Professing in the Postmodern Academy: Faculty and the Future of Church-Related Colleges
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Professing in the Postmodern Academy: Faculty and the Future of Church-Related Colleges
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781932792447 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Baylor University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/27/2005 |
| Series: | Studies in Religion and Higher Education |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 377 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 9.00(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
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Professing in the Postmodern Academy
Faculty and the Future of Church-Related Colleges
By Stephen R. Haynes
Baylor University Press
Copyright © 2008 Stephen R. Haynes
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-932792-44-7
Chapter One
A Review of Research on Church-Related Higher Education
Stephen R. Haynes
In 1944, Albea Godbold began a study of "church colleges in the old South" with a note of deep concern. "Many are asking," he wrote, "can the church college survive? Does it have a place in the American system of higher education? Can it, or dare it, be Christian?" In 1953, Winthrop Hudson lamented that denominational colleges had long since lost any significant religious heritage. In 1969, Charles S. McCoy wondered "what roles and functions are appropriate to [church colleges] in this age of the public college and federal-grant university? Do they have a future? Should the relation between church and college be severed?" More recently, in 1991, James Tunstead Burtchaell asked: "In what form can these colleges survive," and "What role will they play in American higher education in the future?" The consistency in these expressions of concern indicates that certain critical questions-can church-related colleges and universities survive, and can they remain relevant and distinctive-have been with us for at least half a century. In the chapters that follow, junior teacher-scholars at church-related colleges and universities who are participants in The Rhodes Consultation on the Future of the Church-Related College address these very questions. As an introduction to their work, this chapter offers a brief history of American church-related higher education and a review of twentieth-century scholarship dealing with the phenomenon.
colleges tried and failed before the Civil War.
The rapid appearance and extinction of denominational colleges in the nineteenth century contributed to a chaotic educational environment and, ironically, fueled suspicion regarding experiments in public higher education. In fact, by late in the century the "diversity of sects, religious conservatism, and the American insistence upon radical separation of church and state created a suspicion of tax-supported higher education and an active opposition to it." After the Morrill Act of 1862, however, the American public began to embrace the notion of public higher education. This embrace was aided in the twentieth century by the ideological shift from elite to democratic notions of education, a shift that gradually moved from the secondary to post-secondary level. Meanwhile, the emerging state universities were often as religious as the denominational colleges with which they were in competition.
In the last third of the nineteenth century, American higher education was further diversified by a new kind of private university initiated and financed by wealthy industrialists such as Johns Hopkins, Leland Stanford, and John D. Rockefeller. Newly established state universities shared with these private institutions a "vision of mind as being in the service of society." The influx of new money into American higher education from public and private sources brought significant changes: its center of gravity shifted westward from New England, the number of students attending college grew dramatically, businessmen replaced clergymen as trustees, laymen replaced ministers as college presidents, and both the liberal arts ideal and the influence of denominational colleges was eroded.
Perhaps the most significant new feature to appear on the academic landscape between the Civil War and World War I was application of a German pattern of university education, distinguished by its emphases on academic freedom and "scientific" research. The first Germanized institution to flourish in American soil was Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1876. Up to this time American colleges and universities generally conformed to the English collegiate model that placed emphasis on "teaching rather than on study; on students, rather than scholars; on order and discipline, rather than learning."
Following the Civil War, American church colleges were forced to respond to a series of actual and predicted changes in higher education that threatened their identity and their existence. Among the defensive actions taken in the post-bellum period was a struggle to preserve the classics against the advocates of the scientific curriculum. By the end of the nineteenth century, church colleges faced further challenges: increased competition for resources and support, waning public influence, and enrollment of a shrinking proportion of the student population. As we shall see, these challenges were the seeds of a lingering identity crisis that would beset church-affiliated colleges throughout the twentieth century.
Early Twentieth Century
As the twentieth century commenced, the educational landscape became even more inhospitable for church colleges and the pressure to adapt intensified. Although the proportion of students in private institutions was still considerably greater than that enrolled in public institutions (the numbers would not be in balance until 1950), a series of notable educators predicted the imminent demise of the small liberal arts college. The most influential was William Rainey Harper, whose Prospects of the Small College (1900) delineated the forces he believed would impede the development of smaller institutions. Among these were the rise of the state university, the tendency toward specialization, the difficulty of keeping strong faculty from departing for larger institutions, and the decline of the "sectarian spirit." Harper lamented neither these changes nor the extinction, consolidation, and redefinition they were sure to bring. Yet he firmly believed that, having passed through a struggle which only the fittest institutions would survive, small colleges would eventually contribute to "a system of higher education ... the lack of which is sadly felt in every sphere of educational activity." For Harper, the term "system" was crucial, for it denoted organization, sharp distinctions, and recognized standards. Harper's conception of religion's role in American higher education is also pivotal. For he was an advocate of the university's messianic role in spreading a "religion of democracy."
Around the turn of the century, amid prodigious growth in American higher education, transformative forces were at work, including the rise of vocationalism, the separation of graduate study from undergraduate work, the implementation of an elective system, and the establishment of entrance exams and accrediting agencies. Also fateful for the future of denominational colleges were well-funded efforts to systematize American higher education. During the century's first decade, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller set aside several hundred million dollars to forge "a comprehensive system of higher education." In its dissemination of these funds, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's faculty pension program openly discriminated against colleges under denominational control; and though the Rockefeller-supported General Education Board sought to assist high quality denominational schools, its advocacy of national standards in higher education had the effect of diminishing colleges' connections with their denominations and encouraging their gradual secularization.
Thus, as the twentieth century began to unfold, it was not clear whether American church colleges could survive in an educational environment increasingly dominated by the large public university, the research ideal, secularism, and competition for foundation funds.
Interwar Period
Following World War I, the troubles facing traditional centers of higher education "multiplied and intensified." "Orthodox doctrine, Victorian mores, and traditional piety" were coming under attack; the fundamentalist/modernist controversy brought conflict to some college campuses; a national wave of student-led protests assailed the tradition of required chapel; unordained men were elected to the presidencies of flagship Protestant-founded universities; and there was a precipitous decline in clergy presence on boards of trust. For church-sponsored institutions, these forces were exacerbated by other developments, including waning denominationalism, the shrinking proportion of American students educated at church colleges, meager financial resources (in some cases, debt outstripped endowment), and "overburdening" (the existence of more colleges than a denomination could effectively support).
Characterizing American higher education between 1919 and 1946, Merrimon Cuninggim highlights the themes of institutional self-examination, curricular experimentation, vocationalism, retrenchment, and rising secularism. However, despite the growing difficulties facing church colleges, there were signs of religious vibrancy in American higher education. For instance, the interwar period saw a series of national conventions on the vocation of the Christian college (e.g., at Princeton in 1928 and Chicago in 1930), an ecumenical and international student Christian movement, the beginnings of a "theological renaissance" that would leave a lasting impression on Protestant Christianity, attempts to promote the academic study of religion at colleges and universities, and the founding of new organizations and initiatives-including the National Council of Religion in Higher Education (1922), its Kent Fellows program for college graduates interested in professional work in higher education (1924), the University Christian Mission (1938), the United Student Christian Council (1942), and the Faculty Committee on Religion and Higher Education (1944).
Writing in 1947, Cuninggim observed that during the interwar period the "undiluted optimism" of the turn of the century gradually had been replaced by "chastened confidence." Studies of church-related higher education written between the wars confirm Cuninggim's analysis by evincing both a vague dread of the future and soul-searching exploration of the meaning and purpose of the church college. Yet despite the changes that were underway during the first half of the century, church-related colleges remained a major feature on the landscape of American higher education, and a major asset of the church. The vast majority of mainstream Protestant ministers and a great many other professionals were graduates of these institutions.
Postwar Period
Beginning about mid-century, the notorious decline of mainline denominations-along with loyalty to these denominations among the populace-exacerbated all the problems reviewed thus far. In addition, World War II brought into view a new array of societal ambiguities with implications for higher education. On the one hand, secularism was on the offensive: The Harvard Report entitled General Education in a Free Society (1945) concluded ominously that "whatever one's views, religion was not now for most colleges a practicable source of intellectual unity." On the other hand, postwar America was in the midst of a resurgence of popular piety. Together with the theological renaissance that had been underway since the 1930s, this revival of religious sentiment fueled a general interest in the connection of faith and higher education.
This interest was expressed in conferences, organizations such as The Commission on Christian Higher Education, and publications like The Christian Scholar which appeared in 1953. In a special issue of the journal devoted to the "Christian College," the editor noted that "church-related colleges are discovering new vitality as they seek to bring the Christian faith and understanding to bear upon their total life...." This issue of the journal looked toward the First Quadrennial Convocation of Christian Colleges to be held at Denison University in June 1954, "the first major effort of the Christian colleges to meet together across denominational frontiers for a consideration of their unique responsibility in the total educational scene." Supplemental issues published the proceedings of the Convocation, and those of the Second Quadrennial at Drake University in 1958. Both Convocations were ecumenical and international in focus, and both emphasized the Christian college's contribution to higher education; the participants were applauded for their willingness to take up "the serious intellectual tasks facing the church in higher education."
In 1952 the Danforth Foundation initiated a summer seminar for college faculty, while the Hazen Foundation's work in the area included cosponsorship of several "Faculty Consultations on Religion in Higher Education" between 1945 and 1949, and publication of a series of pamphlets dealing with the place of religion in higher education. Another measure of postwar interest in the connection of religion and education was the so-called Christian University Movement, a broad group of individuals and organizations which during the 1940s and 1950s sought to critique the intellectual basis of higher education on Christian grounds. Works associated with the movement-for instance, Sir Walter Moberly's The Crisis in the University (1949) and Alexander Miller's Faith and Learning (1960)-proclaimed a new opportunity for faith in the university.
The result of these paradoxical tendencies seems to have been the emergence of an identity crisis within church-affiliated education as a whole. Bradley Longfield and George Marsden argue that already by the 1940s American theological pluralism had created such a crisis among church-related schools. According to Dorothy Bass, by mid-century church-related colleges "began to report haziness of purpose and to conduct studies into their identity." Douglas Sloan adds that "by the beginning of the 1960s ... the role of the church-related college ... seemed as elusive as ever." Though "the main contours of the contemporary situation were already in place during the middle years of this century," perception of the crisis developed slowly. Recognition accompanied growth in the federal government's involvement in higher education (the "GI Bill" of 1944, the National Defense Act of 1958, the Higher Education Act of 1965, and the Education Amendments of 1972), expansion in public education, and shrinkage in the proportion of students educated at church-related colleges.
Perhaps the most accurate measure of the growing identity crisis among American church-related colleges is the number of studies of this sector of higher education that appeared between 1950 and 1980, most of which attempted to restore the prestige, vigor, and clarity of purpose that seemed to be steadily eluding Christian liberal arts education as the twentieth century wore on.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
AcknowledgementsPreface
Part One: Introduction
A Review of Research on Church-Related Higher Education
Stephen R. Haynes
Part Two: Postmodern Opportunity
The Habit of Empathy: Postmodernity and the Future of the Church-Related College
Paul Lakeland
Prolegomena to Any Postmodern Hope for the Church-Related College
Margaret Falls-Corbitt
A Sense of Place and the Place of Sense
William J. Cahoy
Part Three: Academic Vocation
Conversation and Authority: A Tension in the Inheritance of the Church-Related College
Richard Kyte
Beyond the Faith-Knowledge Dichotomy: Teaching As Vocation
Elizabeth Newman
The Erotic Imagination and the Catholic Academy
John Neary
Part Four: Pedagogy and Praxis
"Academic" vs. "Confessional" Study of the Bible in the Postmodern Classroom: A Response to Philip Davies and David Clines
Julia M. O'Brien
Teaching the Conflicts, For the Bible Tells Me So
Timothy K. Beal
A Pedagogy of Eucharistic Accompaniment
Dominic P. Scibilia
Part Five: Mission and Curriculum
One-Armed Embrace of Postmodernity: International Education and Church-Related Colleges
Keith Graber Miller
Religion and the Curriculum at Church-Related Colleges
Marcia Bunge
From the Ties that Bind to Way-Stations: The Dynamics of Religious Commitment among Students and Their Families
D. Jonathan Grieser and Corrie E. Norman
Afterword
A Typology of Church-Related Colleges and Universities
Stephen R. Haynes
Notes
Bibliography
Contributors