Three types of Christian higher ed

There isn’t only one kind of Christian higher education; there are three.

This, I confess with some embarrassment, has proved something of a revelation to me. Both the types of Christian ed and their manifestations in concrete institutions have always blended together in my experience. But recently I’ve had occasion to reflect with some better informed colleagues on these things, and combined with some visits to other campuses, I found some clarity on the subject. Perhaps you can relate. See if my mini-typology resonates.

First, there is theological education. This is the now two-centuries-long project of, broadly speaking, white American liberal Protestant seminaries and divinity schools to educate (eventually ordained) pastors in theology, ethics, history, ministry, and biblical studies, with the overarching aim of making them learned professionals alongside lawyers and doctors. These institutions could be extensions of ecclesial bodies or independent thereof; they could expand their demographics by race, gender, region, nationality, denomination, and even religion; they could focus more or less on academic standards and prestige; they could hire faculty with stronger or weaker connections to historic Christian commitments; and so on. But it is this project, however malleable, that “theological education” names, a project that is now coming to an end but persists in weakened and ever more rapidly declining form.

(NB: “Religious studies” is not a form of theological education, nor of Christian higher ed, though like all such disciplinary branches in the American academy, it is not unrelated to either.)

The second type is Christian higher education in the classical liberal arts tradition. At first glance you might think this group encompasses the rest, so let me be clear about what I mean.

Not every postsecondary institution that includes the humanities belongs to the classical liberal arts tradition. The kinds of institution I have in mind have deep ties to classical schools, offer a robust Great Books program, feature long-standing and well-funded Honors Colleges, and/or require every entering undergraduate student to undertake a “core” curriculum. This curriculum is typically highly theorized—it constitutes a shared mission that faculty of every kind understand, believe in, and sign on to—and it tends to be designed (and revised over time) by liberal arts faculty with the goal of familiarizing students with great literature, thinkers, and ideas across the millennia. This work of familiarization is usually interwoven with attention to religious thinkers in the West, especially Church Fathers, medieval doctors, and Protestant Reformers, albeit placed in close connection to Jewish, Greek, and Roman culture, art, and politics.

Sometimes the aim is something like “citizenship” or “membership” in “the Western heritage”; sometimes it is indexed to the American story, and thus to the blessings of the Enlightenment (downplaying its downsides); and sometimes the emphasis is not at all regional or national but simply Christian: a global patrimony to which all educated believers are both subject and heir.

Schools in this category come in both Catholic and Protestant varieties, though it is worth noting how difficult it is to be root-and-branch anti-Catholic when most of the history and texts you cover precede 1517. The result is often a gentle, if subtle, ecumenism, which in turn drafts off and encourages a cultural and chronological catholicity: so many centuries, continents, peoples, and languages!

Or so it seems from afar, since I have never been a part of one of these institutions. I had never even heard of one until I was in my doctoral studies. Part of the reason for this is that they are popular with families that home school or send their children to private classical Christian academies, whereas I went to public school and, growing up, knew almost no one who fit either of these categories. I certainly didn’t know what “classical academies” were. And I just assumed that private Christian schools were smaller public schools plus uniforms and prayer.

As I’ve written before, had I known about Great Books programs as a high school senior, I think it likely I would have applied to one. Heck, I’d apply to one today. They sound like heaven on earth for this under-read bookish nerd.

Okay. So that’s only two out of three. What’s the other type?

The third kind is higher education that is also Christian. Here’s what I mean. On one hand, these are collegiate institutions, founded sometime between the middle of the nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth, that are explicit about their Christian beliefs and their behavioral expectations and spiritual goals for students. They may have chapel; they may require courses in religion, theology, or Bible; the faculty, staff, and admin will all be Christian; and there will certainly be a code of conduct.

On the other hand, these institutions have no formal, explicit, or organic connection to the tradition of classical liberal education outlined above: no Core, no Western Civ, no Great Books, no Honors College, no humanities-forward vision of “inheriting the patrimony of ancient literature and ideas” animating the curriculum. For some, the reason is that the school was founded with an outright animus against such things—a sort of anti-intellectual educational institution. For others, the reason is an intense, even rigorous commitment to biblicism; nuda scriptura entailed, at the founding, a self-conscious uncoupling from so much in Western civilization that either corrupted the gospel or was seen inevitably to distract from focusing on the Bible alone. For still others, the reason isn’t so much the presence of a conscious choice as its lack: a simple disconnection from and perhaps even ignorance of the classical liberal arts tradition and the texts, ideas, habits, and aims at its heart.

In addition to these reasons, this third type of Christian higher ed is, to put it bluntly, just less lofty in its rhetoric and self-understanding than the second type. More often than not this is the result of the denomination with which it is associated. It goes without saying that small, marginal, or socially downscale denominations will not have the capital or the hubris to found schools that cast themselves in grand, world-historical terms; they merely want to provide a space for their children to go to school in a Christian environment.

By definition, these schools are not especially prestigious. They’re also less pretentious than their peers. In a word, they are not meant for elites. They’re meant for normies. They aren’t a ladder to D.C. or Wall Street. They’re a pathway to a stable job, a middle-class life, and a Christian family. The aspirations might be lower, but they’re also more realistic. They’re not trying to ape the Ivies; they’re offering an oasis to families who want their children to remain believers while receiving the benefits of a college degree. At their best, that’s exactly what these schools do. At their worst, the function like trade schools with a spiritual facade. Probably, for most institutions, the reality is somewhere in the middle.

What’s important to see is that this third category is distinct from the second, even though the former will often drape itself in the trappings of the latter. In retrospect, this is what kept the two fused in my mind for so long.

In any case, neither is the same as “theological education,” which was an embarrassing confusion for a theology professor to have made for so long. Perhaps there are other distinctions worth adding, but these are the three that made the most sense to me.

The Liberating Arts is out today!

More than three years ago I joined a team of scholars on a grant-funded project called “The Liberating Arts.” We created a website and conducted dozens of video interviews with fellow writers, academics, educators, and intellectuals about the present and future of the liberal arts. The interviews are also available in podcast form.

Today is one more fruit of that long-standing project: a book! It’s called The Liberating Arts: Why We Need Liberal Arts Education. Published by Plough, it was edited by our fearless leaders Jeff Bilbro, Jessica Hooten Wilson, and David Henreckson. And it’s out today. Go buy it directly from Plough, or on Bookshop, or on the Bezos Site, or wherever else you purchase books. Request another copy for your library! And suggest it to your dean or chair or provost or study center as a common read! You won’t regret it.

What is the book, you ask? See below for a description. Let me tell you first whose essays are found between its covers (besides the editors’ and my own): Emily Auerbach, Nathan Beacom, Joseph Clair, Margarita Mooney Clayton, Lydia Dugdale, Don Eben, Becky L. Eggimann, Rachel Griffis, Zena Hitz, David Hsu, L. Gregory Jones, Brandon McCoy, Peter Mommsen, Angel Adams Parham, Steve Prince, John Mark Reynolds, Erin Shaw, Anne Snyder, Sean Sword, Noah Toly, and Jonathan Tran. Those are names worth reading.

What about endorsements? Check out these:

At their best, the humanities are about discerning what kinds of lives we should be living. But humanities education is in crisis today, leaving many without resources to answer this most important question of our lives. The authors of this volume are able contenders for the noble cause of saving and improving the humanities. Read and be inspired! —Miroslav Volf, co-author, Life Worth Living

In this lucid and inspiring volume, a diverse group of thinkers dispel entrenched falsehoods about the irrelevance, injustice, or uselessness of the liberal arts and remind us that nothing is more fundamental to preparing citizens to live in a pluralistic society attempting to balance the values of justice, equality, and community. —Jon Baskin, editor, Harper’s and The Point

In this series of lively, absorbing, and accessible essays, the contributors invoke and dismantle all the chief objections to the study of the liberal arts. The result is a clarion call for an education that enables human and societal flourishing. Everyone concerned about the fate of learning today must read this book. —Eric Adler, author, The Battle of the Classics

In our era of massive social and technological upheaval, this book offers a robust examination of and an expansive vision for the liberal arts. As a scientist who believes that education should shape us for lives of reflection and action, I found the essays riveting, challenging, and inspiring. I picked it up and could not put it down. —Francis Su, author, Mathematics for Human Flourishing

The Liberating Arts is a transformative work. Opening with an acknowledgement of the sundry forces arrayed against liberal arts education today, this diverse collection of voices cultivates an expansive imagination for how the liberal arts can mend what is broken and orient us individually and collectively to what is good, true, and beautiful. —Kristin Kobes du Mez, author, Jesus and John Wayne

And here’s a snapshot of what we’re up to in the book…

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Why would anyone study the liberal arts? It’s no secret that the liberal arts have fallen out of favor and are struggling to prove their relevance. The cost of college pushes students to majors and degrees with more obvious career outcomes.

A new cohort of educators isn’t taking this lying down. They realize they need to reimagine and rearticulate what a liberal arts education is for, and what it might look like in today’s world. In this book, they make an honest reckoning with the history and current state of the liberal arts.

You may have heard – or asked – some of these questions yourself:

• Aren’t the liberal arts a waste of time? How will reading old books and discussing abstract ideas help us feed the hungry, liberate the oppressed and reverse climate change? Actually, we first need to understand what we mean by truth, the good life, and justice.

• Aren’t the liberal arts racist? The “great books” are mostly by privileged dead white males. Despite these objections, for centuries the liberal arts have been a resource for those working for a better world. Here’s how we can benefit from ancient voices while expanding the conversation.

• Aren’t the liberal arts liberal? Aren’t humanities professors mostly progressive ideologues who indoctrinate students? In fact, the liberal arts are an age-old tradition of moral formation, teaching people to think for themselves and learn from other perspectives.

• Aren’t the liberal arts elitist? Hasn’t humanities education too often excluded poor people and minorities? While that has sometime been the case, these educators map out well-proven ways to include people of all social and educational backgrounds.

• Aren’t the liberal arts a bad career investment? I really just want to get a well-paying job and not end up as an overeducated barista. The numbers – and the people hiring – tell a different story.

In this book, educators mount a vigorous defense of the humanist tradition, but also chart a path forward, building on their tradition’s strengths and addressing its failures. In each chapter, dispatches from innovators describe concrete ways this is being put into practice, showing that the liberal arts are not only viable today, but vital to our future.

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P.S. There is a launch event in Manhattan next month. Join Roosevelt Montás, Zena Hitz, Jessica Hooten Wilson, and Jonathan Tran to celebrate The Liberating Arts on September 28 at The Grand Salon of the 3 West Club ⁄ New York. Sign up here.

Expertise

Expertise is under attack is a common theme in journalism and academic writing today. I don’t doubt it, and I don’t doubt its importance. Expertise is real and the loss of public confidence in persons whose office, education, training, or experience have historically granted them some measure of authority is an all too real problem. Implicit distrust of the very notion of authority, the very suggestion of expertise, makes a common life impossible, in more ways than one.

But there is a fundamental misunderstanding in defenses of expertise, and not only in high-minded venues. Even at the ordinary level of daily life or—where I spend my days—in the academy and the classroom, there is a basic confusion regarding what expertise is, what credentials are, and how either ought to function in social relations.

I wrote about this at length in my essay for The New Atlantis a year ago, titled “Statistics as Storytelling.” I won’t rehash that argument here. Let me do my best to boil it down into its basic components. I’ll spell it out in six principles.

The first principle of expertise is a defined scope of competence. An “expert”—if I’m honest, I hate that term; it’s a weasel word, invariably used to enhance status or dismiss objections; but I’ll keep using it here, since it’s the one in circulation—possesses some relevant knowledge about a particular domain: embryology, archeology, Greek sculpture, Moby-Dick. If the Melville scholar comments on anything outside her expertise, therefore, she is by definition no longer an expert, and thus bears no authority worthy of deference or respect. This is the Richard Dawkins phenomenon: He is welcome to speak and to write about philosophy and theology, but he does not do so as a philosopher or theologian, but as an evolutionary biologist addressing questions and subjects outside the scope of his formal training.

The second principle of expertise is that, without exception, all members of the same field, whether delimited by discipline or study or practice or training, disagree with one another about matters crucial to the field to which they belong. Expertise, in other words, is not about unanimity or agreement; it is about membership in a group defined by disagreement and disputation. It is about being party to the contest that is the field; being part of the argument that constitutes the guild. Expertise is not consensus: it’s the very opposite. It’s the entry point into a world of bitter, sometimes rancorous, conflict.

That doesn’t mean that everything is thereby in question. One must agree about certain things to disagree about others. Intelligible disagreement presupposes prior agreement. 2 + 2 = 4 is a premise for mathematicians’ arguments; certain claims build on others. That’s true of every realm of knowledge. But the interesting thing is always what’s not agreed upon. And outsiders are always surprised by just how little is agreed upon, even by like-minded experts in the same field.

The third principle of expertise is that, whenever and wherever what is called for in a given moment or in response to a certain question is not a set of empirical facts but a judgment, then the presumptive force of expertise is immediately qualified. There is no such thing as expertise in judgment. Or rather, there is, but one cannot be credentialed in it, for its name is wisdom. Wisdom is not and cannot be the result of formal education. It does not come with a degree or diploma. There are no letters to append to your name that signify wisdom. The least learned or educated person in the world may be wise, and the smartest or most educated person in the world may be foolish. (Indeed, Christians say that’s the normal run of things.) Good sense comes from living. Prudence is a virtue. Neither is the domain of an expert. There are no experts in good judgment, in wisdom, in prudence. As often as not, expertise functions as an obstacle to it, or a shield from it.

The fourth principle of expertise, then, is that typically what expertise provides is a set of facts or conditions, sometimes necessary but never sufficient, for the possibility of exercising wise judgment. It is true that I know more about Christian theology than most believers in the pews. That does not, in any way, mean that I am more likely to be right than they are about this or that Christian doctrine. A monk of Mount Athos is far wiser to submit to Orthodox tradition than to listen to me, even if I’ve read more Orthodox theologians than he has. A lifelong elderly believer who has never read theology may have keener insight into the mystery of the Eucharist than I do. True, I know the date of the second Ecumenical Council, and she may not. That’s not at issue though. What’s at issue is whether my expertise, such as it is, is either necessary or sufficient for knowing sound doctrine. And it is not. (If you’d like to meet a passel of heretical PhDs in theology, I can arrange an introduction.)

The same goes for biblical scholars. Knowledge of Greek gives you a leg up on having some plausible sense of what St. Paul might have had in mind in the mid-50s, writing to Corinth. But it doesn’t ensure that your exegesis of any New Testament text will be right, or even more likely to be right than the exegesis of an ordinary believer in the pew, ignorant of Greek as well as first-century Greco-Roman culture. Why? First, because New Testament scholars themselves don’t agree about how to read the text. The Pauline guild is that group of experts than which there is no more cantankerous or quarrelsome. Second, because the New Testament is Holy Scripture, and what God has kept from the learned he has revealed to the simple. That is, what God has to say in and through the canon may just as well bypass the intricacies of academic method as be accessed by them. In my experience, that is often the case.

The fifth principle of expertise is that all fields or domains that presuppose or assert normative (rather than empirical) claims logically may and necessarily will come into conflict. This is usually most quickly revealed in anthropology. An economist supposes homo sapiens to be a utility-maximizer, say, while the therapist sees a self-actualizer, and the theologian a sinner in need of Christ. To be sure, some aspects of these visions might be harmonious. But not all. Each, for example, takes a different and mutually opposed view of desire. Are all desires good? Are all to be affirmed or fulfilled? Is desire as such self-validating? And so on. The theologian is not departing from her realm in contesting the claims of the economist or the therapist, for the ground being contested is common to the three of them. It concerns the nature and purpose of the human person. Hence, when areas of expertise overlap, it is wholly proper for argument to ensue. No one’s view is invalidated in advance by dint of lacking the relevant credentials.

The sixth principle of expertise is that sometimes experts are wrong. It may be some group of experts, or all of them. The error may be partial or complete. But experts are wrong, and in fact, regularly so. That is to be expected, since there are no angelic experts, only human ones. The practice of knowledge is just that: a practice, and so subject to all the ordinary human foibles: vanity, greed, oversight, shortsightedness, limitations of every kind, fallibility, haste, contempt, and the rest. Sometimes we want something to be true when it isn’t. Sometimes we wish something were good when it isn’t. Sometimes we can’t stand the thought that our enemy isn’t wrong, and we work overtime to show that he is, or might be. Sometimes our blinders—the products of inheritance, culture, genetics, generation, education, prejudice, peers, parents, friends, what have you—keep us from seeing what is right in front of our noses. Whatever the reason, experts are far from infallible. The one thing you can take to the bank is that every expert in every field at this present moment believes something profoundly wrong or untrue in relation to his or her field, not to mention other fields. That includes me. The problem is just that none of us knows which one of our beliefs is the wrong one, amid all the right ones.

For experts of all kinds, the upshot should be a severe and sincere humility about the range and competence of our knowledge. For normal folks, such humility should be the expectation of experts, not the exception; and when it isn’t present, they are not wrong to be skeptical.

Between pandemic and protest: introducing The Liberating Arts

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to join a group of gifted Christian scholars with an idea for a grant proposal. The idea was to respond to the crisis facing institutions of higher education, particularly liberal arts colleges, proactively rather than reactively. That is, to see the moment—pandemic, protest, political upheaval, demographic collapse, threats to the future of the liberal arts on every side—as an apocalyptic one, in which deep truths about ourselves and our culture are unveiled, as it were, from without. What to do in light of those revelations? How to shore up the ruins, and more than that, to articulate a positive and hopeful case for the institutions and areas of expertise to which we all belong, and by which we have been so profoundly formed, in the midst of so many competing challenges and voices?

Led by Jeff Bilbro, Jessica Hooten Wilson, Noah Toly, and Davey Henreckson, the proposal was approved and we received the grant from CCCU. Earlier this month the project launched, and The Liberating Arts was born. Go check it out!

Here's the description from the About page:

COVID-19 has been apocalyptic for higher education, and indeed for our nation as a whole. It has intensified pressures already threatening liberal arts education: concerns over the cost of college, particularly for majors without clear career outcomes; the popularity of professional degrees with large numbers of required credits; the push for badges or micro-credentials as alternatives to a four-year degree; declining birth rates; the growth of online programs and other hybrid forms of “content delivery.” Concerns over the practicality of the liberal arts intensify ongoing questions about the very idea of moral formation central to this tradition. And within our nation, the pandemic has exacerbated preexisting inequalities and racial injustice. Pandemic conditions have fueled a surprisingly robust protest movement that is powerfully, and inspiringly, raising questions too often ignored by Christian educators. These are particularly pressing issues for Christian colleges and universities, which situate career preparation, moral formation, and critical inquiry within a broader vision for spiritual vocation. 

This project gathers faculty from a variety of institutions to lead conversations regarding the enduring relevance of the liberal arts. We welcome you to watch or listen to these conversations and participate in these vital discussions. The 2020-2021 academic year will likely prove an inflection point for higher education as the coronavirus pandemic and #BlackLivesMatters protests accentuate financial difficulties and surface mission ambiguities. Might it be a tipping point in a positive direction, as institutions seek to better equip students for the complexities facing them? Our conversations will enable colleges and universities across the country to learn from one another in addressing these challenges and opportunities, and they will encourage these institutions to draw on the rich heritage of the liberal arts tradition, while acknowledging its historical limitations, in shaping their responses. Our goal is to think and talk in public about the enduring value of the liberal arts for the particular concerns and challenges of our time.

Other members of the project include Jonathan Tran, Angel Adams Parham, Francis Su, Stephanie Wong, Greg Lee, Rachel Griffis, Kristin Du Mez, Joseph Clair, and Joe Creech. Each week we will be posting 2-3 video interviews with different leading scholars, thinkers, and writers from a variety of backgrounds and institutions. The interviews will track with one of four main thematic "channels" on the website: questions about the liberal arts of a definitional, formational, institutional, or liberational sort.

Already we have videos up featuring Willie James Jennings, Zena Hitz, Alan Jacobs, Karen Lee, and Francis Su. We have many more in the can or scheduled, including my own interview of Alan Noble, which should be posted next week.

I encourage you to peruse the site, watch/listen to the interviews, and share what will hopefully develop into a useful resource with as many others as you can!