statements, codes of conduct, and desired outcomes. In Christian universities, these institutional identifiers must affirm Christian faith clearly at every level, from charter to desired outcomes. Moreover, these commitments mean little unless they are taken seriously in hiring, retention, curriculum, teaching, and student life. Christian colleges must remember that their existence makes sense only as a protest and an alternative to the dominant culture of academia.

To be Continued…

	Dr Jonne Smalhouse on Counter-Cultural Christianity…
	ifaqtheology on Counter-Cultural Christianity…
	HAT on Counter-Cultural Christianity…
	Dr Jonne Smalhouse on “Dignitas Infinita” (Infinite…
	Dr Jonne Smalhouse on “Dignitas Infinita” (Infinite…