Christian “Higher” Education?
As my undergraduate degree comes from Liberty University’s distance program (then known as the School of Lifelong Learning), I found the following quotes from Douglas Wilson concerning evangelical colleges to be amusing (and like most truly amusing things….true!):
If we were to judge from the way Christian colleges advertise themselves to prospective students, we might conclude that the purpose of Christian higher education is to make life-long friends, eat pizza, go rollerblading or horseback riding, and, oh, yeah, learn something.
Oftentimes, the motto of the Christian college appears to be, “Anything the world can do, we can do five years later.”
Modern paganism is in the same shape her older sister was in just before she collapsed. The difference is that modern Christian academic onlookers interpret the writhing of her death throes as a sign of vigor, health, and a bright future. “I’Â’ll have what sheÂ’s having.”
The modern opium dream that education can be religiously neutral should be, in our minds, equivalent to the question of whether or not, to use Dabney’s phrase, “schoolrooms should be located under water or in dark caverns.” Neutrality about the ultimate questions can be pretended in education, but it cannot be accomplished.
Foolishness crosses all boundaries, and it does so because conservatives and liberals have banded together to support the common lie that a thoroughgoing confidence in the Scriptures as the very Word of God and educated sophistication are inconsistent with one another.
From the unpublished booklet “The Quest for Authentic Higher Learning” by Douglas Wilson and Roy Atwood, available here in .pdf format.
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December 11th, 2004 at 1:57 pm
Great stuff!
December 12th, 2004 at 2:22 am
The second to last quote is idiocy.
December 12th, 2004 at 6:39 am
Education, like any sphere of life, is about as neutral toward the big questions as your comment, Steve. Every proposition, even those of a skeptic or atheist, involves a religious presupposition. There is no neutrality. Ever. Anywhere.
December 14th, 2004 at 2:07 pm
Mark:
While what you say is true, I truly believe that one can examine the major propositions and their underlying presuppositions and give fair time.
December 14th, 2004 at 2:12 pm
Absolutely, Geof! Neither I nor Wilson would disagree with you. Christians have nothing to fear from examining any propositions put on the table, and getting to the presuppositions of any proposition is essential.
But we should not pretend neutrality while doing so. What Wilson is arguing for is that Christian colleges either stop pretending that there is any such thing as neutral knowledge or at least have the honesty to stop calling themselves Christian. One of the basic presuppositions of a biblical worldview is that all factuality has its origin and meaning in the triune God.