Engaging Cultures

Two Heritages: Christ and University

a. What if we could harness the power, resources and critical skills of the research university for the growth and health of the contemporary church?

b. What if we could harness the full richness of Christian history and spirituality, benevolence and moral capacity for the enrichment and inspiration of the university community and academia itself?

It would surely break open a new, powerful vision of unparalleled creativity and promote untold good for humanity. It would give us  fire in the belly we have hardly imagined. It would be a boon to research and a boon to the church, producing a win/win scenario. The alienation between these two highly influential institutions (carriers of significant weighty heritage) is nothing short of a tragedy of late modernity. Perhaps we are due for some Big Sky ReThinking.

Envision the Possibilities

• Faith and Reason could pull together like plow horses. We could rethink their relationship.
• Science and the Imagination could complement one another with intensity.
• Wisdom could be combined with Spirit to enrich philosophy and education.
• Goodness and Beauty could become central to research and application of insight.
• Excellence of character could complement excellence of scholarship in the formation of students and the model of professors.
• A new paradigm of freedom could be discovered: as generosity of spirit rather than an end in itself, a freedom that builds community and promotes joy.
• We could recover Christian Humanism for robust social change, and satiate our hunger and thirst for meaning and purpose. There is a robust tradition to tap into here.
• The Wonder of the Cosmos (13.8 billion light years across) made available through powerful telescopes could complement an appreciation of the Creator who loves us intensely, has a vested interest in or well-being, in this small corner of the known universe on the edge of the Milky Way.
• Pioneering in science through particle accelerators, revolutionary breakthroughs in genetics, nanotechnology and neuroscience could be complemented by a great leap forward in human compassion and  social responsibility, a leap forward in ownership of responsibility for climate change and our relationship to the biosphere.

Potential New Discoveries

• We could find new drivers for social change, justice, addressing violence, inequity and exploitation.
• We could discover new solutions and perspectives on international relations, renew our language of peace making.
• We could build a deeper, richer identity capital in young adults (connect them to the eternal weight of glory), and help them think more clearly about investing their talents and passion wisely.
• We could recover a ground for morality and a hope for better, more rational moral discourse and mutual understanding. Moral dialogue would be possible.
• We could come to appreciate the full range of God’s giftedness to humanity and become better stewards of that giftedness. This includes our long range cultural heritage.
• We could combine the brilliant insights of the immanent and the transcendent to accomplish new breakthroughs in thinking, restore our sense of awe and wonder. This would open horizons for fruitful reflection.
• We could discover a new calibre of leadership, noble in character, marked by servanthood, humility and generosity, proved to empowering others. Love would be a marketable skill.

A New Courage Would Emerge

• To take on the Big Questions to challenge our thinking, our creativity, our self-reflection and mindfulness. We could find new solutions to persistent problems. Narrow mindedness and empty rhetoric would be put behind us.
• To rethink our anthropology and concept of self in community, perhaps to help us understand our story and our embeddedness better. This also involves personal honesty about our failures to do the good and right thing, and a commitment to be less narcissistic.
• To recover the capital virtues for inspired, empowered living and educate  the use of our freedom and choice.
• To explore the incarnation as central to human identity and cultural advance: Jesus as the Yes and Amen to it All.
• To use some things other than GDP to measure our success as a nations and as a global community–e.g. social and environmental responsibility.
• To reassess the value and potential of the poetic to reveal who we are as whole persons in relationship.
• To bring under intense scrutiny reductionistic philosophies of naturalistic materialism and moral relativism, and reveal the ways in which they restrict our thinking and our imagination, preventing human progress and cooperation.

A Force for Change

• Recovery of the broken relationship between word and world, signifier and signified, revival of our flat language. Language is a key factor for recovery of culture.
• Enhancement of democracy as people become more aware and responsible citizens, mindful of the common good, and actively engaged in public discourse. They would learn more about how their freedom interfaces with responsibility.
• Prayer would move mountains in the church, the university and society and become more central to discernment of the wisest options to solve problems, promote justice and for future planning. It would also help to sort out differences between good and evil and reduce moral confusion.
• Hunger for knowledge would be complemented by hunger for God and a committed posture of humility and peacemaking, reduction of violence.
• It would potentially transform greedy plutocrats into benevolent benefactors for the common good, especially concerning the Global South and indebted nations. International relations could be enhanced between Global North and Global South.
• More business activity would operate with a moral compass, and concern itself also with responsible contribution, giving back to society, as well as environmental stewardship and justice for workers.
• It could save the threatened humanities and liberal arts in our lower and higher education institutions–needed for whole person development and cultural understanding.
• It could move the world to come up with solutions within alternative energy to head off further, more intense global warming disaster scenarios, and help protect those most vulnerable.
• We could escape some of the darker aspects of our current anarchic nihilism, anti-humanism and the Dionysian elements and trends of society.

Indeed what would it be like to recover God’s shalom, his love, wisdom, goodness and will at the heart of academia and the heart of the church, and for these two heritages to pull together? It would be intensely creative and constructive! There is a strong call to wisdom in the ancient Hebrew Proverbs from the centre of town; perhaps this call can be re-issued from top of the towers of our modern universities: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

If we were to map the future with fresh and deep wisdom, it would change everything; we would get a moral as well as a technical skill education. It would offer a very positive paradigm shift, an unparalleled vision for a more just society, a more equitable world for human flourishing. Saint Anselm wrote, “Jesus is the intelligence of intelligence, the knowledge of knowledge, the wisdom of wisdom, and the truth of truth.”  That means his incarnation bridges faith and reason, heaven and earth, the transcendent and the immanent. In light of his truthfulness, we could become more vulnerable and receptive with each other. This might help with the current crisis of identity and vision in the church and in the university that is the subject of so many books and articles. It could break out a whole new paradigm for renewal of culture, and redraw the boundaries of what it means to be human. Petty concepts of conflict between faith and science could be put to bed, and replaced with substantial dialogue. This is the power and direction of the vita contemplativa.

~Gordon Carkner Ph.D. in Identity and Culture 

See Charles Habib Malik, A Christian Critique of the University.

Douglas V. Henry and Michael D. Beaty (eds.) Christianity and the Soul of the University: Faith as Foundation for Intellectual Community (2006)

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Todd+higher+education+rediscover+soul/6755035/story.htmlDouglas Todd Vancouver Sun “Can Higher Education Rediscover its Soul?”