"CHRISTIANS ARE MADE, NOT BORN" MARTIN W. BUSH Co-Editor Faculty Dialogue One wonders whether when Tertullian penned his Apologetic he could ever have imagined the reach across the centuries that phrase would have-"Christians are made, not born"-and how marvelously challenging it would remain. Those who have followed him as teachers and preachers, and even committed parents, have usually found more accusation, or at least challenge, than comfort in those few words. If Christians are made, not born, then someone (or some group) is responsible to structure circumstances to make them so. Those who teach and administer within Christian institutions of all kinds, from the churches to the graduate schools, have, at least implicitly, accepted this additional weighty responsibility. It is true that within a few years some seem to forget the reason they are there and become focused too narrowly on their own career goals and spheres of influence, or just on counting the days. By and large, however, the community of Christian educators and administrators is comprised of people who have demonstrated repeatedly a noble commitment to the task of "making Christians" despite the often long hours, heavy teaching and advising loads, and having to maintain an incredible number of sometimes overly dependent relationships for relatively low financial reward. Likewise, though many institutions have long since slipped the bonds of relationship with their founding churches and moved on in search of a broader scholastic acceptance, there are still hundreds of colleges, universities, seminaries, and Bible schools which continue to stand firm for committed, Christian scholarship, and which view as valuable the relationship between the institution and the church. What do we make, then, of the concerns expressed in a new book, Schooling Christians (Stanley Hauerwas & John H. Westerhoff, eds.), which raises a corollary argument to Tertullian's statement. The book grew from a consultation sponsored by the Lilly Foundation, which worked from the following statement of invitation: There is a growing conviction that we have reached the moral limits of liberalism, with its understanding of community founded upon the virtue of tolerance and its understanding of education founded upon a common school as the crucible for national identity. Liberalism's advocacy of respect as non-interference and of commonness as neutrality, along with its conviction that harmony in the social order can be achieved by minimizing or obliterating differences, has resulted in moral relativism and indifference, as well as social disease. Similarly, there is a growing conviction that we require a new understanding of society, one that rejects both a social order founded upon a co-existence devoid of conflictual interaction and a "melting pot" devoid of distinctiveness and uniqueness. One alternative understanding of society assumes distinctive, unique, identity-conscious communities interacting with each other in ways that do not compromise their integrity, but make possible various and diverse contributions to our common life. For Christians, the integrity of the church assumes an alternative community alongside and within a society where intolerance and interference are accepted. Christian families need to be able to shape the convictions by which they are to live and by which they hope their children will live. Christian schools and other agencies of Christian education need to be able to do the same. Christian churches need to be able to stand outside the social order exposing whatever is false, dehumanizing, and contrary to gospel practices so as to engage in selective participation and to provide a sign of an alternative way of life. This consultation intends to explore these convictions and thereby provide the foundations for an alternative way of envisioning life in the United States and the ways by which Christian churches, families, and agencies of education (mass media, schools, etc.) might live faithfully in relationship to the social order. (Introduction, pp. vii-vii) The twelve who participated in the consultation (Hauerwas, Westerhoff, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Mark Schwehn, Jean Beth Elshtain, James Skillen, Charles and Joshua Glenn, Patricia Beattie Jung, James Tunstead Burtchaell, Michael G. Cartwright, and Michael Warren), and whose papers appear in the book, are not unified in either their descriptive or prescriptive analyses. They do, however, present an impressive phalanx of challenge to conventional thinking regarding what constitutes appropriate and effective Christian schooling. Their purpose, and ours, is that these be recognized as major issues for discussion in the broader context of the Christian higher education community. The authors are, in fact, spoiling for a fight. The William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company has graciously allowed Faculty Dialogue to reprint the final chapter of the book, written by John H. Westerhoff, professor of theology and Christian nurture at Duke Divinity School and, for the last decade, editor of the journal Religious Education. There has been some concern that in publishing this last chapter the plot would be given away, but it is merely, or perhaps especially, that this chapter speaks more directly to the issues of what we expect or want from Christian education. It is directly relevant on at least two levels: (1) as food for thought for those teaching and enrolled in teacher education programs at the college level, and (2) as direct challenge for rethinking the life and work of Christian higher education communities of whatever stripe or educational level. And, though this is not a paid advertisement and, in fact, Faculty Dialogue initiated contact with the Eerdmans Publishing Company, we quite plainly want to encourage you to read the book, and more, to discuss the issues with your colleagues. If, as the authors suggest, even the schools which are overtly Christian reflect in essence our culture and its fundamental values, which are opposed to a Christian understanding and way of life, we've got more serious problems than adequate fund-raising. In fact, there may be something of an inverse relationship there. If, as they go on to suggest, Christians have failed to challenge our culture's dominant presuppositions, and therefore they are losing their ability to sustain the "schooling," or fashioning, of Christians, then serious thinking and discussion is merely the front edge of what needs to be done. But it does need to be done.