Christians, Scholars and Teachers
Professors Describe the Practical Realities of Nurturing a Christian Mind in Students
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Left to right: Bruce Congdon, Susan VanZanten Gallagher and Ross Stewart |
It's one thing to talk about a distinctively Christian education; it's another thing to implement it. Seattle Pacific University's Symposium on Evangelicalism and Higher Education examined from a variety of perspectives the issue of educating thoughtful Christians. But when it comes to the practicalities of "uniting knowledge and vital piety," as Charles Wesley described it, how do faculty approach the task?
Response asked three SPU faculty members in very different disciplines to offer their views in a group conversation. Participating were Bruce Congdon, professor of biology; Susan VanZanten Gallagher, professor of English; and Ross Stewart, professor of accounting.
To what extent does the Christian faith demand the cultivation of the mind as well as the cultivation of the heart? For a Christian, why is the mind important?
Gallagher: I've always been impressed by Jesus' command in Matthew 2:37 that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind. I think that means we are responsible to develop our emotional life, our spiritual life, and our intellectual life as a means of loving God.
Stewart: We live in an anti-intellectual age where people seek only the minimum of truth to get by. I think we need to be concerned with developing the Christian mind because God created us as interpretive beings and that's what separates us from the rest of creation.
In some ways, though, Christians create a false dichotomy between mind and heart. Going back to classical Christianity, the Hebraic understanding of truth does not make a distinction between the two. We need to guard against compartmentalization of the intellectual and the spiritual; they are intertwined.
Congdon: The Christian faith is about the creation and restoration of whole human beings and the world we inhabit. We were created with hands and eyes, minds and spirits, creativity, emotion, rationality. Our relationships with our Creator, with each other, and with the world require our whole being.
We should see the mind as God's gift to us and something that we need to apply every day of our lives. For a believer's love to "abound more and more, in knowledge and depth of insight," requires a full embrace of the mind and its capacity to honor God.
As Christians, scholars and teachers, how do you unite knowledge and vital piety in the classroom? How do you teach students to learn to think as Christians?
Congdon: I sometimes think too big an expectation is placed on the classroom, when in fact it is limited as a place for the practice and growth of faith and scholarship. Time is short and relationships don't have much growing room, even in small classes.
So how can knowledge and vital piety be joined there? Student-faculty relationships in which students are challenged and encouraged in their faith and their knowledge of the world, often begin in the classroom. I think my main job there is as a role model. If a student can leave my class and say, "I know a scientist who loves to study the natural world and understands his work as a calling from God," I feel I've helped that student take the first step in uniting knowledge and vital piety.
Stewart: It seems to me the distinctive is both in how you teach and what you teach. The "how" of teaching for me is, as Bruce was saying, in relationship. I want to convey a philosophy of being a co-learner with the student - that's very important. And then I constantly try to bring questions to bear on the material I teach that can create integrative responses. It's like one of our colleagues recently said, you need the newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other, trying to create connections between the two worlds.
Gallagher: I'm always trying to show my students that one's world view will affect the kind of assumptions one brings to an issue. I try to do this in a variety of ways, to reach students with different learning styles.
One thing that we do is to examine how an author's belief affects what she or he writes. For example, when I teach American literature and we read an essay by Benjamin Franklin, we will try to identify Franklin's idea of what it means to be an American and to be successful. Then I say, "OK, from your own belief system, how do you identify success and how is that similar or different to Franklin?"
I also try to expose students to a variety of Christian models of viewing the world, and ask them to practice their own self-conscious reflection in a paper, journal entry or essay question.
Within your own disciplines, what are the points of intersection between knowledge and piety that cause the most difficulty for students? As a teacher, how do you help them come to terms with these issues?
Stewart: In accounting, the most difficult thing is to convince the student that reducing everything to a number is very limiting. A lot of students think that numbers - a net income figure or a balance sheet total - are "it."
I think the unique way of teaching accounting in a Christian liberal arts environment is to teach that it is more than a skill. I try to raise issues of accountability and truth-telling, and how numbers are used to influence wealth distribution. There are a lot of ideas that you can bring in from biblical concepts of stewardship.
I ask students: "You can be known as a skillful accountant, but will you be good at recognizing and responding to the ethical and moral dilemmas that the information creates? To whom are you accountable?"
Gallagher: Sometimes a student's piety is offended by what is learned in the course of pursuing knowledge. After all, there's a lot of sin out there, and a lot of the world that needs to be reclaimed for the Lord. That is why in my field, reading works of literature, it's so important to engage these issues within a Christian community.
A frequent problem I encounter is that students want to be able to make pat judgments about the literature. One of my least favorite questions about an author is whether she or he is a Christian. This is interesting biographical material, but usually students ask because they want to know whether they should buy into what the text says. I want them to enter into a dialogue with the text, not just simplistically label it "good" or "bad."
Congdon: The idea that the origins of biological diversity can be studied scientifically presents a threat to the faith of some students. There is no easy way around or through this evolutionary biology. All of my own honest evaluation of the information I have - including Scripture, historical and scientific data, Bible commentaries, experience and so forth - has still left some questions unanswered.
What I have learned, though, and what I hope encourages students, is that questions are often more powerful than answers in guiding us toward God and in the way of God's kingdom. There are incorrect answers, but there are also misleading questions. Keeping an unfaltering commitment to God depends upon keeping the most important question in clear focus: "Who is Jesus Christ?"
If our hearts are set on God, then we will be able to wrestle with the questions posed by modern science with the confidence to consider many answers and the humility to leave some questions unanswered.
What do you most wish parents and alumni could understand about what happens in the SPU classroom?
Gallagher: I have two things. The first is that we are engaged in a long and gradual process, so what takes place in a 50-minute block of time is usually designed to fit into a much larger pattern. There may be days when it is appropriate to leave students up in the air, uncertain about things, in order to get them thinking. Those days are often followed up by other days in which issues may be resolved, or in which I might tell a student what I personally think or sketch out various positions Christians have taken on a matter.
Second, the relationship of Christianity and learning is much more than just starting out a class with prayer. My gifts are as a teacher and scholar; my calling is to challenge students to think, study and learn as Christians.
Stewart: I want parents and alumni to know that the classroom is a hospitable learning environment and that it is redemptive. There's the appreciation for different learning styles that Susan has mentioned, and a respect for students as human beings.
Most importantly, a Christian perspective will be encountered in the SPU classroom and in the lives of professors. If we don't do that, we've lost our distinctive as a Christian university.
Congdon: This is a tired statement, but it is true: We are not here to teach students what to think, but how to think. Education is a conversation in which students are partners with faculty. We need them as much as they need us in order to have a productive and enriching dialogue. I want parents to know that they can trust the learning relationship between faculty and students.
Finally, what are your hopes for your students as they graduate from SPU? How important will the uniting of knowledge and faith be to their future lives - and to the kingdom of God?
Stewart: I hope students learn that "knowledge without wisdom puffs up." I hope that what they gain is not knowledge to go up the corporate ladder, but knowledge for service. I hope there will be a consistency between character and conduct in their lives. And I hope that they will continue to be learners, asking the important questions about life. If they've seen these things modeled by their professors at SPU, then there's a good chance they'll follow that path.
Gallagher: I hope that my students begin to learn how knowledge deepens faith and how faith deepens knowledge, particularly when it comes to reading literature. That's a practice that can enrich the rest of their lives, no matter what vocation they enter.
Congdon: I want future alumni to be professionally capable because our programs are of outstanding quality. I also want the kingdom of God in our time to be advanced by students who have the insight, discernment, humility and love to enter an intelligent conversation with the world in which the love of Jesus Christ is plainly seen.
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