AN APOLOGY FOR THE CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY1 + MICHAEL BEATY + Associate Professor of Philosophy Baylor University I am an educator who is confessionally a Christian. More particularly, I am a Baptist and a professional philosopher who first taught at Ouachita Baptist University and now teaches at Baylor University. Having degrees from Ouachita, Baylor, and Notre Dame University, my own intellectual and spiritual pilgrimage has been much influenced by these universities. All three of these institutions are at least accurately described as "church-related" universities. Sometimes they are called Christian universities. Through the influence of Ouachita I acquired the desire to teach at a Baptist university, a desire nurtured not only by Ouachita, but also by Baylor and Notre Dame. Still, at times I find myself puzzled. What am I supposed to be doing as an educator at Baylor University? Supported by Texas Baptists, Baylor's rich history includes being founded by the Education Society of the Union Baptist Association of the Republic of Texas which "was resolved to found a Baptist university in Texas."2 Baylor identified itself as an institution of higher education3 which strives to exemplify Christian scholarship rather than sectarian indoctrination4 and where an education may be acquired under Christian influences and ideals.5 Obviously, Baylor is a 1 church-related university and sees itself as a Christian university. But what is a Christian university or college? What distinguishes a Christian university from state-supported institutions like the University of Texas and Texas A & M or non-sectarian but private institutions like Harvard and Stanford? And what does Baylor's being Christian and related to the Baptist denomination have to do with my role as an educator, if anything? Is it that I am to produce Baptist ministers, missionaries, or minion, or what? Perhaps Christian scholarship? And what is Christian scholarship? Is it whatever is produced by a scholar who is also a Christian; or is it something more? Can Christian scholarship be produced by non-Christians? And in non-church-related surroundings? What is a Baptist university? Can a university be both church-related and Baptist without being a Christian university. More personally, am I a Christian educator? A Baptist educator? If so, what follows, if anything, from being a Christian, Baptist educator with respect to what I ought to be doing at Baylor University.6 In what follows I seek to clarify my own understanding of what Baylor is about and what this means for my own activities as an educator and scholar. My strategy is this: I shall begin by discussing these questions: What is a Christian university? What makes it distinctive, if anything? To do so I introduce a minimalist conception of a Christian university. After discussing this conception, I 2 enrich the minimalist conception in various ways until I have, by hypothesis, a more adequate conception of a Christian university. My enriched conception of a Christian university will suggest, hopefully, interesting and fruitful lines of thought with respect to questions like the ones I raised above. The Minimalist Conception A Christian university is a university which is supported, financially and in other important ways by Christians. If the university is supported by a particular denomination, then it might be more accurate to identify the university as a church-related university. This designation, if may be argued, puts the emphasis where it belongs, on the university. The relation between the Christian faith or the Christian church and the university will be like the relation between a local Optimist club and a local little league team. The Optimist club may financially support the team, hence the team may be called the Northwest Waco Optimist Blues. The support of the Optimist club will not affect the essential nature of the activity they are supporting-baseball. Being an Optimist baseball player is simply being a baseball player who happens to be supported by the Optimists. Given this analogy, it will be relatively easy to characterize or give a sense to the phrase "Christian educator." A Christian educator is a person who has met the criteria for membership in the academic community, who 3 practices her craft with skill and diligence, and who happens to be teaching or formally affiliated with a university supported by Christians or by a particular Christian denomination. On this view it need not follow that the Christian educator is a Christian or a member of some particular Christian church, just as the Northwest Waco Optimist baseball player need not be a member of the Northwest Waco Optimist Club. One can imagine that the Northwest Waco Optimist Club might require that the manager of its team be chosen from its own membership. Under that stipulation, if we know that Bill is the Northwest Waco Optimist manager, then we know that he is himself a member of the Northwest Waco Optimists. But his being a member of the Northwest Waco Optimists has no essential relation to his activities as manager of the team. What is required to manage well a little league baseball team is determined by the nature of baseball, and not by the nature of membership in the Optimist club. Similarly, one may argue, even if a denomination required those universities if supported to hire only personal who are themselves members of that denomination, their activities as educators are not affected by their membership in that denomination. On this view, a Christian educator is a competent and responsible scholar who happens to be a Christian. The point is this: being a Christian educator is like being a Black-American Ophthalmologist or a Christian brain surgeon. The adjectival designations, Black-American and Christian, 4 have nothing essential to do with what is designated by the noun-an ophthalmologist or a brain surgeon. A Black-American ophthalmologist is an ophthalmologist who happens to be a Black American. Similarly, a Christian surgeon is a surgeon who happens to be a Christian. Why think that it is any different for the Christian educator? The Minimalist-Plus Conception Even those who are satisfied with such a characterization of Christian educator may be unhappy with the similar characterization of what is meant by "Christian University." Echoing the line of a song popular during my college days, they may ask "Is that all there Is?" and insist that something important has been left out. What? Cordell Maddox, the president of Carson-Newman, a Baptist college, in a recent essay in The Southern Baptist Educator suggests a way of characterizing the Christian university which may address the concern just expressed. He says, We must take the risk of fully embracing our Christian, Baptism mission. There is no "halfway point". We are either going to be a Christian institution, or we are not. We must believe in our Baptist people strongly enough that we are willing to invest everything in order to create a Christian environment on our campuses.7 We can imagine someone claiming that the principal feature that distinguishes a Christian university from other 5 universities is its Christian environment. Immediately, we want to know how to distinguish a "Christian environments" from a non-Christian environment? Whatever we say, and we can imagine a range of possible answers to that question, we can see that it is possible to be a church-related university which eschews the intention of creating a "Christian environment" at the university. After all, the Northwest Waco Optimists can certainly support a little league team without attempting to create for their team an "Optimist environment" for their practice and play. If the Northeast Waco Optimists did want to create an "Optimist environment" for their team, what might they do? To begin, when new members join the team, they may be greeted warmly by enthusiastic Optimists who make the new members feel welcome and appreciated. Later they may require that those who play on the team learn the history of the Optimist club, that they learn to distinguish the Optimists from the Lions club or Kiwanis club or the Rotary club, for example, both in terms of origin, key incidents in their respective developments and fundamental guiding principles or goals. They may learn of heroes of the Optimist club and of their successes and failures. After becoming familiar with the goals of the Optimists, team members may be encouraged or required to recite the Optimist Pledge and to sing songs that nurture one's identity with the Optimists. Team members may be encouraged to participate in other Optimist activities and service 6 projects and be rewarded in various ways for having done so. All of these things, and more, including heartfelt commitment, seem applicable to the university that wants to create a Christian environment. New students will be greeted warmly and enthusiastically by members of the university. The attitudes and actions displayed will be appropriately and consistently Christian (according perhaps to that particular community's own self-understanding of what it means to be Christian). For example, loving-kindness, trust, forgiveness, and compassion may be the attitudes of preference in the life of the university. In addition, certain behaviors may be proscribed because they appear incompatible with a Christian way of life. Along the way, courses may be required in church or denominational history, the presence of the church may be felt on the campus i the form of a chapel, or active formal and informal Bible studies. Other groups may meet to emphasize Christian fellowship and service. The heroes of the church may be frequently in view via discussion or symbols. Special activities may be made available on a regular basis to allow students the opportunity to immerse themselves in the Christian environment. Notice, however, that all this may be viewed as mere accretion to the university, having no essential relation to its mission, purpose, or function. And because these activities have no essential relation to the mission or purpose of the university as a university, they have not 7 essential relation to those who teach there-its professors. Just as the Chief Resident of a hospital utilizes her skills in the service of and tailors her activities to the mission of the hospital, so the professor does likewise in the service of the mission of the university, be she a dean or a teacher. What is the mission or purpose of the university? Worth noting is the fact that the modern university is beset by competing answers to this question. Most wish to hold on to the traditional liberal arts notion of stimulating the growth and development, the self-fulfillment of each student by exposure to a liberating curriculum in philosophy, history, literature, classical and foreign languages, and the natural sciences. At the same time, the modern university wishes to embrace the Baconian task of searching for new knowledge , disseminating and applying that knowledge for the benefit of the common good. Not only does the modern university wish to be both a research university and a place where the liberal arts flourish, but it also wishes to prepare students for productive and satisfying careers. Suppose these different, but perhaps related, goals can be unified and are attainable within one institutional arrangement. Subsume all of them under the label "education" We may then say that the central mission of the university is to educate, just as the central mission of the hospital is to heal. Undoubtedly, an atmosphere of caring enhances the 8 hospital's chances to fulfill its mission. To the extent that caring is endemic to the Church or to Christians, then those who establish or use hospitals have a reason to found or use hospitals that have a Christian environment, rather than merely church-related in the weaker sense of being monetarily supported by Christians. Moreover, if a hospital intends to provide the best health-care possible, then even non-church-related hospitals may be expected to be caring. On this view, a Christian hospital and a non-church-related hospital may be distinguished most clearly by virtue of the vehicles which nurture, support, and encourage the caring attitudes which characterize each institution's staff. Similarly, the Christian university may be distinguished from the non-Christian university, not so much by its emphasis on caring, but rather by the means, both symbolic and non-symbolic, it uses to encourage and maintain a caring environment. Note that on the Minimalist-Plus Conception the Christian university is not essentially different from the non-Christian hospital. The tasks of the medical practitioners are the same. The Christian brain surgeon practices her craft in the same ways as the non-Christian brain surgeon. Hence, we should not expect the Christian university to be essentially different from the non-Christian university, nor the Christian scholar to differ essentially from the non-Christian scholar. Christian scholarship will be that which is produced and 9 disseminated by scholars who labor at universities which are supported by Christians and which are circumscribed by a Christian environment. Furthermore, Christian higher education will be a university education in a Christian environment just as Christian health care is health care in a Christian environment. A Conception of a Christian University In our ears the refrain rings again: "Is that all there Is?" Not so, according to John Kuykendall, current president of Davidson College. In his commencement address to the Class of 1990, he asks, Has anyone ever come right out and told you that this is a Christian college? Not "church-related" but Christian? . . . Have we told you that Davidson means to be Christian-that Davidson College stands within a living tradition which intends to hold together the things of the mind and the things of the spirit; with the conviction stated in our constitutional document that "Jesus Christ" is the central fact of history, giving purpose, order, and value to the whole life; and that God is "the source of all truth." . . .Have we told you that you have an obligation as a member of this community-an obligation which continues into alumni status-to deal seriously with that truth both in your intellectual life and in your moral life? . . .8 My gloss on Kuykendall is this:9 the aim of a Christian university is a Christian education. The aim of a 10 Christian education will be to educate the student to live the life of faith, a Christian life, in contemporary society. The life of faith is a life in which the form of one's decisions, choices, and attitudes are determined by one's response to God in Christ. This in turn will inevitably engender beliefs about the nature of God, the world, the human condition, just and unjust social arrangements, etc. These beliefs provide a person a frame of reference and a direction for "seeing" what and how things are and how they ought to be. Moreover, the life of faith is not a solitary life, but rather a life lived within a community of believers who share a framework of conviction- a confession of faith. A Christian education will be a project of the community of believers and a Christian university will be one of the means by virtue of which a particular community of believers attempts to equip students to live a life of faith, a way of life centered and directed by its confessional framework. That which distinguishes a Christian education at Christian universities from other universities, then, is that the education therein is grounded on a guided by a Christian point of view. For a particular group of Christians who embody a living tradition, say Baptists, then a Baptist university will be education which is grounded on and guided by a Baptist confessional or convictional framework. What does all this mean for those who work as teachers at Christian universities? First, this conception of a 11 Christian university implies that those who teach there recognize that the guiding mission of the university is to equip its students to think about the world from and live in the world on the basis of a Christian point of view. This general and ultimate goal involves at least three mediate goals: 1) Increase the student's awareness of what is true10; 2) Increase the student's ability to investigate both within and without and to articulate the results of his or her investigations (to accomplish this aim the student must be equipped with certain skills and competencies); 3) Incline the student to be a certain kind of person, a person disposed to behave in certain kinds of ways, to have certain kinds of attitudes, motives, and feelings. Those who teach at a Christian university should expect those who direct its activities, especially its academic activities, to have some plan or strategy for how these general goals are to be accomplished. More specifically, surely some courses will be in the curriculum as either required or electives designed to foster the integration of faith and learning. For example, at a Christian university the study of the Christian religion must be an essential part of the curriculum. While the course would be similar in design to some courses in non-Christian universities, it would also be different. Not only would the course seek to acquaint students with the tools needed to study religion, to equip them with the ability to evaluate their own religious commitments, to assist them in evolving an integrated world 12 view, but also it should assume that a mature understanding of the Judeo-Christian perspective is both true and an essential part of an integrated world view. That such a course must be taught with sensitivity and openness to other points of view is indubitable. It must not be used to coerce, badger, or belittle anyone. In addition, other, perhaps interdisciplinary, courses ought to be offered in which students are exposed to contrasting views of life and learning. One can imagine courses which offered a diversified educational experience including exposure to film, art, music, readings and discussion and led by faculty members from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. Still, the aim of such courses would be to help students develop a Christian perspective of life and learning in an environment that was challenging, honest, open, and non-coercive.11 Second, those members of the university who self-consciously endorse the notion that being a Christian university entails the equipping of students to live the life of faith in contemporary society and includes having a coherent plan for so doing are to be called Christian educators. Ideally, at a Christian university or college most members of the administration and faculty would have chosen to work there because they embraced this vision of Christian education. At the very least, a Christian university must include a core of educators who are devoted to the integration of faith and learning and who are willing 13 to do the hard labor necessary to create an exciting educational experience for students which reflects this commitment to the integration of faith and learning. Additionally, some of those at the university must be devoted to articulating, deepening, and exploring a Christian point of view in ways which lead to interesting and fruitful lines of research. Until the latter is done, to paraphrase Nicholas Wolterstorff, Christian scholarship will hardly be scholarship at all.12 For example, at a Christian university some of the psychologists who are Christians will be attempting to see how our community's authentic13 Christian believes bear on the information, methods, and theoretical models which make up the domain of their field and vice versa. They will look for assistance from their colleagues in other disciplines as they ponder questions like "What is a self?" What bearing does the right brain/left brain research have on what it is to be a "self" or a "person?" What is the relation, if any, between physical illness and psychological illness? Are all psychological illnesses reducible to physical causes of some sort or other? Are all illnesses to be conceptualized in the same way? In what way, if any, are our beliefs and other such intention-states relevant to our health and well-being? Is the phenomenon of moral guilt always psychologically unhealthy or not? If not, then how will psychologists as counselors appropriate that fact as they work with people who are seeking wholeness and health? How 14 does psychology fit into the overall Christian project of redemption from sin and movement to wholeness? Conclusion I find this conception of a Christian university and its implications for Christian scholars both plausible and exciting. As a Christian educator, I have a taproot and body to which I belong. To identify myself as a Christian educator is to remind myself that my activities as an educator are ways of manifesting my love of God, love of the body of Christ, and love of neighbor. Being a Christian educator is a Christian vocation which may be exercised faithfully or unfaithfully. My allegiance as an educator is ultimately to God and the Christian community and embodied in service of some particular Christian community with a living, vibrant consciousness of itself as followers of Christ. Hence, my activities in teaching and research ought not to be determined solely or authoritatively by reference to what is going on at Harvard or the University of Texas at Austin. Still, perhaps many of us, though educators at church-related universities, are tempted to model our institutions and our own activities only by reference to the great research institutions of higher education, almost all of whom have a taproot which is self-consciously non-religious. Why is this so? The reasons are complex, no doubt. For some of us a major reason is that we are unclear about our vision of the Christian life. This is true of 15 Baptists, I think. So, we Baptist educators must take seriously James McClendon's call to recover and articulate a Baptist vision of the Christian life.14 Is this solely the task of Baptist educators? I doubt it. But it is our task, too, and we ought to get on with it.15 Notes 1The ideas in this essay are the result of my interaction with a number of books or essays I have read over the last several years. While I shall not attempt to identify all of them, I want to acknowledge my debt to several which are not specifically identified in other footnotes. Arthur Holmes, The Idea of a Christian College (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1975). Cardinal John Henry Newman, The Scope and Nature of University Education (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1958). Michael Peterson, Philosophy of Education: Issues and Options (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988). Alvin Plantinga, "Advice to Christian Philosophy," first published in Faith & Philosophy, Vol. 1, No. 3, (July 1984) and recently anthologized in Christian Theism and the Problem of Philosophy, ed. by Michael D. Beaty (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990). Alvin Plantinga, The Twin Pillars of Christian Scholarship (Grand Rapids, MI: Calvin College and Seminary, 16 1990). William C. Ringenberg, The Christian College: A History of Protestant Education in America (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian University Press, 1984). 2"Introduction," Baylor University 1989-90 Bulletin, p. 19. 3"The Purpose of Baylor University," Baylor University 1989-90 Bulletin, p. 2. 4From "Institutional Purpose and Goals," Baylor University 1984-86 Institutional Self-Study, p. 7. 5Baylor University 1989-90 Bulletin, p. 2. 6At bottom, these sorts of questions are motivated by the kind of concern articulated by Nicholas Wolterstorff in his provocative book, Reason Within the Bounds of Religion, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1984), p. 21. Wolterstorff notes that the Christian who is a scholar finds him- or herself in two communities: the community of fellow scholars and the community of fellow Christians. He goes on to suggest that since each of these communities has its own characteristic beliefs and practices, its own criteria for membership, and its own rites of passage, the Christian who is a scholar, will want to ask the following question: how does my membership in these two communities cohere or fit together? 7The Southern Baptist Educator, August 1990 (Nashville, TN: Education Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention), p. 4. 17 8Davidson Journal/Summer 1990, p. 18. 9I have discovered that my gloss on Kuykendall is much influenced by my internalization of a book I read several years ago entitled, Christian Liberal Arts Education. A work of the Calvin College Curriculum Study Committee and published by Calvin College and Eerdmans in 1970, Chapter I-III contain an interesting discussion of the history of liberal arts education and its appropriation by the Christian community. In particular, see "Faith and Life" and "The Christian Community", pp. 28-33, the portions most influential on the line of argument I am developing. 10This goal is compatible with our recognition that our grasp of the truth is, at best, partial and incomplete, fallible and defeasible. 11All students at the University of Notre Dame are required to take a course like this as a part of the Core Curriculum. At Calvin College a course entitled "Christian Perspectives on Learning," is offered during the interim term. See The Calvin College Catalog 1983-84, p. 76 for a brief description of the course's aims and its interdisciplinary nature. 12Nicholas Wolterstorff, Reason Within the Bound of Religion, p. 106. 13Here I follow Nicholas Wolterstorff in suggesting that one's attempt to follow Christ involves a complex matrix of beliefs and actions which are a manifestation of what one's convictions are on how one ought to follow Christ. Though 18 one's authentic Christian commitment is much more than a list of propositions, it does have belief content. One's authentic Christian commitment is relative to persons and times, though it seems reasonable to think that some beliefs would belong to the belief-content of all authentic Christian commitments. That set of beliefs would be small and simple. See Wolterstorff, pp. 71-5. 14See chapter one of his Ethics: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1986). In this chapter he discusses the importance of a quest for a Baptist vision. 15My thanks to Robert Baird, Greg Garrett, Jonathan Lindsey, Jude Nixon, and Donald Schmeltekopf of Baylor University for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. 19