REFLECTIONS ON THE INTEGRATION OF FAITH, LEARNING AND LIFE by Gary J. Percesepe, Professor of Philosophy Cedarville College In his essay, “Teaching for Justice,”(1) Nicholas Wolterstorff observes that teaching and scholarship at a Christian college must go hand in hand. What is needed. Wolterstorff argues. Is praxis oriented scholarship-”that is, scholarship that analyzes social structures with an eye to the call for justice.” Wolterstorff is led to this view by his defense of what he calls the “shalom model” of the Christian college, which he champions over other models that he identifies as the Christian service model, the Christian humanist model, the Christian academic-discipline model, and the Christian socialization model. Each of these models has its advocates, and there is naturally some measure of self-interest involved in the question of who favors what model. Unsurprisingly, the Christian humanist model appeals especially to those teaching in the humanities; the academic-discipline model especially to those teaching in the natural and social sciences; and the socialization model to those engaged in professional and preprofessional education. But none of these models, Wolterstorff argues, responds adequately to the wounds of humanity. As Wolterstorff puts it: The academic-discipline model reminds us that the cultural mandate requires us to develop the potentials of creation by bringing forth science and art. But what about our liberation mandate to free the captive? The Christian humanist model stresses that we must be freed from our cultural particularities to participate as Christians in the freat cultural conversation of thumanity. But what all those people who after searching long and hard find no occupation? Our traditional models speak scarecely at all of injustice in the world, scarcely at all of our calling to mercy and justice.(2) In the Spring of 1988 I was teaching a general Ethics course at Cedarville College, a course which satisfies general education requirements in the humanities, and was packed with 90 students. Inspired and challenged by Wolterstorff, I was working through biblical material on justice and mercy and shalom in the first part of the course, as a preliminary to discussing ethical theory. I was struck by the beautiful biblical imagery of shalom- of human flourishing, in passages normally reserved for prophesy conferences. I grasped the basic biblical priciple that shalom is always already intertwined with justice, and the shalom community is the just community. I began to understand what Wolterstorff means when he says, “There can be no shalom without justice. In shalom, each person enjoys justice, enjoys his or her rights. If individuals are not granted what is due them, if their rightful claim on others is not acknowledged by those others, if others do not carry out their obligations to them, then shalom is wounded.”(3) I began to question whether justice was being done in my own community. I began to travel the roads and paths of the little community that I was teaching in, down streets whose names I did not know, to parts of town I had never visited, though I had taught at this College since 1983, almost six years. What I saw disturbed me. There was poverty and injustice in my community that I had never seen first hand. I took my concerns to my Ethics class. How, I asked, could we discuss this material without acting? Wasn’t that immoral? Didn’t Jesus in Matthew 25 tell us that to the extent that we ignore and do not see “the least of these” we ignore and do not see him? Yet there were people living in our community in shacks. Without front doors on their dwellings; children who had given up at school, parents who had lost hope for a better life. To my delight, the students were aroused. Without my asking, several students came forward and began to organize the others. Some of them went into the community and met with people and tried to determine their needs. Here was a family whose house needed to be painted and roofed, here was an unwed teenaged girl who needed to be tutored to stay in school, here was a boy that needed a friend, here were others that didn’t own a front door to their dwelling. We began to go to work. Each day before class there would be prayer and a sharing of what the needs were. Before the end of the quarter as a class we had raised over $800.00. We had scraped, painted, and roofed a house and purchased and installed a front door. A tutoring service for at-risk youths was started, and was run by Honors students. That teenager had her baby, and gained also a cluster of friends from the College who encouraged her. We participated in shalom, the extension of the Kindom of God. As we hammered and sawed and sanded and painted we had the sense that we were the hands, and arms, and heart of Jesus himself. And in all this, we learned more about ethics than I had ever dreamed possible. What happened after the class was over? Well, the class expressed concern that we not forget what we had done, and all agreed it was necessary to organize a group that would see to it that our new friends were nurtured and encouraged. They called themselves Students for Social Justice, and they were chartered by the College and began to meet on Thursday afternoons. In the years since, this group has reached out to other families in the community, and has also sponsored forums on racism, sexism, multiculturalism, and promoted environmental awareness. They became active in Habitat for Humanity, and began raising money and building houses for God’s people in need. Those students who met to take a class in the Spring of 1988 are gone now, but I still hear from some of them. We talk about many things when we see each other, or talk on the phone but never about the integration of faith, learning and life. Never. I’d like to think I know why. There’s no need. To talk, that is. Shalom. 1. Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Teaching for Justice,” in Making Higher Education Christian: The History and Mission of Evangelical Colleges in America, ed. Joel A. Carpenter and Kenneth Shipps (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), pp. 213-214. 2. Ibid, p. 209. 3. Ibid, p. 210.