The State of (Catholic) Higher Education

Every few years we are subjected to a slate of books about the state of higher education, including Christian higher education, in this country. 

This year we have two about to be released, both from (appropriately enough) the leading and most prestigious academic publisher in the world, Oxford University Press: The Soul of the American University Revisited: From Protestant to Postsecular, 2nd. ed. by George M. Marsden (OUP, 2021), 488pp. About this well-known book, the publisher tells us this:

The Soul of the American University is a classic and much discussed account of the changing roles of Christianity in shaping American higher education, presented here in a newly revised edition to offer insights for a modern era. As late as the World War II era, it was not unusual even for state schools to offer chapel services or for leading universities to refer to themselves as “Christian” institutions. From the 1630s through the 1950s, when Protestantism provided an informal religious establishment, colleges were expected to offer religious and moral guidance. Following reactions in the 1960s against the WASP establishment and concerns for diversity, this specifically religious heritage quickly disappeared and various secular viewpoints predominated. In this updated edition of a landmark volume, George Marsden explores the history of the changing roles of Protestantism in relation to other cultural and intellectual factors shaping American higher education.

Far from a lament for a lost golden age, Marsden offers a penetrating analysis of the changing ways in which Protestantism intersected with collegiate life, intellectual inquiry, and broader cultural developments. He tells the stories of many of the nation's pace-setting universities at defining moments in their histories. By the late nineteenth-century when modern universities emerged, debates over Darwinism and higher criticism of the Bible were reshaping conceptions of Protestantism; in the twentieth century important concerns regarding diversity and inclusion were leading toward ever-broader conceptions of Christianity; then followed attacks on the traditional WASP establishment which brought dramatic disestablishment of earlier religious privilege. By the late twentieth century, exclusive secular viewpoints had become the gold standard in higher education, while our current era is arguably “post-secular”. The Soul of the American University Revisited deftly examines American higher education as it exists in the twenty-first century.

The second book, set for release next month, is James L. Heft, The Future of Catholic Higher Education (OUP, June 2021), 296pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

The Catholic Church has gone through more change in the last sixty years than in the previous six hundred. These changes have caused a significant shift in the future outlook of Catholic higher education as the United States has developed a culture that has grown less receptive to religious traditions and practices. Drawing upon his extensive experience, James Heft lays out the current state of Catholic higher education and what needs to be done to ensure that Catholicism isn't fazed out of the educational system. Heft analyzes the foundational intellectual principles of Catholic Higher Education, and both the strengths and weaknesses of the present day system in order to look at possibilities for its future.

Drawing upon both history and current cultural trends, The Future of Catholic Higher Education critiques the secularization thesis, explores the role of bishops, theologians, dissent, the sensus fidelium, the role of women and freedom of conscience, the relationship between theology and religious studies, hiring practices and curricular designs. Using the image of the "open circle," Heft advances a vision of the catholic university that is neither a "closed circle" of only Catholics nor a "market place of ideas with no distinctive mission." His "open circle" is one that fosters the Catholic intellectual tradition by including scholars of many religions, rooting Catholic social thought in Catholic doctrine, defending academic freedom and the mandatum.

A Russian-American Christian University

When I spent the summer of 2001 teaching in Eastern Europe, I heard from people how much--a scant ten years after independence--many of them, in places like Ukraine and Russia, resented rich American interests muscling in to spread Mormonism, evangelical Protestantism, and other such traditions, making the recovery of truly indigenous institutions that much more difficult. Recently released is a new book that functions as a case-study of one rather highly placed such attempt: Opening the Red Door: The Inside Story of Russia's First Christian Liberal Arts University by John A. Bernbaum (IVP Academic, 2019, 260pp.)

About this book the publisher tells us this:

After the Berlin Wall fell, a group of Christian colleges in the U.S. seized the opportunity to begin strategic faculty and student exchanges with universities inside the Soviet Union. They could not have foreseen the doors that would open next. During a 1990 visit to Russia, John Bernbaum and his colleagues received a surprising invitation from a Russian government official: come help build a faith-based university in Moscow. Thus, after seventy years of fierce religious persecution under communism, the Russian-American Christian University (RACU) was born. 

In Opening the Red Door, Bernbaum presents an insider's account of the rise and fall of a Russian-American partnership. As a founder and later president of RACU, Bernbaum offers a ground-level perspective on Russia’s post-communist transition and the construction of a cultural-educational bridge between the two superpowers. He describes how American RACU staff worked to understand Russian history and culture―including the nation's rich spiritual heritage―so they could support their new Russian friends in rebuilding an educational system and a society. He documents the story of the first private Christian liberal arts university to be accredited in Russia's history, from its first steps, through its major successes, to its facing increasing opposition during the Putin era. Opening the Red Door offers unique insight not only into Russian culture and post–Cold War history but also traces the dynamics within international educational institutions and partnerships. When he first traveled to Russia, Bernbaum writes, he thought of it as a nation of mystery. But after more than twenty-five years of work there, he believes Russia can be understood. His journey of understanding will prove instructive to educators, administrators, students, missionaries, and anyone interested in international relations.

Eastern Orthodoxy in the Academy Today (I)

When, in 2004, I was invited to give a paper in Prince Edward Island at an international conference, "Faith, Freedom, and the Academy," I tried to address the topic from an Eastern Christian perspective. In doing so, I realized that little had been done at that point. Indeed, one of the rare essays I found, by Alexander Schmemann from the 1960s (shortly after the deplorable Land O' Lakes farrago), explicitly wondered aloud whether questions about faith and theology in the modern university were an exclusively Western problem, there being, then, no significant presence of Orthodox academics in Western institutions.

That has all changed, especially in the last two decades. Now there are dozens of Orthodox in several disciplines (most, but not all, in theology and history) teaching at institutions in Europe, Canada, and these United States. Some of them contribute to, and reflect on, that academic experience in a handsome (and rare hardback for this press) new book I just received this week in the mail: Ann Mitsakos Bezzerides and Elizabeth H. Prodromou, eds., Eastern Orthodox Christianity and American Higher Education: Theological, Historical, and Contemporary Reflections (University of Notre Dame Press, 2017), 454pp.

About this collection we are told:

Over the last two decades, the American academy has engaged in a wide-ranging discourse on faith and learning, religion and higher education, and Christianity and the academy. Eastern Orthodox Christians, however, have rarely participated in these conversations. The contributors to this volume aim to reverse this trend by offering original insights from Orthodox Christian perspectives into the ongoing discussion about religion, higher education, and faith and learning in the United States.

The book is divided into two parts. Essays in the first part explore the historical experiences and theological traditions that inform (and sometimes explain) Orthodox approaches to the topic of religion and higher education—in ways that often set them apart from their Protestant and Roman Catholic counterparts. Those in the second part problematize and reflect on Orthodox thought and practice from diverse disciplinary contexts in contemporary higher education. The contributors to this volume offer provocative insights into philosophical questions about the relevance and application of Orthodox ideas in the religious and secular academy, as well as cross-disciplinary treatments of Orthodoxy as an identity marker, pedagogical framework, and teaching and research subject.

"Seldom have so many scholars representing such a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities (even the hard sciences) been brought together to address the important issue of faith and learning through the prism of various aspects of the Eastern Orthodox tradition. The fact that all but one of these contributors are themselves Orthodox Christian scholars provides ample proof that most likely representatives of Orthodox Christianity will be active participants in the ongoing debate addressing the crucial question of faith and the academy, or Athens and Jerusalem, to borrow Tertullian's much abused epigrammatic description of the phenomenon. Eastern Orthodox Christianity and American Higher Education will be useful to the growing number of classes on Eastern Orthodox history and culture taught in American colleges and universities." —Theofanis G. Stavrou, University of Minnesota.

If you peruse the table of contents here, you will recognize some familiar names but also some new ones. I am happy to count several of the contributors as my friends, and naturally turned to their chapters first.

I began with Michael Plekon's chapter, "In the World, for the Life of the World: Personal Reflections on Being a Professor and Priest in a Public University." Fr. Michael, for those who don't know him, has taught at Baruch College in the City University of New York since 1977. (A recent piece about his life there may be found here.) In that time, he has published a long list of books and articles, and I have interviewed him on here several times about some of his recent books.

He begins on what I would call a quintessentially Plekonian note, by arguing that in addition to being a priest, he has spent his whole working life as an academic, and that the latter is not merely an adjunct to the former, a way of paying the bills so he can concentrate on "spiritual" matters: rather, as he says, the university is "my primary location for Christian vocation and ministry" (p.315).

That primary location is an enormous school (17,000 students and faculty) of the greatest diversity anywhere in the country. That diversity shows itself in the classroom with the type and range of questions asked and issues examined.

That diversity all but requires a gracious hospitality on the part of professors, as Plekon notes. I can attest, having been graced by his friendship for a decade now, that he is indeed an enormously hospitable person, and so is the parish, St Gregory's in Wappinger Falls, NY, to which he is attached. (I have often said that were I to find myself living in the lower Hudson Valley, the first thing I would do would be to join St. Gregory's, whose wonderful community has numerous times been wonderfully welcoming to me.)

How, Plekon asks in the latter part of his essay, are we to balance hospitality and ecumenical sensitivity in public settings while being faithful to Orthodoxy? This is a question he has elsewhere addressed, perhaps most importantly in a collection edited by his Doktorvater, the eminent sociologist Peter Berger, ed., Between Relativism and Fundamentalism: Religious Resources for a Middle Position (Eerdmans, 2009).

He cites a number of familiar examples of people who have grappled with earlier versions of that question--Schmemann, Meyendorff, Skobtsova, et al. In a move that is typical of all such figures, and faithful to Orthodoxy's liturgical ethos, Plekon ends by noting that perhaps the greatest way Orthodoxy can teach the truth and exercise hospitality at the same time is through the Eucharist.

In future installments, we shall look at some of the other chapters. In the meantime, Eastern Orthodox Christianity and American Higher Education: Theological, Historical, and Contemporary Reflections is a landmark collection not to be missed.

Continues. 

Eastern Orthodox Higher Education

In 2004, I flew to the University of Prince Edward Island to give a lecture at an international conference entitled "Faith, Freedom, and the Academy," which topic I alone addressed from, of course, an Eastern Christian perspective. That talk formed the basis later on for my chapter in the Festschrift for Michael Plekon, which our mutual friend William Mills put together, about which I interviewed him here.

In my original lecture, I noted that debates about faith, freedom, and the academy were in many ways almost exclusively Western debates. I drew on what little had been published about such questions by Orthodox scholars (including Alexander Schmemann), who all noted the same thing, before going on to suggest that Orthodoxy did indeed have much to offer the Western Church's grappling with these questions in the context of Catholic institutions and Ex Corde Ecclesia, about which I have had a few things to say.

It is of interest to me, then, to note, forthcoming in January 2017, a new collection that will go some ways towards extending Orthodoxy's grappling with questions that have long bedeviled other post-secondary Christian institutions of higher education: Eastern Orthodox Christianity and American Higher Education: Theological, Historical, and Contemporary Reflections, eds. Ann Mitsakos Bezzerides and Elizabeth H. Prodromou (University of Notre Dame Press, 2017), 432pp.

About this collection we are told:

Over the last two decades, the American academy has engaged in a wide-ranging discourse on faith and learning, religion and higher education, and Christianity and the academy. Eastern Orthodox Christians, however, have rarely participated in these conversations. The contributors to this volume aim to reverse this trend by offering original insights from Orthodox Christian perspectives that contribute to the ongoing discussion about religion, higher education, and faith and learning in the United States.

The book is divided into two parts. Essays in the first part explore the historical experiences and theological traditions that inform (and sometimes explain) Orthodox approaches to the topic of religion and higher education—in ways that often set them apart from their Protestant and Roman Catholic counterparts. Those in the second part problematize and reflect on Orthodox thought and practice from diverse disciplinary contexts in contemporary higher education. The contributors to this volume offer provocative insights into philosophical questions about the relevance and application of Orthodox ideas in the religious and secular academy, as well as cross-disciplinary treatments of Orthodoxy as an identity marker, pedagogical framework, and teaching and research subject.

“Seldom have so many scholars representing such a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities (even the hard sciences) been brought together to address the important issue of faith and learning through the prism of various aspects of the Eastern Orthodox tradition. The fact that all but one of these contributors are themselves Orthodox Christian scholars provides ample proof that most likely representatives of Orthodox Christianity will be active participants in the ongoing debate addressing the crucial question of faith and the academy, or Athens and Jerusalem, to borrow Tertullian’s much abused epigrammatic description of the phenomenon. Eastern Orthodox Christianity and American Higher Education will be useful to the growing number of classes on Eastern Orthodox history and culture taught in American colleges and universities.” — Theofanis G. Stavrou, University of Minnesota

Higher Education (2012)

As the academic year begins, now is the time to consider anew what it is that Christians of all traditions are doing when they participate in, and themselves establish and run, universities and colleges. A recent publication of Mike Higton, A Theology of Higher Education (Oxford UP, 2012, 336pp.) may help us consider these questions.

About this book the publisher tells us that it offers

A clear affirmation of the public worth of higher education

A Christian theological account of secular and religiously plural universities

Detailed engagement with the history of the Western university

Interactions with British and American literature on Christianity and higher education

Practical examples and policy recommendations

In this book, Mike Higton provides a constructive critique of Higher Education policy and practice in the UK, the US and beyond, from the standpoint of Christian theology. He focuses on the role universities can and should play in forming students and staff in intellectual virtue, in sustaining vibrant communities of inquiry, and in serving the public good. He argues both that modern secular universities can be a proper context for Christians to pursue their calling as disciples to learn and to teach, and that Christians can contribute to the flourishing of such universities as institutions devoted to learning for the common good. In the process he sets out a vision of the good university as secular and religiously plural, as socially inclusive, and as deeply and productively entangled with the surrounding society. Along the way, he engages with a range of historical examples (the medieval University of Paris, the University of Berlin in the nineteenth century, and John Henry Newman's work in Oxford and Dublin) and with a range of contemporary writers on Higher Education from George Marsden to Stanley Hauerwas and from David Ford to Rowan Williams.