VISION FOR LIFE: VALUES AND MORAL GOALS IN CHRISTIAN HIGHER EDUCATION *E. JOE GILLIAM* Director Institute for Christian Leadership Contributing to the Foundations of a Free Society Through Awareness and Commitment to Lifelong Moral and Ethical Development Creating an education that is truly Christian, and creating a Christian experience that is truly educational helps to reappropriate our heritage in order to meet the challenge of remaining an exemplary and compassionate people. THE QUEST FOR A MORALLY COHERENT LIFE: THREE CONTEMPORARY VIEWS One: A Political View For eighteen months in 1983/84, Georgie Anne Geyer, syndicated columnist and television panelist on world affairs, conducted interviews with world leaders regarding the forces that are contributing to the disintegration of world order: the breakdown of national borders, the rise of irregular warfare and purposeless killing, overpopulation, the burden of international debt, and the onset of "compassion fatigue" by international organizations of developed countries seeking to address the needs of the developing nations. Since World War II--in Geyer's view, the watershed event of our current human passage--the heroic rebuilding of whole societies and the decolonization of half the population of the world has failed to achieve the hopes of a more developed, technological, and egalitarian future. Instead the 1970s and 1980s have witnessed a quiet, relentless, slow-motion disintegration of the structural and spiritual foundations of the global community. Geyer's voice is that of a journalist, political analyst, and international observer disturbed by the violent forces assaulting world order. The menace of global anarchy is a portion of the existential backdrop that challenges all institutions of higher education, but particularly Christian liberal arts colleges, to examine their purpose and mission. Two: A Cultural View During the period Geyer was traveling the world, Robert Bellah, Ford Professor of Sociology and Comparative Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and four associates were in the midst of a five-year (1979-84) project visiting communities, groups, and individuals around the United States. The focus of their concern: How ought we to live? How do we think about how to live? Who are we, as Americans? What is our character? How do we preserve or create a morally coherent life? To explore these questions, the researchers re-examined the views of Alexis de Tocqueville, a distinguished French social philosopher. During his visit in the 1830s, Tocqueville offered the most comprehensive and penetrating analysis of the relationship between character and society in the United States that has ever been written, describing these mores on occasion as "habits of the heart." Tocqueville argued that these mores have been the key to America's success in establishing and maintaining a free republic, and undermining them would threaten the free institutions of the United States. These mores (or "habits of the heart") involve habitual practices with respect to such things as religion, political participation, and economic life. "Heart" is used in its biblical sense: both Old and New Testaments speak of heart as involving intellect, will, and intention as well as feeling. Of particular concern to Tocqueville was the tendency of American citizens to stress an individualism that encouraged withdrawal into the circle of family and friends and left the greater society to fend for itself. He contended that such isolation and withdrawal invite despots to usurp the roles of free citizens. Tocqueville was interested in the countervailing forces that act to pull people back together from isolation to community--voluntary associations that mediate between the individual and the centralized state. Bellah and his associates are concerned with this tension between the person and the community. In their view, the current imbalance in favor of individualism necessitates a transformation of American culture so that we may find coherence in the presence of the fragmentation that characterizes so much of American intellectual and popular culture. The authors affirm the republican and biblical traditions that give meaning and significance to the lives of many Americans. The communities of memory (religious faiths, for example) are countervailing forces that remind us "that our utilitarian pursuits are not the whole of life, that a fulfilled life is one in which God and neighbor are remembered first." Transforming the social ecology of America will entail personal, cultural, and structural changes including the "classical role of education as a way to articulate private aspirations with common cultural meanings so that individuals simultaneously become more fully developed people and citizens of a free society." The voices of these keen observers of American culture suggest that our task is to "reappropriate and revitalize" the republican and biblical traditions so that they can speak to our condition today and help us find again the coherence and wholeness that we have almost lost. Three: An Evangelical View A third voice, speaking with a "community of memory" that Bellah and his associates describe as a key resource for the transformation of American society, challenges the international evangelical community to rediscover its biblical and activist roots and to engage the pressing needs of today's global village. John Stott, noted leader in Christian mission and director of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, challenges the Christian community to rediscover its social conscience and to become involved as redemptive elements, agents of wholeness in our chaotic, fragmented world. Stott explores the opportunities for Christian engagement of specific issues: work and unemployment marriage and divorce racial equality abortion poverty and wealth the nuclear threat feminism ecology and environment homosexuality These voices and others are calling for a renewal of the "habits of the heart" that inform our most profound sense of individual and corporate identity, and a transformation of the social ecology in which we are called to live and work. Traditionally, the conveyance of values and commitments has been the task of education and particularly higher education, especially in the years from the founding of Harvard in 1636 through the nineteenth century. Since the colleges provide the training and validate the credentials of those who are to teach each new generation, an urgent question today is: How is higher education proceeding with its task? THE UNIVERSITY IN AMERICA: "VALUE-FREE" EDUCATION In a 1984 article ("`Universities Have Fallen Down on the Job' of Teaching Values," U.S. News & World Report, Oct. 1, 1984), James Billington, director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, concluded that "American universities have fallen down on the job of transmitting values to students." The fragmentation of the curriculum, a decline of faculty with a commitment to traditional values, academic specialization that imitates the industrial assembly line, adoption of the positivistic methods of the natural sciences, and the offering of a smorgasbord of consumer-oriented courses have led to a profound cynicism about the process of learning that makes America a less caring society. Ideology and methodology--the modern substitutes for religion--have become the value base transmitted by higher education under the guise of a "value-free, tradition-free" curriculum. The result, observes Billington, is polarization: "a growing split between those who are morally concerned but not intellectually trained and those who are highly articulate but morally insensitive." Sustaining two opposing camps poses dangers for a democratic society: it may not survive a full generation of such division. If American universities, the predominant force in terms of number of students enrolled, are failing to address the value issues, who can step into the breach? A growing number of qualified students of both higher education and professional life today are united in the conviction that the church-related liberal arts colleges have the latent potential to undertake this fateful responsibility. CHRISTIAN HIGHER EDUCATION: REAPPROPRIATING THE EVANGELICAL HERITAGE In this connection, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College, reflecting on the development of Christian colleges in the United States, observes that many of these institutions which were founded in the nineteenth century were the intellectual home of Christian scholars who believed that all competent scholarship could be integrated with the Christian faith to the advantage of both. Two mighty philosophical hammer blows shattered that confidence: Darwin's proposed theory of evolution and the advent in Germany of "higher criticism" of the Bible. Scholars proposed a new cosmology: "design without a designer and revelation without a revealer." The response by evangelical colleges, Wolterstorff suggests, has come in two stages: Stage I, from the beginning of this century through the Second World War, was characterized by a narrow emphasis on personal piety and evangelism coupled with a defensive, isolationist withdrawal from the culture at large. Stage II, following the Second World War, dropped the defensive shields and sought to integrate the full breadth of culture within a Christian world view. Wolterstorff believes that the Christian college is on the threshold of a third stage: preserving the contributions of Stage I with its concern for piety and evangelism and of Stage II with its appreciation for our cultural heritage, the emerging call is for the active engagement of the Christian with the pressing issues of contemporary society. Wolterstorff's Stage III parallels the concern of Geyer, Bellah, and Stott that the distinctive challenge of our day is renewal of the "habits of the heart" that preserve and strengthen relationships in community and provide resources for addressing the pressing needs of the global village. A growing chorus of distinguished voices is suggesting that the evangelical Christian colleges can and should be the forerunners of educational and moral renewal. Warren Bryan Martin, Senior Research Fellow of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, has challenged the liberal arts and church-related colleges to reject the vision that produces colleges of convenience and instead to build "colleges of character." The opportunity is clear: The church-related liberal arts college is strategically posed at this moment in history to reappropriate its republican and biblical heritage for the purpose of bringing wholeness, integrity, and vision to the human enterprise as it engages the pressing needs of our global society. The growing number of concerned leaders in education, the social sciences, and the church dramatically signalize the auspiciousness of bringing together a critical mass of seminal thinkers and practitioners who are committed to outlining the vision that can transform our culture and society by re-energizing colleges of character as redemptive agents for wholeness and compassion. These institutions can be an impelling force that remind us of the communities and traditions that formed us, and of what Paul Tillich called "the structure of grace in history" that makes community possible. Distinguished voices endorse the challenge: While no one expects any agency of church or academy by itself to meet all the needs of the new situation, the church-related college has a special calling and a special poise to serve as one of the rare bridges between worlds. The question ahead will not be: can such colleges achieve the task? The question is: will they be responsible servants of their Lord, creative agents in society? The resources may be limited; the horizons are vast. Martin E. Marty Can we not rally a first-rate panel of evangelical minds to address moral and spiritual dilemmas and to speak to the conscience of the nation? Highly qualified scholars to present viable Christian perspectives on the world of learning. Carl F. H. Henry The finest minds must be enlisted--philosophers, scientists, poets, theologians, preachers, college and university presidents, presidents of republics, presidents of corporations. . .possibly only five or a dozen to begin with. Their mandate is twofold: to provide by the end of this decade the most objective, exhaustive, and thorough study of what is really happening in the great universities of Europe and America in the field of the humanities, and to suggest practical ways and means for permeating that field with the right spirit, the right attitude, in a word, with right reason. Charles Malik As I have thought long about the situation of the Christian college in America, recognizing both the magnitude of the conception and the sorrow of its decline, I have turned to the words of Abraham Lincoln when he said on December 1, 1862, "We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth." I do not say that the Christian college is the last best hope, but I do say that it is part of that hope. I want, while I am alive, to give my best thought to the elaboration of the redemptive idea, to face honestly our departure from it, and to assist wherever possible, in its renewal. I think that renewal is possible! D. Elton Trueblood Our society is demonstrably adrift in a sea of social, economic, political, and moral forces. To be sure, we are blessed with an abundance of knowledge and a host of formally well-educated citizens, the indispensable element in a responsive democratic society. As a people we allow our public debt to continue to skyrocket beyond limits considered disastrous by economists and business and industrial leaders. We tolerate socially and personally devitalizing unemployment among those willing to work; we husband grain in thousands of silos while millions here and abroad go hungry. We witness only a quarter of eligible voters taking advantage of the franchise while they irresponsibly complain that the government is misguided; we disregard or abandon the elementary principles of personal and social responsibility which since the earliest days of our national life have been considered the sine qua non of our national well-being. The causes of these fundamental changes in our culture are many and complex. At the root of the most dramatic over the years of this century, however, has been a neglect and in some instances, a deliberate exclusion of the educational elements concerned with values, especially those guiding precepts of human thought and behavior inherent in the Judeo-Christian way of life. The qualities of mind, heart, and spirit required to deal effectively with the personal and social issues at the basis of contemporary disorder in our personal and social lives are explicitly and dramatically exhibited in the utterances of Christ, without which the "habits of the heart" are lost through the fragmentation of culture. Fortunately, even among the most objectivist philosophers there is now a concern about the restoration of a search for meaning in life and a reaffirmation of personal responsibility in the elevation of the quality of life. The church-related college is peculiarly equipped by its philosophy, its faculty, and by the closeness of its community life to take the leadership in restoring to a central position in all of American higher education the treatment of values as an indispensable element in the society of learning. If these institutions accept this awesome responsibility, they will flourish and reap the plaudits of their contemporaries and the encomium of generations yet to come. If they do not seize this fugitive opportunity, they will surrender their most distinctive reason for being. More importantly they will surrender their priceless heritage to the secular forces which already have begun to enfeeble our national will and undermine our position as a people. An organization like the Institute for Christian Leadership working with these institutions can provide an indispensable public service in this pivotal time in our national life. Earl J. McGrath THE CHALLENGE The mission of the evangelical college is derived primarily from the mission of the Church. For the evangelical community, the cornerstone of its heritage is the Lordship of Jesus Christ; in D. Elton Trueblood's striking phrase: "Christ: the Center of Certitude." Its supreme moral demand, Trueblood believes, is Christ's "paradox of double priority" (the two "firsts" of Mark 12:28-34): the cultivation of the inner spiritual life: love of God with heart and soul and strength and mind coupled with the constant social concern embodied in love of one's neighbor. Church historian Martin Marty, Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor at The University of Chicago, has identified a family of apostolic churches with Jesus Christ at the center as a "communion of communions." It is here that he sees the power of this affirmation to form a strong Christocentric fellowship. The communion of communions is not a homogeneous entity, but rather a community of living partly in response to its separate traditions and partly in response to the calls of a common Christian vocation. Marty believes, with Elton Trueblood, that being yoked with Christ and each other offers an alternative to the radical religious individualism and the destructive forces eroding a morally coherent sense of community. Marty's description of the Christian communion of communions offers an encouraging model for rallying the resources of the evangelical Christian colleges for the renewal and transformation of society. Historically, at strategic times evangelical leaders have established networks of concern to address specific challenges to church and society. For example: Christianity Today Attracting funds from the Pew Foundation, a handful of leaders, with Carl F. H. Henry as the founding editor, launched Christianity Today in 1956 to give the evangelical church a much needed publication. Billy Graham and L. Nelson Bell were important endorsers of this effort. Today the publication is one of the most respected religious journals, with a circulation of approximately 200,000 reaching virtually every denomination in the United States. World Vision Another example of what the initiative and dedication of an individual can achieve is found during and after the Korean War, when Bob Pierce launched an orphan ministry that spawned World Vision's program of international compassion and concern. An effort united both the evangelical and mainline churches in the world's largest and most effective missions program of its kind toward relieving hunger and other social needs. Fuller Theological Seminary Just a little over two decades ago, a few leaders of devout faith and commitment, including Carl Henry, left the security of well-established jobs to plant a new seminary on the then evangelically neglected West Coast. Yokefellow's International In 1944 D. Elton Trueblood, writing in The Predicament of Modern Man, identified ours as the "cut-flower civilization": divorced from our roots and adrift in a world that seemed to have lost its meaning. Then in 1949, while reading his New Testament, he suddenly was struck with "Christ's clearest call to commitment," which is found in Matthew 11:29: "Take my yoke upon you." Thus was given a name to "the heretofore nameless fellowship which was beginning to become a conscious one." Yokefellows has become both intensified and diversified with chapters throughout the U.S. and around the world. A movement concerned for personal discipline and the establishment of incendiary fellowships, the spiritual life of prisoners, and the education of the laity. The Billy Graham Association No man in human history has contributed more to world evangelization than Billy Graham. Beyond the primary task of proclaiming the good news of redemption, Mr. Graham's ability to unite Christians from all denominations in a concern for biblical principles on the crises of our age is unmatched. These movements offer a model and demonstration of the power of renewal that a network of committed Christian leaders can bring to bear on issues of vital human need. In the same spirit, Christian higher education has the potential, if properly supported, to be the single most effective agent for the transformation of society. Recognizing the singular position Christian higher education can hold in leading the indispensable redirection of contemporary life, a morally coherent life for both the individual and social community, the Institute for Christian Leadership seeks to strengthen the peculiar purpose of these "colleges of character" and to facilitate the revitalization of their traditional spiritual heritage to the end of rejuvenating the entire life of our democratic society. THE NECESSARY LEADERSHIP A potential for the transformation of both education and society already exists within the seventy-six member schools of the Christian College Coalition. From the beginning it has been the dominant goal of the Institute for Christian Leadership to facilitate and strengthen the worthy mission of this evangelical network. Four activities are designed to implement the Institute's commitment to realize this vision of renewal: 1. The establishment of a Resource Center to house a FORUM (a Think Tank or medium of exchange) that will facilitate an easy exchange of ideas and experiences--a body or panel of recognized scholars who will help reanimate the vision of Christian higher education. 2. The Institute for Christian Leadership already provides mechanism for creative thinking, exchange of ideas, and the motivation to research and write for publication in the journal Faculty Dialogue so that the purposes and goals of the Christian higher education movement will be strengthened and enhanced. 3. In order to reflect with accuracy the "Christian World View" at the evangelical Christian college and review its strength of commitment to its republican and biblical heritage, it will sponsor the design of a measurement instrument comparable to the Institutional Functioning Inventory (IFI) and the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) to evaluate the extent to which the Christian presuppositions, convictions, and commitments have shaped institutional life, and positively influenced the students who have been its patrons. 4. The networking of Christian scholars both on and off campus will have two controlling goals. The first, working with the Christian College Coalition, will enable the Institute to bring scholars together for the exchange of ideas, for conferences, research, and writing. More broadly, the Institute will seek ways to identify scholars with a Christian commitment who teach or work in the public sector of education, with the purpose of engaging them in such professional activities as will spread the concern for moral values within the secular society. THE NECESSARY RESOURCES; DISCERNING THE kAIROS The Greek translation of the Bible employs two principal terms to speak of time. Chronos, an invention of humanity, divides existence into segments that serve as markers of human activity. In our day, schedules and calendars and clocks have become tyrants to be manipulated and tamed by "one-minute managers." There is another dimension: kairos, divine time, the urgent and pregnant instant when Providence arrests the heart and conscience of the faithful with a spiritual vision and call for responsibility in a broken world. There is no option for manipulation; one must take a leap of faith or suffer the moment to pass. This paper, "Vision for Life," opened with political, cultural, and evangelical voices crying in a contemporary wilderness for a vision of moral coherence and social responsibility; searching for a kairos, a revealed moment to press forward as instruments for reform and renovation of the social order. Martin Marty reminds the Church that it is a community of memory with a distinguished heritage of forebears whose responses to kairos over the past five hundred years of settlement in the New World can be reviewed for insight and encouragement to free us to discern the divine moment in our day to act. In the first generation, Bartolomeo de Las Casas, who some believe was the first Christian ordained in the New World, spoke out for Indian rights. In the first Protestant generation, Puritans formed a commonwealth of order and justice based on the theocracy of the Old Testament. Many Anabaptist dissenters stood with the patriots of independence to extend political freedom as they had supported ecclesiastical freedom. Quakers tried to establish a holy commonwealth of voluntary assent to the laws of the spirit. Citizens of New Amsterdam fashioned social and commercial adjustments that tolerated a pluralism of religious confessions. Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield in the 1740s, the Wesleyans in the 1780s, and the revivalists of the 1800s not only preached individual spiritual rebirth but also, as sponsors of benevolent and reform agencies, worked for moral renovation, sometimes even through legislation. The millennial wing of the revivalists worked to shape a better society in the image and hope of the Peaceable Kingdom or the Second Coming. Freedman's bureaus by and for blacks allied with abolitionists to bring judgment on slavery and to reshape American society in the terrible rending of the 1860s. The nonviolent but radical envisioning of society espoused by the agents of the Social Gospel and the social criticism of the Niebuhr era shared a passion for justice in the opening decades of this century. In the 1960s ecumenical and liberal Protestantism, along with its Catholic and Jewish counterparts, shared the progressivism and utopianism of many in the technological and political orders. In the 1970s and '80s more conservative Christian elements organized politically to offer an alternative social program on a cluster of issues: scientific evolution, prayer and Bible reading in the public schools, abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment, homosexual rights, the limits of speech and press on materials deemed to be obscene or pornographic. Historically, over the past five centuries, often at great sacrifice, individual pilgrims and movements of the faith have responded to a perceived call to serve as countervailing forces offering alternative visions for American life. This paper, "Vision for Life," has argued that in our day, the mood of radical individualism reflected in a myriad of personal, political, and legislative interest groups, the aggressiveness of conservative Christian privatists accused of "single issue" advocacy, and the tribal rivalries that feed global anarchy have raised concerns among thoughtful observers that the morale that makes community possible is rapidly eroding. These observers are asking, is it not time for a reawakening, an affirmation and exploration of a "kairos" which calls for a more complex strategy to identify and empower a community of communities that contributes to the reconstruction of a social order that is faithful to the Christian, public, and common weal? In recent decades higher education has focused on the transmission of knowledge, especially objective factual material and increasingly on narrowly specialized learning, and has neglected the more rounded intellectual development of the individual. This preoccupation with the factual substance of learning has been paralleled by a disregard, sometimes deliberate, of the other traits involved in human behavior, such as emotional predispositions and moral convictions. If it is true that American universities are typically not engaging these issues, and, because of compartmentalization of the disciplines and emphasis on specialization they may structurally be unable to do so; who then will answer the call? The Institute for Christian Leadership believes that the evangelical Christian liberal arts colleges (a minority within the minority of independent higher education) can be equipped, with self-criticism and self-appraisal, as instruments to bring about the essential changes required to restore the vision of a just and healthy American society, one in which its citizens can join in the effort to correct the inadequacies so dramatically portrayed by Ms. Geyer. The Church which gave birth to these institutions can stimulate and be stimulated by its higher education progeny as a partner in the process of renewal. Predicated on an authentic discernment of the timing and the securing of sufficient resources, the distinctive strategy of the Institute--its "genius"--is embodied in the four activities outlined above and reiterated below: Timing Those who have participated in the development of the Institute for Christian Leadership believe that the project has been conceived in response to a kairos--a distinctive, inspired moment in the life of Christian higher education, the Church, the Nation, and the international community. Its task: to help equip Christian colleges to serve as one of the constituents of a community of communities engaged in the quest for a morally coherent and responsible ministry to a broken world. The Think Tank For the past five years, the Institute has been identifying a cadre of individuals who share the conviction that Christian colleges have the potential to be a powerful redemptive force and partner with other concerned constituents in rebuilding a public and social morale that can arrest the current global trend toward social and moral anarchy and discern and engage the tasks that God reveals for this day. The Institute proposes the formation of a Think Tank where these exemplars and sensitive spirits can rethink the philosophy, mission, and heritage of Christian higher education and remap the strategy for marshaling these resources to address the challenges and opportunities of this moment in the human enterprise. The Journal The work of the Think Tank will be shared through the journal, Faculty Dialogue, a publication that neither competes with nor duplicates the work of other journals of higher education. Faculty Dialogue is a fresh vehicle that involves scholars and leaders in many Christian communities of concern: church-related colleges, the public sector of higher education, the Church, professions and guilds. As Ted Ward, Co-Editor of Faculty Dialogue, observes: Faculty Dialogue is going to speak to the issue of the integrity and vitality of Christian higher education not as a higher education journal but as a journal acting with Christian higher education as its knowledge base. Special Projects and Studies Guided by the conceptual map of the Think Tank participants, the dialogue with faculties, and other concerned communities, the feasibility of designing a values measurement instrument for Christian colleges will be explored that would: * measure the impact which an institution has had upon the development of personal values in its students; * identify the resources within specific institutions which most effectively contributed to increased awareness of social issues and values development in its students. Corollary to these specifics, the ICL believes that this process will assist in: * identifying the human and spiritual resources within each college and its network of supporters; * serving to build morale, a sense of community, and a common commitment with other concerned communities to address the task of engaging pressing national and global social issues. Networking Utilizing the resources of the Think Tank, the expanding circulation base of Faculty Dialogue (currently 10,000 individuals and 250 institutions) and the values measure instrument, the Institute will build an extensive network of individuals and communities in the Christian colleges, the public sector of higher education, local congregations, the media, alumni, business and commerce, the professions and guilds--a community of communities--to stimulate public and social morale and provide resources for addressing national and international social issues. Independent Funding The Institute for Christian Leadership seeks funding to supplement contributions of the participating colleges. This organization will assure an autonomy allowing the Institute to attract the diverse constituents and communities that are committed to similar goals and objectives. General direction of the project will be given by the Institute for Christian Leadership. The members of the Institute's Think Tank will be accountable to one another and the good will of the participating colleges and the Institute's network. In summary then, the special call for the project as a whole is to provide an independent forum for a community of Christian scholars in church-related and public higher education and an allied network of leaders from local congregations, alumni, and professionals to listen, hear, and engage the major social and ethical challenges of our generation. The endeavor of the Institute is distinctive since it appears that most traditional communities do not have the facilities or the opportunity to provide a forum of this breadth and depth at this critical juncture in the human enterprise. The activities of the Institute seek to provide a special resource to the Christian colleges in the quest to reappropriate their evangelical heritage and realize the full possibilities of their calling. The Think Tank, journal, special projects, and network seek to: * build morale * emphasize the incarnational imperative of a risen Christ who empowers believers to intervene in history. (For a generation that is demoralized by the magnitude of global crises and paralyzed by an awareness of human limitation, grace and hope emerge in remembering that Jesus Christ not only had to die for humanity but chose to live among and honor them by his participation in their travails. God continues to sustain the grand design and to support those who, in God's time, are called onto the historical stage and choose to participate.) * encourage and enable this community of communities to respond at this especially urgent and pregnant instant to God's call for ministry and service in a broken world. To pursue this vision for the remainder of this century, one is assured that our greatest concern is not primarily for the college, but for the world. Commenting recently in The Wall Street Journal on American education, Irving Kristol argues that the task of moral renewal is far more profound than offering classes in "values clarification." . . . There is a growing furor over our schools' apparent incapacity to instill good habits of the heart and spirit. "Values education" is the new catchword, as we observe so many youngsters on a slippery slope, displaying a blithe lack of responsibility toward themselves and others. But most of what is now being promoted in the name of "values education" is, from an educational point of view, just another cop-out. Even the words themselves are disingenuous, since chatter about "values" is simply a way of not talking about morals. Effective education contributes to an ethos--a "way of life"--that does more than teach good character: it demonstrates and embodies good character. The task is formidable. This vision for greatness is as difficult as it is rare but it is more likely to come through the educational institutions than in any other part of our total society. Now is the "moment" to move with boldness: the truly Christian college can be the leaven in a strategy for renewal if we can develop a love for the difficult.