Christian Higher Education in a Postmodern Age

1. Christian Higher Education in a Postmodern Age Dr. John W. Hawthorne Spring Arbor Community of Learners September 21, 2012

2. My Plan for This Morning • Three Challenges to Consider • Two Sources for Solutions • One Resulting Image

3. – the data on today’s college students suggests some interesting shifts from past generations *From the musical Bye Bye Birdie. Coming To Spring Arbor University February 7-10, 2013 Challenge 1: “What’s the matter with kids today?”*

4. The Beloit Mindset List 2003 (1981) • Never a Yugolsavia • Moonwalk about Michael Jackson • Women on Supreme Court • DNA in lab 1976 (1954) • Cold War • Beatles and Rock • Segregation • Atoms 2015-6 (1993-4) • War on Terror • Brittney not a Mouseketeer • Blacks, Women, as Secretary of State • Genome Sequenced

5. Putnam and Campbell: American Grace

6. Putnam and Campbell: American Grace

7. Attitudes toward Same-Sex Marriage: May 2011

8. What’s Going On? Changing Social Dynamics: Diversity is Everywhere • Media Imagery • Social Networking • Engagement with those non-evangelicals The Significance of Emerging Adulthood • Delayed Marriage • Identity Exploration • Experimentation The Over-politicization of Religion • Two Decades of Harsh Language • Exclusionary Stances • Concern with the Institutional Church

9. David Kinnaman: You Lost Me (2011) Today’s Culture is Characterized by: • Fluidity • Complexity • Diversity • Uncertainty Six Problems with the Institutional Church • It’s Overprotective • It Tends toward Shallowness • It’s seen as Anti-Science • It can be Repressive • It is Exclusive • It doesn’t allow Doubt Bottom Line: We can adjust to these students or they’ll leave us alone

10. – integration, a valuable metaphor of decades past, may have challenges in this postmodern age Challenge 2: “Reliance on worldview language”

11. Modernity, worldviews, and the integration of faith and learning • Christian Colleges, Separatism, and the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy (H.R. Niebuhr, “Christ Against Culture”) • A Curious Paradox: the battle with the broader culture was fought on modernist terms through the appropriation of philosophical argument • Two seminal works • Francis Schaeffer, How Shall We Then Live (1976) • Arthur Holmes, The Idea of a Christian College (1975) • A distinctive Worldview offered to Christians as part of the toolkit of a stance against the broader world

12. The Limitations of the Worldview Metaphor in a Postmodern Age • “The Desegregation of Faith and Learning” • Ron Sider, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience (2005) • James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom (2009) – moving from “which Christian ideas drop into … mind receptacles” to “how a Christian education shapes us… into a certain kind of people” • Christian Smith and the National Survey on Youth and Religion: Moral Therapeutic Deism and the incursion of popular culture Bottom Line: We’re using Modernist tools to address Postmodern populations

13. – moving from compliance/credentials to learning that transforms Challenge 3. “Checking off the Boxes”

14. The Institutional Life of Higher Education • Higher Ed as an Economic Gateway • Intense Focus on Credits, Grades, Experiences • Faculty Too – Syllabi, Assignments, Grading, Due Dates • Process over Learning • Separation of Academics and Co-Curricular

15. Completing the Obstacle Course? Beginning College Wipeout, ABC Television

16. Limited Impacts on Learning • Arum and Roksa, Academically Adrift (2011) – Little Gains in Critical Thinking • Keeling and Hersh, We’re Losing our Minds (2011) – Lacking a Vital Academic Culture • Bain, What the Best College Students Do (2012) • Surface Learning • Strategic Learning • Deep Learning

17. – How Wesleyan thought reshapes our conversations about faith and learning Solution 1: “Slipping on the Concept”

18. The Wesleyan “Quadrilateral” The Marks of the Spring Arbor Concept The clock tower

19. Community of Learners Involvement in Liberal Arts Reason Tradition Experience Reason Jesus as Perspective Critical Participation in Contemporary World Tradition Scripture Scripture Experience

20. The Components of the “Quadrilateral” The Arc of Scripture Testing Tradition and Experience Reason in Service of the other three Role of the Holy Spirit Prevenient Grace “Spiritual Senses” Ordinary Means of Grace Christian Higher Education as Spirit-Led Discovery Wesleyan Theology and Educational Implications

21. The secret CAN BE found in the middle

23. – A Community of Learners at work and play *From The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Life, the Universe, and Everything, by Douglas Adams, 1982 Solution 2. “There is an art to Flying …” *

24. There is an art, [the guide] says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, it suggests, and try it. The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and willingness not to mind that it's going to hurt. That is, it's going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard. Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties. One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It's no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won't. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you're halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it's going to hurt if you fail to miss it.

25. Acknowledging the Challenges but Proceeding Anyway Parker Palmer: “Don’t’ be Afraid” means Don’t Be the Fear Abandoning Control Learning from our students Engaging Difficult Issues Avoiding Issues of Power and Authority How to Miss Accidentally

26. – When authentic individuals are attentive to the spirit and engage the world in example and action we embody the very present Kingdom of God. *Words by Maltbie D. Babcock, hymn tune by Franklin L. Sheppard The Image: “This is my Father’s World” *

27. Verse 3 This is my Father’s world, Oh let me ne’er forget That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the Ruler yet. This is my Father’s world. The battle is not done: Jesus, who died, who shall be satisfied And earth and heav’n be one.

28. “The Kingdom of God is at hand” Critical Participation in the Contemporary World of Spring Arbor University Awareness of the “Quadrilateral” and The Concept Provide Practice in Grounded Living We can represent the Kingdom of God in the broader society precisely to the extent that we do it here first The Very Present Kingdom of God

29. Paul’s Image of the Church as a Body (Romans 12: 4-13, 1 Corinthians 12: 12-31) The Parts serve the Whole as they express unique gifts We’re in this together Paul’s Vision of Diversity (Galatians 3: 28-29, my paraphrase) There is neither professor nor student, there is neither freshmen nor senior, there is neither conservative nor liberal; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Christian Learners, heirs according to promise. Two Scriptural Images

30. Thanks for listening to my ramblingsQuestions and Comments?