The Vocation of Christian Education & The Vocation of TheoMetrics
We are compelled by what many NOTABLE CHRISTIAN SCHOLARS are saying.
T.S. Eliot (1940) The Idea of a Christian Society
The purpose of a Christian education would not be merely to make men and women pious Christians: a system aimed to rigidly at this end alone would become only obscurantist. A Christian education would primarily train people to be able to think in Christian categories…
C. S. Lewis. (1949) “Is Theology Poetry?” in The Weight of Glory
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
Excerpts from the Argument offered by Benne, R. (2001). Quality with Soul: How Six Premier Colleges and Universities Keep Faith with Their Religious Traditions.
Here are insights from one scholar regarding the centrality of faith and learning to the Christian school’s educational mission.
The challenge for orthodox* schools is to keep faculty standards high in the traditional areas of teaching, scholarship, and service. But even more of a challenge might be to acquire the kind of talent needed to integrate faith in learning well. Integrating faith and learning poorly may be worse than not trying it at all. Doing it well requires both talent and thorough preparation. Faculty selection for critical mass* schools is both the most important and most difficult of tasks. It is most important because faculty members are the ground troops, the ones who directly encounter the students. If the Christian account is to be publicly relevant to the central task of the school – its education – then the right kind of faculty is indispensable. Faculty members will not only have to be adept at teaching, scholarship, and service, but also a fourth category: institutional fit. Ability to contribute to the identity and mission of the Christian college is as important criterion as the traditional three.
*Orthodox and *Critical Mass schools are those which Benne suggests have retained the Christian vision as their organizing paradigm.
p. 192
In concluding his research, Benne speaks of the importance of a far-reaching vision. He calls for “a theology confident in the comprehensiveness of the Christian account that will draw upon the vast sources of wisdom the Christian intellectual tradition has built over the millennia…A Christian college has to employ a theology that is public and comprehensive, not merely private and pietist, because a public, comprehensive theology is the only sort that provides an adequate conversation partner for the many fields of inquiry in a modern university or college.” [An important caveat]
The engagement of the Christian theological account with several disciplines does not go on all the time… a good deal of the time in any decent classroom is given over to transmitting knowledge of the field in question as understood by the world at large. But at the depths and boundaries of every field profound issues appear they can be brought into dialogue with the comprehensive Christian theological account
p. 198
Under the heading “Embedding the Vision” the following are some of Benne’s recommendations:
It is clear that each school’s animating vision, in both its religious and more specifically theological versions, has to be articulated and embedded in the ongoing life of the college… It has to be inculcated in new members of the community, not only but especially faculty….This takes time and resources, and probably involves required participation. …If genuine engagement in faith and learning are to take place, non-theologians need to acquire at least a solid lay education in basic Christian theology. After all, Christian schools are asking non-theologians to step out of their own expertise in order to engage faith with their field of inquiry. These faculty members should be encouraged to acquire a sufficiently sophisticated intellectual account of their faith as preparation for an engagement that does justice to their secular expertise….When such theological education reaches more and more faculty, the possibilities for exciting faith and learning engagement will multiply exponentially.
pp.204-205