Christian Higher Education as a High Calling

What is the high calling of Christian higher education in today’s world? Most Christian colleges and universities proclaim carefully worded mission statements, intended to motivate their students to influence the world with the power of the gospel. These aspirational documents exist to keep people in educational communities aimed in the same direction. Yet, the institutional mission, even when articulated well, may not capture the individual motivations that impel scholars, practitioners, and leaders to remain committed to the service of Christian higher education. Tension often exists between individual scholars’ intrinsic callings to serve within Christian education and the institution’s stated mission and expectations for y members … between the individual and the collective.

Within the context of the United States, most higher education colleagues would agree that we live in very difficult days—that higher education is under assault as never before, as evidenced by the commoditization of the higher education experience, the declining interest in—and support for—the liberal arts, the exponentially increasing and persistent financial pressures and demands, the unaffordability and inaccessibility of today’s college education, expanding government regulation and intervention, public disengagement, criticism and declining support, media misrepresentations, changing demographics, and an increasing inability to argue successfully the value proposition. The Christian college, once the foundation upon which American higher education was formed, is not immune to these significant concerns. Indeed, in addition to navigating the rapidly changing landscapes and environments that exist today, Christian institutions are also tasked with engaging changing cultural norms and evolving legal authority that, at times, may be inconsistent or at conflict with the faith mandates to which these institutions subscribe and the deeply held religious values they seek to honor and advance. These are difficult days, to be sure, and for distinctly Christian institutions, these are arguably the most challenging days in the history of American higher education.

We live in a world that unceasingly shudders and groans, searching for substance—and ultimate meaning—but finding little, if any, of either. We also live in a world desperately seeking honesty, integrity, justice, peace, truth, substance, value, trustworthiness, assurance, confidence, comfort, love, unity, and rest, but too often coming up empty.

Christian postsecondary institutions are facing these current challenges with all of the hallmarks of excellence that mark the finest colleges and universities, yet with an additional imperative to fulfill the Great Commission and the Greatest Commandment. These biblical commands point scholars and students toward love for God and neighbor, and a creative impulse to bring justice and healing to a hurting world. At its best, however, the distinction of the Christian college is not solely captured by an ambitious mission of love for the world, but by the transformation of the individual. In a culture fractured by self-obsessed opinions, the Christian college student carries a message of love. Such love manifests itself in acts of compassion, but also in a commitment to civility, which builds upon the mission of the liberal arts to create good citizens. Christian civility requires caring enough to engage with the tough cultural questions and challenges of the day. Incivility often appears as a rude and selfish dismissal of the opinions of others, or a form of dialog that denigrates the opponent in a zero-sum game. However, an utter lack of engagement is also a form of incivility, as isolation from community is simply not a peaceful path toward order, but rather an abdication of the responsibility to love that is rooted in the gospel.

At Taylor University (Indiana), the institution that hosted the colloquium in honor of a recent presidential inauguration that led to this collection of essays, the balance between individual and community is at the heart of the university’s Life Together Covenant. Like most Christian colleges, Taylor has certain guidelines and rules that are shared by all members of the community. For over 30 years, these standards have been defined in the Life Together Covenant, an aspirational document pointing back to the high calling of the scriptures. Some guidelines may seem restrictive to certain members of the community. Others may disagree with particular rules. Yet, there is beauty in agreement concerning what we give up in order to gain the richness of community lived together. For a few years, the student voluntarily makes sacrifices and, in so doing, elevates higher principles of preference for others. A symbol of this agreement is the servant’s towel, given to new students and again at graduation, symbolizing love extended to those in the Taylor community and in the world.

At its best, the Christian college builds community around aspirations to the gospel and a loving outlook. This issue of the CHE journal examines this high calling within a framework of Christian love. “No higher calling” frames the imperative to love God, love one’s neighbor, and love the created order. The theme “no higher calling” was reflected in the inauguration address of Dr. Paul Lowell Haines, the 31st president of Taylor University. The six articles in this issue were originally presented at a colloquium that was designed to honor this inauguration. Taken together, the authors explore the dynamics within the community of the Christian college, even amid growing challenges for higher education, and especially for institutions espousing a distinctly Christian mission.

Part I addresses the absolute necessity of living in right relationship with and loving God as the foundation of our higher calling. In When Less is More: Cultivating A Community in Relationship with God, Lisa Graham McMinn thoughtfully highlights key ways Christian communities—specifically colleges and universities—can situate themselves in right relationship with God. She calls us to sit still before God in anticipation of his transformation. With grateful hearts, we must learn to be still, thus allowing God to shape our hearts through the centering prayer Graham McMinn describes. She argues that inaugurations and new semesters are a time to reorient and reflect. Rather than enacting change on our campuses by scrambling to create programs addressing various needs, Graham McMinn calmly reminds us that upon new beginnings, less really can be more. The most powerful and important transformation we might hope for, becoming more like Jesus, often requires quiet and stillness—less. Offering her distinct observations of Christian college campuses, Graham McMinn reminds readers of the importance and sacredness of the culture created among students, faculty, and staff. By providing personal examples of her own striving for stillness and seeking less as more, McMinn makes herself incredibly relatable and delivers a captivating argument concerning how to best seek loving and living in right relationship with God.

In response, Nancy Dayton affirms and expands on Graham McMinn’s work, speaking not only of the Taylor University community, but also offering her personal reflections on the subject. Throughout this response, Dayton presents a series of questions she continues to ask in her own work as a faculty member and faculty moderator at Taylor. The questions represent a variety of areas upon which communities striving to love God would be wise to reflect. Speaking specifically of Taylor, Dayton and Graham McMinn agree, each affirming the ways they have seen the call to love God lived out at Taylor. Dayton adds to Graham McMinn’s work by suggesting the creation of countercultural educational spaces, where students are freed from standardized performance-based understandings of education. In such a classroom, students make mistakes and ask the hard questions of life, thus gaining a richer and truer understanding of the Christian life not as performance-based, but rather as the faithful cultivation of habits and disciplines. Though we may encounter failure as we continue to love God as a community, Graham McMinn and Dayton together remind readers of the importance of striving and the ways we can continue seeking God’s will for our campuses.

In Part II, D. Stephen Long presents a compelling argument emphasizing key elements of orienting self and community in loving one’s neighbor. In Being Good Pharisees: The Joy of Inauthentic Community, Long convincingly develops three main points, each an important element of the Wesleyan tradition. Long first affirms Christianity as a social religion (Wesley, 2010). Building on this affirmation, Long highlights the remaining two elements: encouraging Christians to be a people called out for the sake of the nations and being made new through baptism. Christians are also called to exemplify an outward-focused love by caring for the sick, incarcerated, and needy. Contextualizing this call, Long evaluates Taylor’s Life Together Covenant—a document outlining responsibilities and expectations for community life—in light of Wesley’s general rules. Long’s argument culminates in two important questions the majority of students at Christian institutions will contemplate as they seek to love their neighbors. These questions center on appropriate Christian response to violence and understanding how to live rightly in light of our possessions, property, and economic privileges. Long reflects and draws upon his time at Taylor University to offer a compelling argument for living in right relationship and loving one’s neighbor.

May Young’s thoughtful response highlights treatment of one’s neighbors as essential to one’s faith. Young offers a visual of vertical and horizontal relationships, representing relationships with God and others, respectively. The goal, Young argues, is to integrate these two relationships moving forward. To best integrate these two loves, we must take note and adhere to the love commandments in our lives. With the goal of continually striving to be examples of love, Christians also need to remember the challenges of living in mission with others—challenges that are present due to personal brokenness. Ultimately, Long’s essay and Young’s subsequent response clarify and emphasize the importance of the Christian call to live in right relationship with one another.

In Part III, discussion concerning the Christian call to love broadens to encompass the entirety of the created order. Without reducing the discussion to simply one of creation care, both Steven Bouma-Prediger and Jan Reber uniquely emphasize the importance of caring for the physical creation as a part of the Christian ministry of reconciliation. Bouma-Prediger’s essay, What Is God’s Good Future?: Right Relationships With All Things, addresses the pressing question, “Is it possible for us to be in right relationship with all things … [and], if so, how?” (p. 299). Bouma-Prediger turns to scripture to shape his answer. First, a careful analysis of Colossians 1 reminds readers of Christ’s deep pleasure in reconciling all things to himself. Such complete reconciliation is only possible as a result of Christ being both creator and redeemer, such that “no dichotomy exists between the God who creates and the God who redeems” (p. 303). The very nature of being both creator and redeemer does not allow God to turn his back on creation. Therefore, Bouma-Prediger turns to Revelation, chapters 21 and 22, to provide readers a glimpse into the reality of the hoped-for redemption. Revelation asserts that God’s good future, a reconciled future, is indeed a physical earthy future. God’s good future is one in which all things—physical creation included—are not replaced, but rather renewed. With this renewal comes ultimate reconciliation, as heaven and earth are joined—upon God’s initiative—to create a city characterized by the presence of God and inescapable shalom. Concluding the chapter, Bouma-Prediger invites us to join him in imagining the vision of Revelation not for the future, but for the present. In so doing, he encourages us to embrace our Christian call to love creation, thus bearing witness in the present to our future hope.

In response, biologist Jan Reber uses her expertise and enthusiasm for all living things to affirm Bouma-Prediger’s theologically grounded claims concerning the call to Christians to love the entirety of the created order. She points out how Christians, who should be models of creation care, have fallen behind secular organizations in this regard, providing ample evidence of the natural physical effects such failure has had on creation. Christians, it seems, remain hyperfocused on the future, often failing to recognize that the present earth will not be destroyed, but renewed, as Bouma-Prediger attests. Building upon Bouma-Prediger’s work, Reber provides several creative practical strategies for possible use by Christian institutions seeking to instill a love of creation in students. In so doing, she provides a foundation on which educators can build, helping promote the courageous imagination Bouma-Prediger requests of readers in his conclusion. According to Reber, we must shift the very cultures of Christian institutions in order to create responsible and care-filled citizens capable of serving as positive change agents and models. Otherwise, we are simply developing people who will continue “wreaking havoc in someone else’s house” (p. 314).

The edition also features a review symposium of James K. A. Smith’s Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology. The six-part symposium—which includes an introduction, four reviews, and a thoughtful response from Jamie Smith—provides an example of productive civil dialog. The reviewers thoughtfully discuss both deep-seated and nuanced beliefs concerning the topic of Smith’s book: the ways Christian beliefs and practices, or liturgies, inform political engagement. Smith (2017) reminds readers: “Our ‘political’ lives are not sequestered to a particular sphere” (p. 9). As the political is increasingly reduced to a realm rather than viewed as an ongoing project, Smith (2017) laments the loss of “an appreciation for the way the polis is a formative community of solidarity and . . . political participation requires and assumes just such formation—a citizenry with habits and practices for living in common and toward a certain end” (p. 9). As Smith and the reviewers dialog, the civility with which they agree and disagree—graciously affirming and challenging one another—certainly exemplifies the type of purposeful engagement desired by Smith. The formative power of such engagement is clear as the reviewers refine one another’s thinking and, in the process, our thinking as readers. This type of engagement is a necessary component of the solidarity required in order to achieve certain common Christian ends—or calls: to love God, to love neighbor, and to love the created order. Smith and the reviewers would likely agree that these loves, in turn, shape our public theology and political engagement. Thus, the review symposium provides Christians one final call: to allow our Christian loves to shape and be shaped by courageous engagement—rather than disengagement—in public and political discourse, but to do so with the shared Christian telos of the reconciliation of all things always in mind.

Paul House concludes this theme issue of the CHE journal with reflections on the balance between individual and community, giving particular attention to the importance of place. Many Christian colleges are located in rural areas—small towns and the countryside—that are often seen as less relevant by our modern, technology-obsessed culture. House examines the ways that small-town life exerts unique and positive influences on the mission, community, and individuals of Christian higher education. There may be some value in a retreat from the burgeoning city life of the majority of Americans after all. The rural setting of some Christian colleges provides an opportunity to escape rush-hour traffic, unless you get stuck behind a plow during spring planting, or a combine during fall harvest season. The rich campus relationships at many of these small Christian colleges is a result of locations that are far from the entertainment options of metro centers or suburban sprawl. As recently as a generation ago, a rural setting alone might have compelled students to build deep relationships with one another. Today, the joys of quiet contemplation in a small town require a technological disconnect, even if temporarily, from the ubiquitous digital life. In this context, civility has a chance to survive, and perhaps thrive, as students embrace the love of God, others, and the created world absent the white noise of an abrasive culture. For those who serve in Christian higher education, working to foster such growth, aimed at fulfilling the gospel, is indeed the highest of callings.