Report on the First Meeting of the
Lilly Seminar on Religion and Higher Education

Key Largo, Florida
January 31 - February 2, 1997

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First Year Theme: Church-Relatedness

Lilly Seminar Members in Attendance:

Nancy Ammerman (Hartford Seminary)
Michael Beaty (Baylor University)
Richard J. Bernstein (New School for Social Research)
Allan Boesak (American Baptist Seminary of the West)
Barbara DeConcini (Executive Director, American Academy of Rel.)
Denis Donoghue (New York University)
Craig Dykstra (Lilly Endowment)
Jean Bethke Elshtain (The Divinity School, University of Chicago)
Philip Gleason (University of Notre Dame)
Nathan Hatch (University of Notre Dame)
James L. Heft (University of Dayton)
Monika Hellwig (Executive Director, Association of Cathlic  Colleges and Universities)
David Hollinger (UC Berkeley)
Jeanne Knoerle (Lilly Endowment)
Eugene Y. Lowe, Jr. (Northwestern University)
Mark Noll (Wheaton College)
Francis Oakley (Williams College)
Mark Schwehn (Valparaiso University)
Douglas Sloan (Teachers College, Columbia University)
Peter Steinfels (Religion Editor, New York Times)
Eleonore Stump (St. Louis University)
James Turner* (University of Notre Dame)
Frank Turner (Yale University)
Diane Winston (Center for the Study of American Religion)
Alan Wolfe (Boston University)
Nicholas Wolterstorff* (The Divinity School, Yale University)
Robert Wuthnow (Princeton University)

*Co-directors

Lilly Seminar Administrative Staff:
Andrea Sterk
Donna Ring
Michael Hamilton

Seminar Members Unable to Attend:
Richard Hughes (Pepperdine University)
Richard Mouw (Fuller Seminary)
 
 
 

MAJOR RECURRING THEMES for this meeting

 

SESSION I - Saturday Morning

History of American Higher Education (Jim Turner)
 In order to provide contexts for ongoing debate and discussion Jim Turner opened our first session with an overview of developments in American higher education from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present.  He identified five chronological stages and discussed four themes in each of these periods:  a) college and university governance; b) demographics of students and faculty, especially as it bears on religion; c) extra-curricular student life, i.e. student activities not run by faculty, administrators or other officers of the institution; and d) the intellectual character of higher education.  What follows is a fairly full resume of his observations in abbreviated form.

I. 1800-1850:  An era of self-consciously Protestant & overwhelmingly undergraduate education

 a) Boundaries between public and private were fluid (e.g., Harvard got state funding; U. of Michigan had general oversight of education in the state--public as well as private).  Colleges quite small representing primarily local constituency.  Governing boards closely tied to community; few colleges had denominational governance.  Leadership of most institutions reflected broadly evangelical Protestantism that was hegemonic in American culture.
 b) Higher education seen as having very little practical purpose.  Only very small fraction of population (c.2%) went to college.  Scarcity of non-Protestants in general population reflected in higher education.  Most faculty were clergymen.
 c) Extra-curricular life relatively narrow, limited primarily to two types: literary and forensic societies, and "drinking, hell-raising and harrassing unpopular faculty".  Little activity concerned religion since most colleges officially sponsored this (e.g. periodic revivals and required chapel).
 d) Overwhelmingly undergraduate education.  Research had little to no place.  Classical education the norm.  Courses on evidences of Christianity & moral philosophy provided intellectually unified & specifically religious framework to learning.  Knowledge was both Protestant & unified.

II. Second half of 19th century:  An era of institutional diversification & religious questioning

 a) Growth in number & size of state institutions; clearer demarcation between public (state) and private; emergence of a few national universities (e.g., Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Stanford); growing number of institutions under direct denominational control.
 b) Percentage in higher education still very small, though it begins to climb toward end of century.  Women & African Americans began to attend college.  More significant with regard to religion was massive immigration of non-Protestants to America beginning late 1840s.  By 1900 there were c.90 Catholic institutions.  Significant numbers of Catholic & Jewish students also appear in other universities.  Rising numbers of unbelieving or agnostic faculty.  Almost uniformly Protestant facade of the professoriate before the Civil War was beginning to crack.
 c) Proliferation of athletics, clubs and activities.  Religious activities (e.g., YMCA) partly response to gradual retreat of religion in classrooms & growing reluctance of some colleges officially to sponsor them.  (E.g., U. of California, founded 1859, never had student chapel services; Harvard chapel became voluntary in 1886.)  Beginning of real distinction between religious & secular colleges.
 d) Great diversification of curricula & institutions:  land grant colleges, expansion in agriculture & engineering, student selection of courses, development of graduate studies.  Emergence of research ideal behind much of this.  Collapse of old form of moral philosophy as unifying, integrating force based on divine creation & governance of the world.  (Virtually every college taught it in 1850; virtually no college taught it in 1900.)  This destroyed framework that made higher education intellectually Christian & specifically Protestant.  Parallel fragmentation in conception of knowledge.  With rise of more strongly disciplinary ideal of academic knowledge professors reluctant to accept validity of principles from outside their field and increasingly hesitant to deal with metaphysical questions.  Roots of distinction between objective knowledge & subjective moral or religious concerns; beginning of ideal of "value-free knowledge".  Tone of most institutions remained Protestant, but foundations of specifically Christian or Protestant education had largely collapsed.

III. c.1900 to end of World War II:  Working out lines of change of last period; religion moves from academic core to extra-curricular margins of higher education

 a) Emergence of a few more national universities & colleges; still clearer demarcation between public & private.  Many church-related Protestant institutions severed denominational ties or remained only nostalgically attached to founding denominations.
 b) Substantial increase in numbers of students including a growing percentage of Jews and Catholics.  Also growing proportion of non-believing Protestants in faculties.
 c) Extra-curricular activies increased.  Compulsory chapel largely disappeared.  Widespread institutionalization of campus ministry system.  Student ministry moved into hands of denominational clergy rather than institutional ministers.
 d) Rise of the research university.  Knowledge increasingly organized on disciplinary model.  Religion as intellectually forming influence decisively marginalized.  Some religious schools (e.g., Wheaton & most Catholic schools) rejected trends & insisted on keeping religious commitment central to intellectual life, but by doing so they largely isolated themselves from general American academic life.  In general, faith decisively separated from knowledge, both in teaching & research.

IV. 1945 to 1960s

 a) Nationalization of more institutions & governing boards.  Sharper legal separation between state institutions and religion.
 b) Very great increase in numbers.  College becomes normal expectation for middle-class and many working-class Americans.  Profile of faculty shifts encompassing more Jews & Catholics.
 c) Little change from pre-war period except for increase in activities of evangelical Protestants on secular campuses (e.g., Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship established 1940s).
 d) Generally secular tone of teaching & research established before mid-century does not change.  3 important developments:  1. major effort by mainline Protestants to restore intellectual influence of religion in higher education; 2. study of religion as secular subject takes firm root (AAR founded 1963); 3. toward latter part of period, rapid disintegration of neo-Thomist center of Catholic intellectual life & full integration of Catholic scholars into mainstream of American academia.

V. The last 25 years

 a) Even sharper legal separation between state institutions and religion.  More recently, growing evidence of strained relations between some denominations & universities they sponsor.
 b) Continued increase in numbers and ethnic diversity including substantial presence at larger universities of students and faculty from non-Christian and non-Jewish backgrounds.
 c) General re-emergence of evangelicals in American public life paralleled by great increase in campus evangelical activity. Rise of Non-western (Isalmic, Buddhist, Hindu) campus groups.
 d) Intellectual life marked by more fluidity, especially in last 15 years.  Spread of interdisciplinary studies, questioning of possibility of objective knowledge, arguments for various types of perspectival knowledge, etc. raise question of whether we may be amidst an academic revolution like that of late 19th century.  Some scholars, especially among younger evangelicals & Catholics, argue that a Christian perspective on knowledge as valid as a feminist one, that there can legitimately be distinctively Christian scholarship, or that religious intellectual traditions can make a distinctive contribution to general scholarship.  As yet, however, no great dent in general contentment of American academics with largely secular character of their work.

In conclusion, Jim made some general observations:
 1. There has been an enormous change in the meaning of education, especially in relationship of knowledge to moral life.
 2. There is a huge gap now between religious beliefs of the great majority of Americans and the beliefs embodied in teaching and research at most institutions of higher education.  Students' religious beliefs often conflict sharply with the secular worldview dominant in academic knowledge.
 3. The role of church-related institutions is confused and problematic in light of general secularization.  What should be their role?  Should they approach knowledge in a distinctive way?
 4. We've arrived at a point when many questions about the relationship of religion to higher education press upon us.
 

Discussion

 David Hollinger offered two addenda and a word of caution.  First, he noted that from 1900 to 1945 the association that developed in higher education between Christian affirmation on the one hand and anti-Semitic exclusion on the other represented a serious crisis for how Christianity oriented itself to the future of higher education in the U.S.  Second, dramatic demographic change occurred between 1945 and the late 1960s.  Jewish intellectuals, a stigmatized and systematically excluded ethno-racial group, grew from less than 1% of the elite professoriate to overrepresentation by more than 3000%.  He knows of no other case of such change in the history of American higher education.   On a cautionary note Hollinger commented that in the contemporary period when we talk about post-modernism, critiques of objectivity and so on, there is a tendency to exaggerate the extent to which the standard secular episteme is in disarray.  It's easy for people who think the current episteme disadvantages them to exaggerate the weakness of its foundation.
 Richard Bernstein thought what was missing from the account was the dark side--examples of exclusion, quota systems, formal and informal ways in which, e.g., Catholics are excluded from Protestant institutions because they're "not quite kosher".  Regarding marginalization Jim Turner responded that people arguing for an increased role of religion in higher education have failed sufficiently to come to grips with ways in which religious, and specifically Protestant commitments, have been used to ensure the power of some groups and to marginalize others.  There is a corresponding tendency to tell the story of modernists or liberal Protestantism as a decline from orthodox religious belief.  Yet in the context of higher education it is precisely modernists and liberal Protestants who were able to break from what was often an oppressive past.

 The discussion turned to the extra-curricular domain.  Jim Turner described the movement of religion into the sphere of student life as distinct from the sphere of curricular engagement.  Eugene Lowe pointed out that while some values can become marginalized in this shift, they can also be strengthened.  Turner agreed that we shouldn't underestimate the power of extra-curricular activities in shaping college and university life since the late nineteenth century.  Eleonore Stump added that often in voluntary organizations students teach each other, disdaining official academic channels for the transformation of knowledge.  18-20 year old students teach each other moral philosophy in the broad sense, lead Bible studies, etc.  Such activity represents a rejection of expertise.

 Mark Noll spoke of Turner's narrative as a Protestant intellectual analogy to Christendom.  Protestant hegemony in higher education in the U.S. represented a Christendom situation.  The question is, what do you do when Christendom collapses?  Questions about what to do in the wake of the collapse of a hegemonic situation are always quite complicated.  Noll expressed hope that those interested in Christian engagement with higher learning would wash their hands of the Christendom idea.  The dark side is very dark indeed.  Any effort to evade it would be a mistake; any effort to propose something for the future that ignores the pitfalls of such hegemony is a mistake.  Yet some of the goals, procedures, lessons and aspirations involved in the Christendom process are rescuable.
 In response to this Christendom analogy Alan Wolfe observed that Americans are not really the kinds of religious believers the surveys indicate.  Americans are widely but not deeply religious.  Likewise, academic culture is not as extreme as the picture suggests.  Most academics are secular and relativistic to some degree, but most want above all to be supportive.

 Discussion shifted to students' worldviews.  Jim Turner said that for most students there is no connection between their religious worldviews and their intellectual lives.  As teachers he thinks we ought to be helping students in some way to engage the two.  Bernstein responded that most students don't really have a worldview; it's more like "cotton candy" (a metaphor that would recur throughout our meeting).  So Turner is making assumptions about a conflict that may not really be a conflict.  To this Turner suggested that perhaps one of our jobs is to create a conflict rather than letting students drift on in the cotton candy.
 Stump and Lowe added the dimension of discipline affirming that in fields like philosophy, theology and biblical studies conflict is more evident.  Also, conflict is not just between students and faculty but sometimes among faculty as well.  Jean Elshtain spoke of her experience teaching political theory at U. of Massachusetts.  Students would sometimes challenge professors (e.g., for including a religious text in a course on modern political thought).  Sometimes faculty would challenge faculty.
 In response to Bernstein Monika Hellwig said that precisely because of the "cotton candy" character of religious faith there is tremendous conflict.  Professionals have thought through certain issues on a high level of sophistication, but in the framework of a very unsophisticated and crude ideology regarding questions like what makes a good human life.  They should be challenged to think through basic ideological convictions at the same level of sophistication as professional commitments.

 Elshtain returned to the Christendom analogy noting that "post-Christendom" may be a more appropriate term for our era than "post-modern".  While there is justified worry about the previous hegemonic nature of Christendom, "Christianity" needs to be separated from "Christendom".  Nancy Ammerman thought the post-Christendom idea provided a helpful framework to consider disestablishment and voluntarism, which has ironically produced a thriving religious realm precisely because it is voluntary.  The voluntary sector around the university needs to be examined.

 Craig Dykstra added some information to Jim Turner's survey.  During the post-World War II period there was a shift in higher education toward technical rather than humanistic education.  (Conrad Cherry has statistics showing that probably only 15% of all students in higher education do any significant work in the humanities.)  He noted two related changes: 1) the percentage of the U.S. population going to college has changed enormously, and 2) there has been an increase in the size of institutions.  As a result, even for those in the humanities most faculty don't know anything about the religious beliefs of their students.

 Reflecting on changes in the character of intellectual knowledge and its relation to religion, Bob Wuthnow described the '60s and '70s as a watershed period.  The idea of either religion or knowledge as propositional truth gave way to a more complex notion embodied in technical knowledge, practical knowledge or in holistic approaches to body, mind, spirit, and so forth.  It may be that we're not thinking of religion and morality so much in terms of integrated propositions about truth but more as fragmented or parcelized approaches to life.  If so, one could find more about religion in, for example, literature courses or the performing arts.  Much of the thinking and practice of what used to be moral philosophy is now scattered in those disciplines in ways that relfect changes in the 1960s.

 Diane Winston turned the conversation back to student culture commenting on the contrast in extra-curricular activities between the first era in Turner's survey and today.  When Protestant hegemony was most secure students were "hellraising, drinking and harrassing unpopular professors."  Now we talk about groups for prayer, Bible study and worship.  This prompts thinking about the nature of undergraduates, what's in their minds, why they come to college.  This complicates the task of professors who want to share different kinds of knowledge.
 Winston also noted that her work with adult students suggests that different student populations are more receptive to different kinds of discussions.  As we move into a time when adult students will be the majority, we should begin to think about how we talk to them about issues of morality and religion differently from the ways in which we talk to undergraduates.
 Doug Sloan commented that people in congregations and people in academia have a lot in common.  Where he ministered in Kansas people were very bright and had a wonderful, childlike view of God.  He finds now that his sophisticated colleagues in academia share this 5-year old view of God.  The only difference is that they liked it out in western Kansas, and in academia they don't.
 Jim Heft expressed his conviction that some type of exploration or deepening of the religious dimension is an important part of higher education.  If the convictions of students and professors are not engaged there's a tendency for a very unsophisticated thing to have tremendous power.  Unexamined, some of the "cotton candy" becomes "hardtack".  It's brittle, it breaks and it breaks other things.  Therefore, there needs to be a real engagement with students on that level.  This is tricky business, however, because it raises the question of how professors socialize, and whether what they consider to be sophisticated will actually deepen the faith of some students.

 Mike Beaty discussed how the collapse of Scottish common sense philosophy in the nineteenth century affected colleges like Baylor.  A separation of faith and learning occurred because there was no longer an intellectual framework to bring them together.  For Catholic schools Thomism functioned in a similar way providing a common intellectual framework.  But recently that framework too has been lost, and Catholic schools are beginning to ask the same sorts of questions that Baylor began asking around 1900.  What are we about, and how do we bring faith and learning together?  Beatty's main question was, in order for religion to have a role in higher education do we have to have a common intellectual framework, or can we get along without it?

 Frank Turner described our discussion as very "quaint".  The fact that almost 50% of undergraduates are no longer the traditional age and that institutions are responding to market pressures raises the question of whether the issues we're considering are will be discussed at all.  Turner also stressed the impact of popular culture, which was left out of Jim's survey.  Stump noted that undergraduates today (in contrast to the '60s) who aren't in a mainstream religious tradition are generally not atheists.  We find a variety of religious sensibilities, but students do not care to learn anything from faculty about morality or religion.

 Denis Donoghue explained that during his first 20 years teaching English at the University of Dublin you could get on with the assumption, rightly or wrongly, that education was about "accredited knowledge".  When he came to America 18 or 19 years ago assumptions about the objectivity of accredited knowledge were being questioned.  There has been a shift of paradigms from the centrality of knowledge to individual experience.  E.g., the idea that there is something in a poem to be transmitted in a given order seems to students utterly archaic.  They regard a poem as simply provocation for the development and definition of their own experience.  This raises the question of whether it would be possible to teach on the basis of the interrogation and perhaps partial sharing of experiences rather than the mutuality of accredited knowledge.  As soon as you make a claim to official or objective knowledge you're setting up an obstacle.  If you ask students to compare experiences in reading a particular poem you can engage them on the level of comparative theory, but perhaps on no other level.  The question is to what extent might we be able to build on such an approach?

 Allan Boesak commented that in South Africa a religious understanding of the world must serve the national ideology.  He thinks the U.S. too is driven by nationalism.  What is the role of civil religion?  Wolfe responded that we also have "cotton candy nationalism".  The Gulf War reflected a kind of thin nationalism--let's make sure no one is killed, at least no Americans.  Attitudes of people toward their country are not very different from their attitudes with regard to religion.  Wolfe wants to raise the question of religion and higher education from the standpoint not of religion but of education, which requries a certain depth.  He finds the thinness extremely problematic.
 Elshtain described nationalism as part of a residual civic religion or the Christendom idea, i.e, America as God's nation.  The irony is that Christianity, properly understood, challenges this kind of nationalistic Christendom.  It constantly raises questions about the powers, about justice, etc.

 David Hollinger questioned the assumption that teachers should be very conscious of the spiritual orientation of students and design pedagogical strategies and curricula with this in mind.  Referring to Donoghue's distinction, he could most see the legitimacy of this approach if one views teaching as the exploration of individual experience.  If you view teaching as the translating of accredited knowledge, which he decidedly does when he teaches a history course, he's not sure it's so wise to be constructing in your mind the spiritual orientation of all the undergraduates or graduate students you're trying to reach.  He'd rather stand on the epistemic integrity of the educational process and the knowledge base that we're trying to transmit.
 Hollinger also commented on the possible connection between Dykstra's observation about the changing demography of students and Noll's reflection on the roles Christianity might find for itself in a non-hegemonic world.  If the humanities and social sciences continue their decline in student constituencies, it is possible that the influence of those who teach those disciplines will be decidedly weakened.  From a strictly survivalist point of view, Christian survivalists should make common cause with forces diminishing in support because then there will be a constituency.  He said this partly tongue in cheek, but also seriously.  It is his impression that those who do not take humanities and social science courses (e.g., business or engineering majors) are generally more responsive to an orthodox Christian message than is the average student in his intellectual history class.

 Nick Wolterstorff closed the morning session observing that much of our discussion focused on the relationship between the culture (broadly conceived) which students bring to college and the culture that they find officially in that college/univeristy experience.  Are these two widely dissonant?
 

SESSION II - Saturday afternoon

Jim Turner's broad survey of American higher education was complemented by specific cases studies followed by discussion.

Case Study #1:  Baylor University (Michael Beaty)

 Michael Beaty distributed two handouts.  The first, entitled "Problems and Opportunies at Religiously-Identified Colleges and Universities", was the focus of his presentation.  (The second was a comparative survey of faculty at three religiously-identified colleges regarding the relationship of faith and learning at their institutions.)  Beaty first explained his own perspective.  All of his educational experience has been in relgiously-identified colleges and universities.  He thinks they have an important task to perform and, given the dominant academic culture, he is concerned about the prospects for such institutions to flourish.  Using Baylor as a model, he highlighed some of the problems facing religiously-identified institutions.

 At Baylor University by the early 20th century the "two spheres" view had been formulated and has remained the dominant philosophy ever since.  Religious identity or faith is one sphere, and learning is another.  They are independent of one another and have no real relationship.  If you ask Baylor faculty members today what the task of Baylor is, they will say "to provide an excellent eduation in a Christian environment".  If you ask what it means to have a "Christian environment", they'll say to be kind and caring to students and to one another.  One of the problems of this "two spheres" view is that if these equal but independent spheres come into conflict, there is no agreed upon, rational way to settle it.  Academics tend to become protectors of the learning dimension, the administration and board of regents become protectors of the faith dimension, and the two groups repeatedly come in conflict with each other.
 Beaty also discussed the issue of pluralism, including Christian pluralism.  There is much of value in pluralism, but it becomes a problem for an institution that wants to maintain its religious identity.  The faculty at Baylor tend to favor vague characterizations of its religious identity.  What does it mean to have a Baptist identity, or a Christian identity?  What impact will this have in hiring or in curriculum?  Is it not problematic to favor nebulous descriptions?  It is very difficult to sustain a conversation on such questions because they inevitably raises all kinds of fears.
 Hiring practices also present problems for religiously-identified institutions.  In this regard Mike referred to some responses on his comparative survey.
 

Case Study #2:  A Comparison of the Place of Religion at Oxford & Yale (Frank Turner)

Oxford (based on research & interviews in the 1980s)
 Oxford was an exclusively Church of England institution through the mid-19th century when religious pluralism was imposed by parliament.  By 1900 groups with particular religious goals (e.g., high church, low church, non-conformist, Roman Catholic) had established separate institutions within the university.  The theology faculty has remained overwhelmingly Anglican, primarily liberal Anglican.  It has been closely tied to the college chaplaincies, which have had small constitutencies since compulsory chapel was abandoned after World War II.
 The philosophy faculty, largely associated with logical positivism, created an atmosphere hostile to religion.  This is probably the major intellectual influence, as opposed to a general and largely unarticulated secularism.  Despite constant statements about religious decline, there is far more visible presence of religion at Oxford than at any comparable elite American research univesity, public or private, religiously or non-religiously oriented.
 Turner described the Roman Catholic chaplaincy as one of the two single most successful religious institutions at Oxford.  This is largely due to a line of extremely able chaplains in the second quarter of the century.  They and their successors established a very strong sense of community for students outside the college setting.  This has remained extremely important.
 The most successful group throughout the century have been the evangelicals.  The Oxford Intercollegiate Christian Union (known as OICCU) is an active student ministry with an emphasis on individual conversion.  During interviews in the '80s faculty in theology and other disciplines talked (with some embarrassment) about the conversions that had occurred in their colleges in recent years.  The most successful religious institution at Oxford is St. Aldate's, a Church of England parish that for over half a century has been the center of evangelical activity.  It has a lively low church service, and lots of Bible study and community.  Staff and faculty attend.  Along with OICCU, Turner described St. Aldate's as "an absolute thorn in the side" of the college chaplains and the theology faculty.

Yale (based on experience living there 31 years)
 In contrast to Oxford, there has been virtually no religious impact at Yale from any local religious group.  The chaplaincy in has shifted from a forthrightly political to a self-consciously de politicized ministry.  Since the early '70s there has been no charismatic figure in the chaplaincy.  There are very low-profile Lutheran and Episcopalian chaplaincies, and a relatively high-profile Roman Catholic congregation whose board includes major high-profile Roman Catholic faculty.  The Jewish chaplaincy has been steadily increasing on all fronts.  A Judaic studies program was created in the early '80s and is growing.  There is a modest presence of evangelical groups, a growing number of Bible studies, and there is a new and growing Mormon presence.  Yale trustees share the conviction that one of their number (16) should be a clergy person.
 "Counter-attractions" to religion at Yale include ethnic identity, student services and political activity.  They have all in different ways replaced religion or religious functions.  On the other hand, recruitment is bringing in new evangelicals, and Turner now finds it more likely for graduate students to raise religious questions than undergraduates.

 Factors affecting the decline of religion at Yale.  I have grouped Turner's long list into three categories:  1) religious factors; 2) disciplinary changes; and 3) professionalization.
 1) Religious factors.  Turner's may represent the last generation of scholars who brought to their academic training a religious capital from home life, active churches and a culture that saw religious issues as intrinsically related to the humanities.  The politicization of Protestantism (both on left and right) has de-emphasized the traditional stress on doctrine, personal conduct, reading of Scripture and theology.  This has undermined its influence on scholarship and the life of the mind.  In the wake of Vatican II rapid changes in Roman Catholicism quickly removed it as an "other" against which both Protestants and Jews could clearly define themselves and their values in the academy.  Catholicism is less on the defensive in academic culture, but it is very hard to discuss religious issues with students who have no idea of the difference between, e.g., Ignatius and Calvin.
 2) Disciplinary changes.  Emphasis on social history since the 1960s has led to a reductionist and instrumentalist view of religion.  Social historians have tended to see religion as a force working against human liberation.  In literary studies Marxism and varieties of structuralism and post structuralism have rejected values and methods previously brought to literature.  They are less concerned with literature historically considered and tend to reject the authority of language to impart moral values.  (He noted a parallel between literary studies in this century & biblical studies in the 19th century.)  Philosophy at Yale has played no part in religious matters in recent years.  The collapse of sociology as a major discipline has harmed religious concerns, and the turn to physical anthropology has lessened the spectrum of religious studies.  Religious studies lives off other disciplines and is in difficulty inasmuch as these disciplines are unconcerned with religion.  Science has done less to curb concern with religion than any other academic enterprise.
 3) Professionalization has affected higher education in several ways.  Homogenization has occurred since World War II, i.e., institutions look increasingly alike due to professional aspirations.  The graduate school and the professional association rather than the institution or its religious affiliation have become the mode of self-identity for scholars.  Professionalism rather than profession of faith has become the way of life of the academy.  Professionalism has also entered the world of religious education.  E.g., in the '50s scholars began to believe that graduate degrees should be granted not by a Divinity School but by a department of religion.  Departments of religion comprise scholars who seek professional standing in the academy as the professional standing of the clergy has steadily fallen.  Until recently at Yale it has simply been assumed that appointments at the Div. School are academically inferior.
 Turner emphasized the self-imposed isolation of Yale Div. School from the rest of the university.  E.g., despite personal kindness he has received from the Div. School faculty, there has never been any interest in his scholarship or in that of any colleagues in his department who work on religion.  Also, at no time during his considerable involvement on committees at the Div. School did he hear a word about how, if at all, issues of theology, faith commitment or denominational organization had anything to do with its mission.

 In conclusion Turner surmised that at Oxford and Yale the most important religious work tends to come from areas not specifically directed toward religion.  Probably the two most influential works on religion coming out of Yale in recent years have been from faculty outside the Div. School:  the 5-volume history of doctrine by Jaroslav Pelikan (who started at the Div. School but moved to religious studies and then to history); and Culture of Disbelief by Stephen Carter (Law School).  Similarly, the most successful religious activities are spawned by groups that are attached to the university (e.g., St. Aldate's at Oxford).
 

Discussion

 Wuthnow asked Beaty about the distinctive contributions that a Baptist institution might be able to make to the larger conversation.  Beaty re-emphasized the problems, particularly the fragmentation of Baptist life expressed in different narratives about what it means to be a Baptist.  As a result, the tendency has been simply to stress excellence in education.  So far Baptists have contributed simply by preserving 40 or 50 schools committed to something called Christian higher education.  This holds out the possibility, principally at an undergraduate level, that students will be engaged in religiously-informed conversations on the one hand and academically-informed discussions of religion on the other.  Ammerman added that a difficulty faced by church-related colleges in general (not just Baptist) is the erosion of a sense of denominational identity.

 Bernstein noted two particularly significant consequences of what Frank Turner said which may be important for how we structure this Seminar in the next few years.  First, the most interesting religious activities in American universities are not taking place in official circles.  Second, the most interesting religious phenomena in society have nothing to do with university life.  Hopefully we can come out after three years with a sense of how we can revitalize the academic component of all this.
 F. Turner largely agreed with Bernstein's points making two related comments.  First, during the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam university people suddenly decided they could make a difference.  On the whole universities have not made a difference in great social movements.  Also, at Yale (and perhaps elsewhere) what is happening in Judaic studies is very reminiscent of the approaches to literature and the like of the 1950s, infused with Protestantism or moral concerns of the Judeo-Christian tradition.  Similarly, faculty in Judaic studies, even on different sides of the spectrum, are now infused with an articulated sense of value.
 Elshtain commented that a kind of unthought fideism of some faculty in Beaty's survey could deepen the fissure between faith and learning.  Beaty responded that a number of faculty have views about faith which, from there point of view, makes it intelligible to say that faith and learning ought to be kept apart.  This leads to a deep impasse.
 Hollinger appreciated the dilemma of church-related colleges and proposed a scenario for resolving it.  He suggested that faculty hiring at a place like Baylor be strictly academic, based on standard peer review.  No attention would be paid to spiritual orientation or faith.  But there would also be an added sphere.  It might consist of required courses for students in Bible and religion, compulsory chapel, a program of religious and cultural activities, etc.  Those who come to Baylor know they're buying into this.  This would be consistent with the lesson of Frank Turner's presentation that if you're interested in rejuvenating religious activities you might want to do them outside the strictly academic sphere.  Hollinger was arguing for a sharper distinction between the "two spheres" so you get away from the idea that being a Christian is simply being kind and caring.  Would this work?
 Peter Steinfels noted that the administration was one weak link in this scenario.  Hollinger agreed that interaction between faculty and the trustees was a difficulty in the proposed model, but asked whether that was the only obstacle.  He was still unclear about the faith dimension that Baylor wants.  He was looking for some way of creating an atmosphere on campus that would embody a more particularized version of the gospel than is manifest in vaguer ecumenical formulations without compromising the authentic desire to be fully part of modern learning.

 Wolfe commented that he'd been hearing an alternative to the existing account of the problem we're addressing.  The existing account is rooted in the idea that there is a dominant secular academic culture.  Believers are excluded from this dominant culture.  A kind of crisis of knowledge or objectivity has created a situation which, for perhaps the first time in 100 years, opens up the possibility of re-inclusion.  In a sense this creates natural allies between believers and other groups that feel excluded from the university, primarily those who identify with one form or another of identity politics.  Wolfe doesn't like this common formulation of the problem because he doesn't like identity politics (e.g., the idea of feminist knowledge or distinctly Christian knowledge).  The alternative account he's been hearing stresses the triumph of a certain kind of academic professionalism which has run rampant.  It excludes a person who might be labeled a belletrist, an intellectual, someone with general knowledge that doesn't fit into a very narrow, logically coherent system.  If that's the case, the natural allies of people who want to bring religion back to the university are more general humanists.  Wolfe feels much more comfortable with this account and would see himself as a natural ally.
 Responding to Wolfe's rendering of the problem of academic professionalism, Frank Turner affirmed that all institutions of higher education, with few exceptions, are under tremendous market pressures.  There are too many colleges in this country, and one way they're going to compete is through teaching, e.g., better advising, more conferences on papers, etc.  This will inevitably lead away from the professional ideal.  Faculty will have less time to publish; teaching rather than publication will be rewarded.  There is going to be a more nurturing environment.  Professors will confront students face to face, and that will inevitably bring up issues of values and the like.  All this will begin to undermine professionalization.  He also noted that we tend to overestimate the impact faculty have on students in comparison with factors like peer pressure.  A lot of students go through our classes utterly untouched, just as we did in many cases.

 Doug Sloan returned to Hollinger's proposed solution to Beaty's two sphere dilemma.  It raises the question of what we mean by religious renewal.  Does it have nothing to do with how we know the world or the assumptions that go into the academic disciplines?  He wonders if there's any real religious renewal without deep consequences in these areas.
 Beaty remarked that Hollinger's question forces the Baylor administration to admit an incoherence (which Hollinger admitted was part of his design).  They never wanted to be committed to a two sheres view.  The emergence of the modern research university with commitments to methodological neutrality among other things inclined them toward something like this view.  In reality, they do think faith and intellectual life should be held together, but they're not sure how to envision it.  They need a new paradigm and new practices (e.g., hiring) to go along with it.
 Stump contended that if you separate faith and learning you weaken both the community of faith and the larger community that houses it.  A faith that is intellectually weak is in certain respects very defenseless.  On the other hand, it does the larger society no good if it has people who are anti intellectual but powerfully and passionately committed to certain religious views.

 Donoghue expressed confusion as to how we were using the word "religion" or "religious".  He listed a number of possible usages.  In Beaty's presentation "religion" was used in a very local setting of a particular university.  Is that what we're worried about, or are we worried about some larger failure for which the very vocabulary of religion may or may not be adequate?

 Heft referred to Wolfe's earlier question of whether there is a Christian knowledge.  On the one hand he would say no.  On the other hand, certain realities of faith have a cognitive character.  This is his difficulty with Hollinger's proposal of a of sharper division between academic and religious dimensions.  There are cognitive dimensions to faith.  Sometimes they're primarily the questions you put to a discipline, the questions you find significant or want to explore.  He mentioned Stephen Carter's work as an example of this.  Heft thinks there are faith commitments that can have a profound impact on the way you approach a discipline.  If there's enough intellectual power in people with this faith dimension, they can begin to influence the discipline itself.  The tragedy is that often people attracted to religious studies have been not the brightest, the best or the most virtuous.

 Winston raised several points.  First, she asked what kind of paradigm Beaty thought would overcome the faith/learning split.  She also referred to Frank Turner's remarks about Jewish studies at Yale.  In this discipline it seems that people are able to speak from a "1950s model" (in a positive sense) of moral faith sensibility.  Why is it possible in that field as opposed to others?  In both presentations Winston noted that a lot of religion in a good, dynamic sense may come from outside the university.  Maybe that's an area that needs to be built up more.
 Regarding Judaic studies Frank Turner reponded that the holocaust so brings forward all of these issues that discussion is inevitable, which is not true in other areas.
 In terms of influences from the outside, Turner reaffirmed that they may be most important.  He spoke of the Danforth Fellows as a program in the last half century that probably really affected American life.  They recruited people who were interested in teaching and who had a broad Christian ethical dimension.  Among Danforth Fellows he knew there was a difference, and there continues to be as they reach middle age.  (Among those present there were in fact five Danforth Fellows.)

 Winston wondered why the holocaust enabled moral issues to be discussed for Jews while something similar was not true for Christians?  Hollinger pointed to the diasporic character of Judaism.  Jewish religion is a diaspora community, and the moral authority spoken is from people who've not held power since the destruction of the Temple.  Christianity has a very different connection with power in the west.

 Beaty responded to the question of another model to replace the two spheres view.  Thinking of rationality as a tradition-based, tradition-constituted activity (using MacIntyre's language in philosophy of science) could be helpful.  In practice, he would go to the core curriculum, which should bring religiously-informed perspectives in contact with the best that we know from non religiously-informed perspectives and vice versa.  This could ensure that all students at Baylor have an opportunity to think deeply about those religious beliefs they've brought with them.

 Discussion turned to Frank Turner's analysis of relations between Yale U. and the Div. School.  Mark Schwehn said that at Chicago (where he was junior factuly 1975-83) there was much more intellectual and institutional interchange.  He wondered which is atypical, Yale or Chicago.  He suspects that the difference has to do with leadership.  Turner noted that Yale Div. School is extremely isolated, seemingly more so than comparable institutions.  He thinks there is a historic reason for this having to do with the way the religious studies program was created.  But he also felt that stronger leadership would have found ways of fostering interaction.
 Wolterstorff tied the situation at Yale with the issue of professionalism.  He noted that among Div. School heroes of the past few if any would measure up to university professional standards.  The consequence is a sense of intimidation.  (This may be part of the reason that someone like Frank Turner has never been invited there.)  Also, Yale Div. School was the flagship of moderately liberal Protestantism from the '30s to the early '70s.  As this movement lost its élan and intellectual vitality, the Div. School has felt perplexed.  It has found no substitute for that intellectual understanding of its enterprise and has fallen into "intimidated passitivity".

 Mark Noll wondered what the Oxford analysis could contribute to our discussion given the very different structure and context of higher education in Britain.  Frank Turner thought one lesson to be learned was the importance of vigorous local churches.  Noll asked whether anyone could think of a recent modern example in the U.S. of a vigorous church next to a university that has made an intellectual difference in the university.  The response was silence.  Frank Turner thought that a vigorous local church could at least make a difference in religious life.

 The session ended on the topic of formation.  Dykstra asked whether higher education should be consciously understood as an activity of formation.  Religious traditions are about formation- formation of ways of life, kinds of self and kinds of community.  He raised several related questions:  Intellectually and practially, do various religious traditions have anything constructive to offer to the kinds of formation that are needed in our culture, particularly in higher education? If so, on what grounds?  Are there only distinct formations or are there aspects of formation that it is possible to share in a highly pluralistic culture?  What constitutes excellence in higher education?  Is there anything that religious traditions can contribute to it in various kinds of institutions and situations?
 Hatch pointed out that since the '60s American higher education has simply stopped trying to form people.  At least public institutions have become agnostic on that issue.  It was noted, however, that multi-culturalism is in a sense an effort to return to some kind of formation, as are professional and technical education.  Wolfe doesn't sense there are any such goals in the university.  It's entirely self-referential.  It doesn't look outside of itself.  Its standards of excellence are entirely within itself. SESSION III - Sunday Morning
 

Case Study #3:  Williams College (Frank Oakley)

 Williams in the early 1960s:
 Williams College, chartered in 1793, was never a church-related institution, but it acquired the reputation during the first century of its existence of being a safe, sound, orthodox place in terms of centrist congregationalist commitments.  Oakley went to Williams in '61 to teach medieval and Reformation history and has remained there ever since.
 There were a small handful of Catholic students, 2 Catholic faculty members, a larger but still small handful of Jewish students and faculty members, and a broad mass of mainstream Protestants or unchurched people.  The latter category probably included most faculty.  The Protestant chaplain was an academic with an appointment in the religion department, and there was still compulsory chapel.  (The requirement could be met by attending the church, chapel or synagogue of your choice.)  The new president, a man uncomfortable with any sign of religious sentiment, managed to have compulsory chapel abolished by 1962.  Regular Sunday services of a generic Protestant type continued in the chapel.  The atmosphere was basically secular.  Those of religious commitment, of whom Oakley was one, tended neither to conceal the fact nor to do much talking about it.

 Williams today:
 There is still a Protestant chaplain, who spends much of his time organizing community service projects.  He has no academic appointment.  There are two part-time assistant chaplains, one Catholic, one Jewish.  There are no regular Sunday services in the chapel except for Catholic mass.  College-wide religious services are inter-faith.  There is now a college Jewish center which has regular Sabbath services.  Somewhat over a fifth of the student body is Roman Catholic, about 11% is Jewish, and there are smaller Muslim and Hindu groups.  Reading the weekly calendar one might think the college is a hotbed of religious zeal.  A great number and diversity of religious groups are listed.  Oakley described the Jewish association as a rather vital, student-led operation.  The Catholic group seems somewhat uncertain of itself and quite torpid.  The evangelical Christian fellowship is very active and seems to have drawn into its orbit some of the more conservative Catholic students.  The evangelical element--encompassing regular prayer groups, Bible studies, etc.--is fairly new at Williams and plays a very important role in some students' lives.  Among the younger faculty there is a small contingent with similar commitments.
 How does this modest surge in religious activity intersect with the intellectual life of believing students and faculty?  So far as Oakley can make out, not very much.  The center of gravity in students' religious lives seems to lie primarily in worship, prayer, the cultivation of spiritual life and the strengthening of moral commitment.  With the possible exception of members of the Jewish association, he senses distressingly little interest among students in the intellectual dimensions of their particular religious traditions.  For some reason, there is great diffidence about asking fellow believers on the faculty (of which there are certainly more now than there used to be) to help in exploring this area.  This is partly because such faculty members seem to be disproportionately clustered in natural or harder core social sciences, disciplines in which it's easier than in the humanities to slip into a kind of compartmentalized Latin Averroïst posture toward the possible intersection of private faith commitment and professional intellectual activity.
 In the classroom one senses a reasonable degree of tolerance among students when intonations of religious commitment surface in discussion, though probably less acceptance when the commitment is Christian fundamentalist as opposed to something more exotic.  At least among younger faculty the situation is similar.  Apart from older members of the religion department, there isn't much inclination to fall into a "faith-busting" role.  But if not outright hostility, there is a tendency to inadvertant display of "negative intellectual body language", which bright students of clear faith commitment are very quick to note.

 On a wider scale Oakley thinks this sort of "negative intellectual body language" has been evident in the reaction of some in the academy to attempts (like those of George Marsden) to put firmly on the agenda for discussion in higher education the issue of the role in or the exclusion from the academy of religious commitments or perspectives.  Oakley thinks such issues fall approrpriately within the orbit of reasoned discsussion in the secular, liberal, pluralistic university.  He confessed that he was quite confused about these things but thinks it is important that the discussion continue.   In conclusion Oakley made two hortatory suggestions that might help to keep discussion going with openness and vigor.  1) Those raising the issues should avoid engaging or even being perceived as engaging in any sort of exercise in "competetive liminality".  There is something a bit unseemly in the current degree of scrambling and competition in academic circles for secure marginal status!  2) Those of secular bent, whom this whole issue makes instinctively uneasy, should avoid reaching for their pistols, i.e., accusing those who are raising the issue of seeking "victim" status.
 

Discussion

 Almost all the discussion following Oakley's presentation focused on student-faculty relations and the issue of formation.  Stump thought the negative body language to which Oakley referred explains the reluctance of believing students to approach faculty regarding intellectual dimensions of religious faith.  Oakley noted that there is a growing number of faculty members who are people of religious commitment, but he worries that they do not convey a sense of willingness to help.  He's not sure whether this is the case, but he's curious about the failure of students to exploit the abilities, talents and knowledge of faculty on religious questions.  Wolterstorff wondered whether students had come to think of religion as so present-oriented--oriented toward prayer, moral engagement, spiritual upbuilding--that the notion of long, rich intellectual traditions which lay behind and are part of these faiths is lost from their consciousness, so they feel they have nothin to talk to faculty about.  Oakley affirmed that this was lost from the consciousness or interest of many.
 Winston noted that in light of American religious history it doesn't seem odd that these students would prefer experiential religion to intellectual religion.  Also students are in a stage of life in which authentic experience probably counts more for them than intellectual activity.  Reflecting on Dykstra's comments about how formation takes places, she suggested that students would probably go to professors who somehow model or embody some of the characteristics they seek.  That would be the meeting point at which experience and intellectual background could begin.  Faculty must not just offer intellectual traditions but be living a life that relates to students' convictions.

 Wolfe found Oakley's call for each side to soften itself a bit to be very good advice.  He added that conversations within each side (the religious and the secular) need to go on.  The idea of "formation" is essential.  It is the opposite of "identity politics".  Identity politics assumes your identity is already formed while formation assumes it is still in the process of being formed.

 Hatch asked Oakley whether he saw an evolution toward much more functional student faculty relationships.  E.g., students study history from a faculty member, but they don't come to professors as models of life.  Oakley said that there was clearly less of this.  However, students may draw more conclusions from behavior than from formal interaction of that sort.  Students are clearly very curious about faculty with religious commitments.  They observe and draw conclusions from what they see.
 Elshtain suggested that the fact that students were so actively organizing themselves in groups for Bible study, prayer and so on indicates that they're raising the quesiton, "How should I live my life?"  It's a question they want to keep alive as they go through the process of higher eduation even though the question is not part of the curriculum.
 Phil Gleason was struck by the comment that institutions of higher education weren't interested in or or were indifferent to formation.  This hasn't been his impression.  In the mid-'60s he worked fairly closely with a sociologist of education who was interested in student cultures.  The question for him was how to bust up the culture students brought to college with them--their old fashioned religious, economic and political views--and equip them with a more satisfactory set of views.  It has been said that the critical thinking that is the aim of collegiate instruction should issue in a critical spirit toward society, i.e., unless one is a critic of the existing order one hasn't learned to be a critical thinker.  PC is exaggerated, easy to caricature, and so on, but the assumption is that there are certain right views students ought to acquire.  E.g., one ought not to be racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.  The university has absorbed the religious task of explaining the world or life and offering some sort of salvation or prescription for conduct in keeping with the given explanation.  Maybe faith-busting isn't as prevalent now as when he observed it closer at hand, but it seemed to Gleason that there was certainly an interest in formation.  It was just a different formation from what the churches were assumed to have been giving.

 With regard to formation Hollinger commented that he finds it helpful to make a sharp distinction between two values or modes on the part of what might be seen as secular professors.  The distinction is between what we might call institutionalized alienation, which Gleason seemed to be criticizing, and an effort to see to it that students hold their opinions on some critical foundation.  The latter does discourage the uncritical perpetuation of values, attitudes and practices inherited from a peer group, a family and a church, but it doesn't necessarily lead to a PC attitude or to institutionalized alienation.
 Hollinger also asked what others thought about the idea connected with Schleiermacher that Christianity will ultimately be better off if it withdraws from the cognitive realm and focuses more on the cultivation of religious feelings and, as some would extrapolate from that, social ethics; and that the idea of Christianity trying to be a major player in the cognitive and epistemic realm is simply a mistake, that that part of the formation of culture should be left to the wissenschaftlich world.  Elshtain thought that route was a disaster because it further widens the chasm between reason and faith.  It leaves open the option of a deeply felt but unthought fideism on the one hand, and a realm of pure ratiocination on the other.  Wolterstorff commented, however, that this in many ways fit the description that Oakley was presenting of some Williams students.

 Lowe discussed change in the perception of the university chaplain.  He referred to Oakley's comment that these days at Williams the chaplain seems primarily engaged in community service.  This is a common pattern.  He questioned the extent to which that person is viewed collegially by members of the faculty as opposed to the person's identity being more fixed in relation to student or community services.  There are still a few places that preserve the old notion of the preacher to the university, but this is rare.  The evolution of the role of the college chaplain might be an interesting thing to look at in a number of different kinds of institutions.  Lowe also referred to the function of the black church in the last 20-25 years on majority campuses.  He described gospel ensembles as community-forming exercises, though not necessarily credal or doctrinal groups.  Also, when many institutions go through the process of thinking about what the role of the chaplain should be, they end up appointing a black minister to that role.  This is an intriguing development.

 Bernstein introduced a note of deep skepticism with regard to formation.  In principle it is the case that the locus of world view or morality has shifted in America from the church to the university.  But for whatever lipservice is paid to it in college catalogues, the faculty doesn't really believe in formation.  Increasingly the ethos is undermining formation, and not just in the religious sense.  Bernstein sees a very dramatic change in the conception of a teacher since the '50s or '60s.  He doesn't believe it's going to change.  The inner logic of specialized knowledge and professionalism is so powerful.  Graduate students are socialized in such ways that they're robbed of any kind sense of vision.  However, like Oakley, Bernstein thinks the situation now is very confusing.  There's always a kind of ideological and cultural lag in the university.  He thinks identity politics is already dead.  The vestige is still there and there will still be groups exploiting it in ugly ways, but as a serious intellectual option one has come to see how thin the notion really is and how much more complex identity really is.  So the situation is more confused, but the confusion also presents an opportunity for more frank and open discussions.

 Frank Turner expanded on some of Bernstein's comments.  He agreed that formation is now very weak, especially in connection with religion.  For example, last year he chaired a committee at Yale on procedures to deal with student to student sexual harrassment or assault.  Absolutely no one suggested talking with the chaplains.
 Turner also spoke of an enormous disjuncture between the culture of graduate education and the world graduate students go into.  As far as he can tell, there is no discussion in most graduate programs about formation, about relationships with students, though there is more discussion now about teaching.  Outside of private religious groups (again, Bible study groups are showing up among graduate students), there's nothing in the graduate experience that addresses the issues we've been talking about.  We send people out to teach in structures unlike the graduate school, but also carrying nothing within themselves except what they may have learned along the way.  What they know about religion or formation is what they've picked up in the culture or in families rather than anything that's part of their training.  This may be something we should think more about.

 In connection with the theme of formation Mark Schwhen suggested revisiting a text like The Apology, where the two charges were of corrupting the young and impiety.  He referred to Hollinger's mention of a kind of formation that universities do rather well, i.e. getting students to reexamine critically the unexamined tyrannies that hold sway over their lives when they arrive including unexamined religious views and prejudices of all sorts.  Often, however, students are shorn of prejudices they brought with them but are given no resources to begin to form some new sense of themselves or the world.  It seems that we here are trying to attach the process of formation to a religious project, which is what Socrates was trying to do in the Apology.  Discussing a text like this might help to articulate freshly some of the things we've set out for conversation in this group.
 Schwehn also echoed Bernstein's and Frank Turner's skepticism about seriously thinking we're going to return to some notion of formation.  On the other hand, he agreed with the point made earlier that there is going to be tremendous public and economic pressure on the academy to start to do some things which it has ignored.  Part of that pressure may lead to something like a more studied concern for just what kind of human beings we are in fact forming, if only by negligence and fault.

 Oakley had three closing comments.  First, regarding Lowe's reference to gospel groups, Oakley viewed Williams' gospel choir as a vehicle of integration.  This was quite dramatic at a time when people were talking about segmentation and separatism on campus.  Secondly, on the issue of formation, he was very struck by testimonies to how little adult presence there was in the lives of typical students at Williams.  There is a great hunger for adult contact that we are not meeting.  Formation is an enormous notion, but being present or being willing to be present and share some things seems important.  Thirdly, he thinks it may be too late to affect what Hollinger was talking about [regarding a Scheiermacherian approach].  Or if we did, we'd have a great deal of trouble making sense of our intellectual tradition, which has been transformed by the intersection of religious commitment and philosophical notions.  Oakley admitted the notion of our "western tradition" is overused, but he's not sure we could make sense of our own past if we tried such a separation, or at least it would distort our past.
 

Directions for the Future
 The meeting ended with a brainstorming session.  I've not included much discussion or disagreement here but only definite suggestions or questions raised for consideration.

 Hellwig proposed prior to our next meeting a short statement from every member of the seminar giving his or her perspective on the role of religion in church-related and secular universities. This could be supplemented by one or two papers on the theme.

 Sloan generally agreed with Hollinger's comments that the dominant episteme of the academy is in better shape than the post-modern furor would have us believe and that the dominant episteme has no real place for the cognitive claims of religion.  In this light he recommended a relentless critique of the dominant episteme--not as necessarily wrong, but as incomplete.  There are other ways of knowing besides those recognized in the academy.

 Heft raised four issues for consideration:  1) The cognitive claims of religion.  2) Formation.  Should it be done, how should it be done, what forms might it take?  3) The disciplines, the critique of the disciplines, and the possibility of a new configuration.  Is the model of professionalization breaking down, and what might this might mean for the questions we're considering?  4) Student culture.  Where is it, and what does this suggest in relation to religion and higher education.

 Ammerman suggested a more systematic examination of the nature of formation as it takes place in various universities and colleges.  We should look at formation from several angles.  We need sustained attention to questions of what and how we know, i.e. epistemological issues, as well as questions concerning how we ought to live.  Also, it is essential to recognize that formation takes place in community.  We need to think more about the relation between the community of learning and the communities from which students and faculty come.  We need to consider how formation looks different given the plurality of communities in which primary formation is taking place today.

 Bernstein proposed some type of analysis of what's happening in the courts.  Also, referring to Boesak's remarks about South Africa, he encouraged some exploration of the role that religion is playing in people's lives, which has very little to do with the university.
 Wolfe raised the same point about the courts suggesting that we invite a law professor.  (He subitted a list of names to Jim Turner.)  He also emphasized the need to keep our focus more narrowly on the question of religion and higher education.

 Winston posed the question of how different groups in a pluralistic society can do meaningful kinds of formation.  Also, how do we address these questions in light of the fact that the majority of undergradutes are interested in technical education and that soon most undergraduates will be over the age of 30 or 35?  We also need to think more about different categories of institutions--church related colleges, private universities, state universities.  They are all very different and come at these problems in different ways.  Finally, Winston felt that we can learn from the Jewish experience, and she suggested hearing someone--perhaps from Yeshiva or Brandeis--talk about this.

 Noll proposed sharply focused position papers, books or talks.  He suggested three kinds of presentations of this sort:  1) A series of personal reflections such as those we've heard so far.  He'd like to hear from Henry May, David Martin (sociologist and Anglican priest) and Walter Ong among others.  2) More agressive living representatives of the proposition that it is foolish to be consistently Christian or religious.  He mentioned a few people who could make this case well and in an interactive way.  3) Discussion of significant books or papers (even if written by members of our Seminar), e.g., Wolterstorff's Reason Within the Limits of Religion and Jim Turner's Without God, Without Creed.  He also mentioned Charles Taylor's work.

 Barbara DeConcini suggested focusing on what sorts of resources the practice and the study of religion offer to undergraduate education in a culture of cynicism.

 Elshtain referred to the many literary texts being subjected to radical reduction without being explored or dealt with in any serious way.  Students know they're being cheated on some level.  In this light she thought an interesting question to consider is:  Without the notion of repristinisation of tradition, how do you release the vibrancy of complex traditions?  How does one bring them in a rich and sturdy way into higher education?
 Regarding formation, Hollinger wanted to see a greater sense of reality than he's heard so far about the difficulty that the academy--particularly in public universities but perhaps even in private, religiously-oriented institutions--will have in agreeing on just what kind of human beings we want to form.  If someone would articulate that ideal and then explain how the choice of those values were warranted, he'd be much more interested in that part of the conversation.  Another caution concerned what he called the structure of plausibility that informs knowledge creation and the assessment of truth claims in the academy today.  The matter of critiquing that structure of plausibility seems to him a very big project.  This is a prodigious historical reality with enormous power and enormous capacity for self-critique, which is one of the reasons that some of us are so loyal to it.

 Wuthnow noted how often the issue of tolerance had come up in one form or another.  One of the things a liberal education has been presumed to teach in the past is some form of tolerance.  He is curious about the texture of that tolerance now.  Is the tolerance we see among younger faculty something that has substance, or is it a kind of "You do your thing, I'll do my thing" tolerance?  If we have some notion of what a good tolerance should be, how do we promote it?  How do we teach graduate students to pass on that kind of tolerance to students of the next generation?  Bernstein mentioned that Michael Walter has just worked on a book on toleration with a historical dimension.  This might be a good resource.

 Gleason thought it would be helpful to formulate a clearer, more specific notion of what kind of product or audience we're aiming at.  Is the goal here primarily to encourage those who share our concerns or to address those for whom these issues are not a concern.  Stump echoed the concern to clarify our goals.  Jim Turner explained that in subsequent meetings the final Sunday morning session will be devoted to the formulation of practical suggestions that university and college administrators, faculty members, foundations might adopt.  There are various ways of distributing this information.  The Lilly Endowment itself is very interested in our practical suggestions.  Also, there is a possibility of trying to distill these notions into a very short book (less than 100 pages) which might be made widely available to relevant audiences in a cheap paperback edition.

 Steinfels thinks there will be an in-built dynamic to move toward common denominators for people who teach in both secular and religiously-identified institutions unless there is an effort to keep that from happening.  He thinks the effort should be made because it would be very helpful for people in each kind of institution to have their own particular challenges discussed by people who are in the other kind of institution.  He has a particular interest in the problem of the dominant academic culture foreclosing the perpetuation of distinctly religiously-identified institutions that don't want to be totally segregated as sectarian because of the pressures this raises and the shadow of illegitimacy cast over the consideration of any religious factor in the hiring process.  Perhaps such a problem would never get on the table if we stick only to common denominator issues.  Jim Turner noted that Steven Haynes is running a Lilly program attempting to discern the distinctives of different kinds of church-related institutions.  He may be a resource person we could bring in.
 Oakley emphasized the need to deal with the distinctions Winston made earlier, not only between denominational and secular institutions, but differences between part-time students, students over 25, and those in community colleges.  We face vastly different situations when we talk about formation.  We tend instinctively to slip into thinking in terms of private, residential institutions, which are now quite the exception.
 Hellwig added the need to distinguish between undergraduate and graduate education.  Hatch re-emphasized this concern.

 Lowe suggested we continue to work on the schematic narrative with which we began.  Some of the differences we tend to associate with the contemporary period of higher education have more of a history than we assume (e.g., the role of extension education).  We tend to lose such distinctives if we focus on a general grid.  It may be helpful to determine for each of the segments what some of the background history is.  We wouldn't need to do this all the time, but perhaps at part of each meeting we could work at a different strand delineating that tradition through some period of time.

 Wolterstorff closed with the assurance that he and Jim Turner would try to integrate these suggestions in planning our next five stimulating, creative, tightly-focused, and highly relevant meetings!
 

MAJOR RECURRING THEMES

1. The collapse of the "Christendom" model of Protestant hegemony in higher education and its consequences.  Some described the result of this collapse in terms of a "new configuration" of religion and religious influences in higher education.  What does this new configuration look like?  How does it affect the disciplines?  How will it affect the role of religion in the academy?  Is there greater tolerance for religious views now?  If so, what is the nature of this tolerance?

2. Religion in the extra-curricular domain.  Many people noted that much that is happening with regard to religion is taking place outside the strictly academic dimension.  What are the reasons for this?  Is this a rejection of expertise?   How should faculty and administrators regard this trend?  How might we reinvigorate the academic dimension of this?

3. Tension between religious worldviews and intellectual life of students (and some faculty).  A faith learning divide is evident at religiously-identified as well as secular insitutions.  The shallowness of religious conviction among Americans in general and students in particular was repeatedly discussed, hence "cotton candy" faith.  There is very little interest among believing students in the intellectual traditions of faith.  Should faculty be helping students to engage faith and intellectual life?  If so, how?

4. The phenomenon of professionalism (or professionalization) in higher education.  This trend has been increasing in recent decades.  How has it affected the place of religion in the academy?  Market pressures may now be moving us away from the professional ideal.  What might this mean for the intersection of religion and higher education in the future?

5. Formation.  In what sense should higher education be seen as an exercise in formation?  What role do or ought faculty to play in this process?  (Faculty-student relationships came up from a number of different angles.)  What and how can religious traditions contribute to formation in the academy?  Is a plurality of formations possible given the plural environment of our academic institutions?  Some attention must also be paid to the role of community and communities in the formation process.

6. Demographic change among students.  A number of seminar members called attention to the fact that over 40% of current undergraduates are over the age of 25, and the trend is increasing.  The large majority of students are now engaged in technical or non-humanistic education.  Part-time students and community college students are also on the rise.  How will such changes affect the relation of religion to higher education and the specific issues of concern to this group?

7. Concern about the training of graduate students.  Graduate programs are increasingly specialized and professionally oriented.  They rarely prepare students for the world they are about to enter as faculty members.  There is little if any consideration of interaction with undergraduates or issues like formation.

8. Student culture in the 1990s.  What are its distinctives?  Is the culture students bring to their college or university experience widely dissonant from the official culture they encounter in the academy?  How does contemporary student culture present problems or offer opportunities with regard to religion and higher education.

         Respectfully Submitted,
         Andrea Sterk
         Summer, 1997

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