Report on the Second Meeting of the

Lilly Seminar on Religion and Higher Education

University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana
September 12-14, 1997

First Year Theme: Church-Relatedness

Lilly Seminar Members in Attendance:
Nancy Ammerman (Hartford Seminary)
Michael Beaty (Baylor University)
Richard Bernstein (New School for Social Research)
Allan Boesak (American Baptist Seminary of the West)
Conrad Cherry (Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture)
Barbara DeConcini (American Academy of Religion)
Denis Donoghue (New York University)
Craig Dykstra (Lilly Endowment)
Jean Bethke Eshtain (The Divinity School, University of Chicago)
Philip Gleason (University of Notre Dame)
Nathan Hatch (University of Notre Dame)
Stephen Haynes (Rhodes College)
James L. Heft (University of Dayton)
Monika Hellwig (Association of Catholic Colleges & Universities)
David Hollinger (UC Berkeley)
Richard Hughes (Pepperdine University)
Jeanne Knoerle (Lilly Endowment)
Eugene Y. Lowe, Jr. (Northwestern University)
Richard Mouw (Fuller Theological Seminary)
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)

Lilly Seminar Staff:
Andrea Sterk
Donna Ring

Visitor:
Robert Sullivan (Visiting Professor, University of Notre Dame)
 

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MAJOR  RECURRING THEMES

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SESSION I - Saturday Morning

Models for Christian Higher Education (Richard Hughes)
 The focus of this session was a paper presented by Richard Hughes of Pepperdine University entitled "Models for Christian Higher Education".  The presentation was followed by three responses & general discussion.
 Among his preliminary comments Hughes explained that his use of the term "models" referred to specific theological traditions as opposed to particular schools.  The question he was seeking to answer in the paper, based largely on findings of the book he co-edited, was how various theological models sustain the life of the mind.  He focused on 4 Christian models--Reformed, Anabaptist, Catholic & Lutheran--though he welcomed insights from other traditions.

A. The Reformed Model
 The Reformed model is rooted in the vision of John Calvin who sought to place every facet of Genevan life--religion, politics, music, art--under the sovereignty of God.  The vision was later popularized by the 19th century Dutch statesman & philosopher Abraham Kuyper.  The passion to transform human culture into the Kingdom of God is the driving genius of this tradition.  According to this vision, all learning should be Christian in both purpose & orientation.  3 fundamental concepts underscore the Reformed approach:
 1. The notion of a Christian worldview, i.e. the idea that Calvinism is not just a theology or system of ecclesiastical polity but a complete worldview with implications for all areas of life.
 2. The conviction that all truth is God's truth, a phrase used to affirm that God is the author not only of our faith but of every facet of our world.  There can be no discrepancy between Christian convictions & authentic knowledge in all other aspects of life including the academic disciplines.
 3. Integration of faith and learning.  Because all truth is God's truth all learning should be integrated into a coherent understanding of reality informed by explicitly Christian convictions.
 Sustaining these ideas is the Reformed notion of secularization, which  occurs when any dimension of human life fails to be brought under the umbrella of a distinctly Christian worldview.  Integration of faith & learning around a Christian worldview becomes imperative if one hopes to avoid the "slippery slope" toward secularization.  (By contrast, in the Lutheran & Catholic traditions the secular is viewed as a legitimate vehicle of God's grace.)
 Strengths & Weaknesses.  The Reformed approach overcomes fragmentation with a holistic approach to learning, and it provides students with a clearly defined position from which they can discriminate between competing perspectives & worldviews.  However, though it allows substantial freedom to search for penultimate truths in the context of an all-embracing Christian worldview, it is not so hospitable to serious consideration of alternate worldviews.  The historic Reformed insistence on the finitude of humankind & all human thinking could act as a corrective to triumphalism, but the Calvinist themes of human finitude & brokenness are sometimes lost against the overpowering notion that God has called his saints to renovate the world.

B. The Mennonite Model
 The starting point in the Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition has much more to do with holistic living & ethics than with cognition & the intellect.  Mennonites seek above all to implement a vision of discipleship based on the teachings of Jesus, taking seriously his words to abandon self in the interest of others & his charges to practice humility, simplicity & non-violence.  How can such unconventional virtues possibly sustain the values associated with the academy?  Hughes emphasized 3 aspects of the Mennonite vision:
 1. Anabaptism was originally a movement of dissent, daring to question the status quo.  In the 16th century dissent focused on lifestyle commitments, but Anabaptists consistently demonstrated their commitment to independent thinking.  Inasmuch as the academic enterprise requires a willingness to question conventional wisdom, the Anabaptist heritage offers important resources for sustaining the life of the mind.
 2. In keeping with the call to abandon self for the sake of others & to abandon narrow nationalism in the interest of "world citizenship" Mennonites stress service to others, especially to the poor, marginalized & oppressed throughout the world.  They take seriously the emphasis on pluralism & diversity that typifies the modern academy.  The international studies program at Goshen provides a prime example.  80% of all students spend a semester in a third world culture serving & learning the country's history, culture & language.
 3. An historic emphasis on humility in this tradition prepares scholars to embrace a cardinal virtue of the academy: willingness to admit that one's understanding may be fragmentary & incomplete, that one could be wrong.
 These themes shape the curriculum in important ways, e.g., programs in peace making & conflict resolution in most Mennonite colleges & an emphasis on majors that prepare students for careers of service.  Hughes also spoke of efforts to nurture a strong sense of community among both faculty & students at Mennonite colleges.
 Strengths & Weakness.  Commitment to stand with a radical Jesus is both a great strength & a potential liability in higher education.  A commitment that has inspired humility & respect for cultural diversity can also inspire narrowness & sectarian exclusivity, e.g., when the radical teachings of Jesus become little more than ethnic folkways or when Mennonites take seriously the mandates of Jesus without embracing seriously the grace & forgiveness of God.

C. The Roman Catholic Model
 Most Roman Catholic colleges & universities were established by various religious orders with a diversity of emphases.  Nevertheless, Hughes described certain uniquely Catholic dimensions that sustain the life of the mind:
 1. The sacramental principle suggests that the natural world & elements of culture can serve as vehicles by which the grace of God is mediated to humanity.  Many Catholic educators would take issue with the Reformed contention that human culture is fundamentally secular if not brought under the sovereign sway of Christ.  Rather, the natural world & human culture are valuable & fully legitimate, whether transformed by the rule of Christ or not.
 2. Universality of the Catholic tradition.  It embraces believers from every corner of the world holding diverse political ideologies & from every social & economic class.  From a theological point of view it is intentionally universal.  This universality should permit Catholic universities to prize pluralism & diversity and to find a legitimate place at the table for every conversation partner.
 3. The communitarian nature of redemption.  The church is not simply the hierarchical magisterium but is composed of all people of God throughout the world who form this community of faith.  According to M. Hellwig the life of the mind must not be understood only in cognitive terms.  The community experience of higher education should promote human formation for leadership & responsibility in all walks of life.  This communitarian dimension suggests that Catholic colleges & universities should place scholarship & teaching in the service of justice & peace for all peoples of the world, an emphasis that has particularly characterized Jesuit institutions.
 Strengths & Weaknesses.  The Roman Catholic tradition is at home with human reason, the natural world, secular human culture, human history & with human beings who stand both inside & outside the faith.  In theory this makes Catholicism particularly compatible with the ideals of the modern university.  However, it is possible for the tradition to stand at odds with the life of the mind, e.g., when dogma displaces inquiry, when orthodoxy undermines the search for truth, or when Catholics absolutize dimensions of Catholic faith that have the potential to break through their own particularity.

D. The Lutheran Model
 Among Lutheran resources for sustaining the life of the mind Hughes emphasized two of Luther's notions and spelled out their implications:
 1. Insistence on human finitude & the sovereignty of God.  Luther always pointed to these two notions at the same time.  The sovereignty of God means I am not God; my reason is inevitably impaired & my knowledge always fragmentary & incomplete.  In the context of higher ed. this means that every scholar must confess that he or she could be wrong.  Only such a confession empowers scholars to scrutinize critically their own theories & judgments and enables them to engage in a conversation that takes seriously other voices.  Authentic Lutherans can never absolutize their own perspectives but must always be reassessing & rethinking, always in dialogue with themselves & others.
 2. The notion of paradox.  Luther gloried in paradox (e.g. the Christian is both free & a servant at the same time).  Most supportive of the life of the mind is the notion of two kingdoms: the Christian lives simultaneously in the world & in the Kingdom of God, in nature & in grace.  In Luther's vision God employs the finite dimensions of the natural world as vehicles to convey his grace to human beings.  Here the tradition closely resembles Catholic sacramental understanding.  Lutherans are called not to transform the secular world into the Kingdom of God (Reformed tradition), nor to separate from the world (like some Anabaptists), but to dwell in 2 worlds at once.  They are therefore free to take seriously both the secular world & the Kingdom of God.
 Strengths & Weaknesses.  The notion of two kingdoms can foster genuine conversation in which all voices at the table are taken seriously.  There is a "Christian worldview" in the Lutheran context, but there is no need to impose it on other voices, nor is it important to "integrate faith & learning" around that perspective.  Rather, one seeks to bring the secular world & a Christian perspective into conversation.  The strength of this tradition is also its weakness, for it is easy to sacrifice one side of the paradox in the interest of the other.  The risks are absolutism on the one hand & relativism on the other.  Lutheran schools may look very different with regard to faculty hiring & the student body depending on which side of the paradox they emphasize.

 Conclusion.  The notion of a "Christian institution of higher learning" has diverse meanings depending on its underlying theological convictions.  In certain areas some models are strong where others are weak, so leaders in church-related education should seek to learn from other theological models.  Finally, one would hope these models might bear fruit in practical ways--in the curriculum & cocurriculum, in teaching & in scholarship.  For this to happen faculty, administration, trustees & specialists in student life must be attentive to theological models.  They must repeatedly ask what difference it makes that their institution claims to be Lutheran, Catholic, Southern Baptist or Nazarene.  How should their tradition play itself out in concrete terms?
 

Response #1 (Conrad Cherry)
 Cherry observed that Hughes' models alert us to different ways in which faith & learning can be correlated & suggest that there are different "Christian worldviews".  Given recent jeremiads about secularization of the academy, he found discussion of different theological perspectives on the "secular" to be especially refreshing.  Cherry's own project examined 4 institutions: a large state university, an African-American university, a mainline Protestant liberal arts college & a Roman Catholic university.  He made 3 observations about religious practices of undergraduates:
 1. Undergraduates prefer the word "spirituality" to "religion".  There is a certain "sitting loose" to theological boundaries, but by no means always an abandonment of tradition.  Cherry spoke of an acute quest for a personal experience of God joined with an eclectic, heavy borrowing from diverse traditions.  We should not dismiss this widespread, eclectic spirituality of today as hopelessly insubstantial & vacuous, what we referred to at the first meeting of this seminar as "cotton candy" worldviews.
 2. This generation of students is by no means a self-absorbed, "me" generation.  We find a high degree of volunteerism & philanthropy on campus.  Service learning & no credit volunteerism are popular options & are often religiously formed & motivated.
 3. Student religious practice, both public & private, is widespread and diverse.  If "secularization" of the campus suggests waning or marginalization of religious practice among students, their study is revealing no such thing. E.g., at the African-American school 60% of the seniors regularly attended religious services last year.  At the state university a veritable smorgasbord of religious activities is available.  At all the schools examined there was a close alliance between varsity sports & religion, and student government leaders were often also religious leaders.
 Cherry noted that religion is taught widely across the curriculum of the liberal & performing arts in addition to courses in religion & theology departments.  There are many genuine efforts to lead undergraduates into an empathetic understanding of diverse religious perspectives.  This is neither advocacy nor positivism.  In attempting to understand religion in higher education Cherry thought we should attend to forms of student spirituality that are experiential, eclectic, not defined by previous boundaries of tradition & custom.  He also believes we are ill-served by theological models that lament the secularization of the academy & by rhetorical models that offer only the 2 options of advocacy & objectivity with regard to teaching religion.
 

Response #2 (Stephen Haynes)
 As the initiator of the Rhodes Consultation, a Lilly-funded project on the future of church-related colleges, Haynes found Hughes' book & paper very helpful in honestly assessing positive & negative potential of various traditions, but he did not find the study particularly representative of Christian higher education as a whole.  He discussed most fully the chapters dealing with Reformed colleges.  They focused on Whitworth & Calvin.  Haynes pointed out that church-related colleges embody local & regional traditions as well as the more universal traditions Hughes described.  Rhodes College provides a good example.  Though it celebrates the Reformed tradition, Haynes was hard-pressed to identify the influence of Calvin, let alone Kuyper, at Rhodes.  At the same time certain 19th century Southern Presbyterians have had immense influence on the college since its founding in 1848, e.g. the Reformed thinker Benjamin Morgan Palmer--Southern nationalist, advocate of slavery, secession & segregation.  Palmer's thinking represents the sort of local or regional tradition which Hughes' ignores.  Such traditions can be more potent in defining a college's character than the broad traditions described as Reformed, Roman Catholic, etc.
 Haynes also commented on the alleged desire of Reformed institutions to integrate faith & learning.  While this goal is evident at Whitworth & Calvin, he does not see it currently at most of the 68 colleges affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA).  These colleges also claim to stand in the Reformed tradition, so where is their desire for integration?  Haynes thinks it should & could be a discernible goal at most of these schools, but it is not.  Why not?  He suggested that one of the very tangible results of "secularization" is the prevalent faculty attitude that one cannot integrate knowledge & faith since these realms have very little in common and are better kept apart.
 In closing Haynes spoke about the tenuous future of mainstream church-related colleges.  Most have gradually lost the will to insure that new faculty members are positively disposed toward the founding tradition of the college.  Junior faculty are hired more for their professional credentials & are therefore more likely to identify their primary loyalty as the discipline or the academic guild, not the college or the church.  In fact if Hughes had chosen more mainstream--and in Haynes' view more representative--church-related colleges for his study, he would have been hard-pressed to find faculty (especially junior or mid-career faculty) willing to write about their college's religious tradition.
 

Response #3 (Diane Winston)
 Winston described her ongoing cooperative project on adult education programs at church-related colleges.  Part of the study examined adult ed. programs at 4 Catholic & 6 evangelical colleges nationwide (chosen because their religious commitments are stronger than at mainline schools).  Largely for financial reasons these colleges accept significant numbers of older students who choose a school more often for pragmatic than for religious reasons.  A key question in the study was whether introducing market forces necessarily leads to secularization or whether these forces have revitalized institutional mission.  Though adult ed. is certainly not seen as the vanguard in the academic world, adults are the fastest growing segment of the college market.  They usually have their funding provided by government or industry, and they demand very little from a school's infrastructure.
 Constraints for expressing religious purpose in adult ed. programs are primarily financial.  Many church-related colleges economize on adult programs by hiring adjuncts.  This raises obvious problems.  Adjuncts cannot represent the school's mission as well as full-time faculty.  Using adjuncts reinforces a structural division between adult & traditional students.  Moreover, satellite programs for adults are often taught off campus.  Another finiancial constraint arises from marketing strategies.  Some schools use secular media to advertise.  (A small evangelical college reported it did very well by advertising on David Letterman!)  When advertising on secular media schools tend to downplay religious affiliation.  A different constraint pertains to campus environment, which plays a very important role in socialization.  It makes possible mandatory chapel, participation in fellowship groups, Bible studies & Christian-oriented recreational activities.  Missing out on this environment entails a significant loss of identity-forming experiences.
 Preliminary findings suggest that adult ed. programs are helping many colleges to thrive.  Moreover, the schools examined believe their religious identity can withstand the pressure of a new clientele & accompanying market forces.  Most said they did not fear secularization as a result of such programs, nor did they think an increase in adult students would adversely affect their religious mission.  Winston found the term "diffusion" a more apt description of the change in religious mission at church-related schools than "secularization".  She suggested that adult ed. programs force recognition of a shift from Christendom to Christianity (a distinction made at our last meeting).  Such programs have provided ways to think about being Christian in a pluralist society.  They also help us reflect on the purposes of education.

Discussion

 Jean Elshtain opened the discussion with two questions, one for Cherry & one for Hughes.  She questioned Cherry about his description of the spiritual quest of undergraduates, particularly his comments about students not wanting to abandon tradition so much as to have their own version of it.  She remarked that making one's own tradition or religion is quite different than making one's tradition one's own.  How could Cherry discern spiritual vacuity by contrast to the rather optimistic reading of the phenomena that he offered?
 Cherry explained that it was neither making the tradition one's own nor is it necessarily a departure from tradition.  He prefers to view the situation as a "restructuring of tradition".  E.g., at the African-American college they studied Cherry interviewed the student body president, who was also president of the Christian fellowship & a pre-ministerial student.  He said he would not describe his university as "religious" but as a very "spiritual" campus.  He was not referring to an abandonment of his Baptist heritage but rather the restructuring of that heritage in such a way that addresses what he considers the spiritual needs of the generation.  He is not merely reappropriating the tradition as if it were something fixed but selecting out of it what he thinks is most important.
 Elshtain remarked that the focus remains the self, "me".  Cherry admitted this, but he thinks a dialectic between community & self is also there.  The student in his example is a committed churchman who is not retreating into a privatized self alone.  There is certainly a correlation between his own selfhood & the community he wants to transform.

 Hughes, Elshtain commented, seemed to equate the life of the mind with critical & pluralistic thinking and to suggest that where dogma appears critical thinking disappears.  The implication is that dogma is the death of critical inquiry.  She asked for further comment.  Hughes responded that it is difficult to define precisely what the life of the mind is, but he associates it with a rigorous, open-ended search or quest.  Critical thinking involves the ability to look at one set of presuppositions from the point of view of another, to recognize & juxtapose sets of presuppositions, to get outside oneself & assess oneself from another point of view.  He thinks each of the traditions he discussed can sustain critical thinking in various ways.

 David Hollinger appreciated Hughes' clarification of distinctions, but he noted that in each of the 4 traditions Hughes had implicitly described a severe internal tension.  On the one hand, each tradition shows responsiveness to the life of the mind & has indigenous resources for participating in that life.  On the other hand, each tradition has the capacity for absolutism, dogmatism & a variety of other countervailing forces.  In light of this tension, Hollinger posed 2 questions of Hughes:
 1) Could he say something about the inventory of strategies he believes are available from within these traditions for strengthening the life of the mind side of this tension & weakening those tendencies that lead in the other direction?  (Hollinger also wondered where ecumenical initiatives might lie.)
 2) If one considers these faith traditions autonomously rather than in explicit & prescribed relation to higher education, and if one looks at higher education as one of a number of instruments for the achievement of their goals in the world, is it possible that higher education comes very far down on the list of priorities?  E.g., is it possible that "the Mennonite subject" (to use postructuralist language) might more commandingly fulfill a practice of radical discipleship by eschewing higher education altogether?
 To Hollinger's first question Hughes responded that the strategies are implicit in each of the traditions & involve the simple recognition that there is a transcendent dimension, that we are finite human beings.  If taken seriously, this means we're on a quest.  It is very difficult to dogmatize & absolutize because we're open to new perspectives & angles.  Hollinger thought Hughes was saying that resolving internal tensions (between resources for the life of the mind and potential for dogmatism & absolutism) is a matter of a "fundamental theological conviction".  Hollinger was looking for something more programmatic for colleagues who had to deal with this on a daily basis.  He admitted this may require another book(!), but the question seemed to arise naturally out of the way Hughes structured the book & presentation.
 Regarding Hollinger's second question Hughes said there is in fact a lot of anti intellectualism in Mennonite churches.  Goshen is quite distinctive.  However, if Mennonites have a fundamental commitment to radical discipleship, then if they do get involved in higher education as they have, it only makes sense that they try to play it out in their academic institutions.  Nick Wolterstorff wondered whether almost all Mennonites might resonate with what Hollinger had said.  Even at Goshen there seems to be a certain hesitation about the project of higher education.  It's certainly not their highest commitment.

 Reflecting on a remark of Steve Haynes, Bernstein wondered whether the whole mindset of young faculty today, even those teaching at church-related schools, is simply not one of theological models & mission statements.  Haynes agreed.  He had interviewed faculty who taught at Rhodes in the '50s and found they had a very different vision.  They were committed to the idea of a church-related college, to character formation of students; they were loyal to a church.  They even brought religious convictions to bear on social issues.  This is a different breed of faculty than those with whom he identifies today.  There has been a major sea-change in the way faculty understand themselves.
 If Cherry is right about religious revival on campuses & if faculty are disconnected from it, Jim Turner asked, what does this suggest about the future?  Haynes said that some junior faculty can identify with students on that level, but most feel it's simply inappropriate to talk to students about anything personal, especially religious beliefs.  He suspects this is a result of graduate student socialization.  He also thinks it's a potential problem if students want this kind of formation & we're not prepared to be involved.
 Wolterstorff observed that there was also apparently no institutional loyalty on the part of younger faculty.  Why were they at Rhodes?  Haynes replied, "because that's where the job offer came from."  Though Rhodes was a good fit for him personally, it was purely coincidental.  He needed a full-time job with benefits and was willing to move anywhere.  Haynes commented further on the realities of the academic job market.  Junior faculty are often on a series of 1-year contracts.  They don't feel loyalty from institutions.  They must do what it takes to survive & raise a family.  Administrations generally devise hiring policies around the job market.  At Rhodes they found they could basically stop offering tenure-track positions and still hire excellent people.  As long as it's possible to do that schools will pare back on what they offer.  This does not create loyalty among faculty.

 Discussion returned to some of Hollinger's concerns.  After commending Hughes' presentation, Mark Noll suggested that his models have not been good for promoting the life of the mind in Christian higher education.  Christian faculty seem to be more effective in non-religious environments.  As examples Noll referred to Pelikan leaving Valparaiso and Wolterstorff, Marsden, Mouw & Plantinga leaving Calvin.  Outside church-related institutions they have flourished & even expanded Christian emphases in the context of true give & take.  The models seem to work very well intellectually, particularly where there's true intellectual give & take, but not institutionally.
 Hughes agreed that historically the models have not worked institutionally, but he's not sure that they can't work.  Most church-related institutions need to come to terms with what their heritage really is and try to play it out.  In many cases, the models haven't really been embraced.

 Eleonore Stump was concerned by the report of a spiritual awakening on the part of undergraduates that is apparently disconnected from faculty.  Cherry noted that in his study they did not focus on faculty attitudes or religious convictions.  Stump also wondered whether many adjuncts were being hired to teach lower level or introductory courses & what this might mean for a school's mission.  She thought that at church-related schools as well as large state institutions there is a much heavier reliance on adjuncts.
 Haynes offered a more positive perspective on the situation of church-related colleges with some remarks on the Rhodes consultation. He was pleasantly surprised by the large number of people who applied--junior faculty at church-related schools who were actually interested in having this conversation.  If these people feel institutionally supported and if a network develops where they can build alliances, then faculty characteristics might change.  He also noted that though these faculty are interested in church-relatedness, their loyalty to their particular institution is not prodigious.

 Nancy Ammerman questioned the relationship between the theological models Hughes described & what actually happens at the schools he examined.  In his book she found a variety of factors shaping decisions at these colleges--pressures of the academic profession, government regulations, models of nearby colleges--but little evidence that the colleges were being shaped practically by the theological models.  The Mennonites seemed to provide the only case in which activities of the college were different for being Mennonite.  She asked whether he could say more about why the models make very little difference.  Hughes did not agree completely citing Calvin, Wheaton & Pepperdine as counter-examples.  However, he is not sure why at some schools the models exercise much less influence.  Ammerman suggested that the ability of any institution of higher ed. to carry out a coherent ideological program is dependent on a coherent community that cares about perpetuating itself.
 Jim Turner asked whether there was any systematic attention given to the character of the student body, specifically the proportion of students coming from the sponsoring denomination.  Hughes answered affirmatively.  Ammerman remarked that one of the reasons Goshen is so strong is precisely because of its denominational homogeneity--on the part of both students & faculty.  Hughes agreed adding that when you have a particularistic environment the challenge is how to avoid absolutism.  Ammerman noted that at Goshen breaking through the particularity came through structural means in the curriculum- making people go overseas & so forth, not just ideological reinforcement.

 Jim Heft made 3 observations.  He noted many examples that seemed to support Noll's comment about the apparent need to leave a Christian academy in order to flourish intellectually.  However, he wonders how many others have left the Christian academy & left their Christian roots at the same time.  Second, Heft was struck by how many schools described in Hughes' book were on the brink of bankruptcy at different times.  If you want to nurture a strong intellectual life you need to have some money!  Otherwise faculty will spend most of their time teaching, running activities, etc.  There are very few Christian institutions at this point that have both the vision & the money to do this, and this is one of the main reasons why the models haven't worked.  Also, Heft wanted to see more thoughtful explication of the intellectual life itself as a formation.  Finally, he commented on Hollinger's question about how to develop strategies to prevent dogmatism.  If theologically you say that a key source is reason, however understood, you've already brought in an agenda.  You need to take seriously non-believers & others.  Ultimately it will take a lot of patience.  He emphasized the need to deal with the continuing issue of the relationship between the church & academic freedom.

 Mark Schwehn noted that the older generation Christian scholars tend to have their feet in both kinds of institutions.  E.g., they serve as chair of the board of a Christian college or return to the Christian college as president or in some other capacity.  In different stages of their lives they tend to commit themselves to one or another of the different roles of a Christian scholar.  Some of this has to do with different intellectual styles.  Schwehn didn't agree completely that the paradigms don't work institutionally.

 Monika Hellwig thought there were some extremely "slippery terms" being used- especially religion & spirituality, dogmatism & absolutism.  Different voices are using those terms in different ways.  She offered 3 pieces of wisdom from different traditions that all raise the question, what is the tradition that builds up rather than holding back?  Again she noted that what we're calling dogma, dogmatism, absolutism, etc. needs a much more careful & sophisticated analysis.
 Connected with Hellwig's concerns, Denis Donoghue said that he had started to notice a discrepancy in the very terminologies we're using.  On the one hand we're using words like "heritage" and "tradition" that seem to imply a considerable sense of responsibility, a sense of historical memory as well as a sense of divinity.  On the other hand, we seem equally determined somehow to remove either the theological or historical weightedness of these terms in the zeal with which we're devising weightless equivalents.  The most extreme example of this was the one just mentioned, namely the use of "spirituality" rather than "religion".  It seemed to Donoghue that we were allowing the axiomatics with regard to our conversation to proceed much too glibly.  He has something of the same feeling when he reads Richard Rorty on the topic of the conversation.  Eventually Rorty seems to be indicating that it doesn't really matter what anybody says so long as the conversation persists.  That seems to him a notion at once both highly attractive but also rather sinister.
 Hughes responded to these concerns.  He thought Monika was saying that dogma can be very important as a framework within which the conversation can take place.  Hughes explained that his concern is not to abolish dogma but to affirm dogma in such a way that the dogma does not simply become an end in itself.  It should point us beyond itself to other realities & other ways of thinking.  Dogma as a framework is there to work in & through, but it never should become so limiting & defining that we can't work through it.
 Though this made sense to Donoghue, it didn't particularly appease him.  He found the representation of dogma simply as a framework to be misleading.  He was also a little disturbed when he thought of the motives & values that are circumvented by the very vocabulary one is now using.  E.g., what happened to motives such as obedience & submission; to T.S. Eliot's notion "humility is endless"?  It seemed we were much too easily going along with the "rhetoric of weightlessness" & simply trying to find congenial, plausible reasons for doing so.  He's not sure this is what we should be doing.

 Richard Mouw commented on the Mennonite situation in order to highlight some larger issues.  Mennonites have 2 very strong areas of scholarship--history of the Anabaptist tradition & peace studies.  Increasingly they have to work at remembering who they are & at reinforcing an ethic that is in many ways counter-cultural.  Memories of what it means to be Mennonite & commitment to non-violence don't come automatically these days.  Regarding Hollinger's query about why they don't simply abandon academic institutions & become radical disciples, he noted that radical discipleship in the Mennonite community desperately needs the undergirding of a group of scholars who are retrieving the historical narrative & finding social scientific bases for the peace ethic.  In many ways Mennonite schools are keeping their tradition alive in a way that schools of other traditions don't.  All these traditions need a community of scholars who define, talk about & tell the stories of their tradition.  But where one goes to find out what it means to be Presbyterian?  With the decline of catechesis in the churches & with college faculty who don't really care about the Presbyterian tradition, you probably go to seminary.  So, Mouw emphasized both the community-preserving character of church-related colleges & the need for seminaries where this community-preserving character has been lost.

 Mike Beaty described a u-shaped phenomenon among faculty at Baylor.  A survey taken in 1994 indicated that faculty who'd been at the institution 25 years or longer or very recent faculty were highly committed to religious ideals.  In the view of the provost, who came to Baylor in 1989, this is due to his own role in the interview process for new faculty.  He is the last gate in the screening process for hiring.  He questions candidates about faith & learning & how they view themselves in light of this emphasis at Baylor.  Another view is that individuals responding to the survey who were tenure-track (i.e. who'd been there 2-5 yrs.) had reason to answer the survey in a way they thought the institution would want.
 Stump asked how much influence the provost had, and Beaty explained that he makes a recommendation to the president about whether or not the candidate should be hired.  Often people are turned down even in opposition to the department.  Hollinger asked whether there is then a religious test for hiring at Baylor.  Beaty affirmed that if this type of questioning constitutes a religious test, then there is one.

 Frank Turner spoke about the socialization of graduate students.  He commented that there is no consideration of religion or formation in the training of grad. students.  Most people go or send their kids to school to achieve social mobility.  Also, for some time in graduate training there has been a retreat from the historical sense.  There is a great need for courses in Reformation history, intellectual history, etc., so that people know their traditions.  E.g., grad students may know about just how many peasants were involved in a particular uprising but nothing about the theology of Luther.

 Alan Wolfe questioned to what degree the tensions posed applied to non religiously oriented institutions as well.  He wondered whether it was not a question of any mission-oriented institution.
 

SESSION II - Saturday Afternoon

 The session was devoted to the topic of "formation" reflecting concerns expressed during our meeting in Florida.  Representatives of 3 campus ministries were invited to address the topic from the perspectives of their ministries.  (Rabbi Summit presented Sunday morning.)  The first two presentations were followed by a brief response & general discussion.
 

Presentation #1 - Rev. Daniel Jenky, CSC, Rector Sacred Heart Basilica, University of Notre Dame
 Father Jenky first described the residential system at the very heart of Notre Dame's student life.  The 27 undergraduate dorms & 2 graduate housing complexes all have their own chapels, daily & Sunday masses, prayer groups, music groups, service groups & a full array of pastoral services.  There is an abundance of priests & religious sisters & brothers in residence serving as rectors in addition to undergraduate RAs who have a pastoral role.  If you want to talk about God, a personal problem, which theology course to take, a moral issue or even about the death of Princess Diana, there is somebody just down the hall who understands their professional role as being primarily pastoral.  The residential system is also not "value-neutral".  Part of the mission of the university is to proclaim faith in Christ, strengthen gospel values & promote active participation in the Roman Catholic church to which about 87% of undergraduates belong.  Despite these emphases, the atmosphere at Notre Dame as one of free inquiry.  Faith is not imposed.  There is no mandatory attendance at chapel or loyalty oaths, but faith is also clearly not marginalized.  The university expends an enormous amount of its time & money to promote Christian programs & facilities and to have personnel available.
 Campus ministry & the Center for Social Concerns try to do what staff in the dorms cannot do.  The Center for Social Concerns promotes social action & social service.  It has an educational component in which people prepare for volunteer service or reflect after a year of service or a short-term "urban plunge".  It also sponsors big brother & sister programs, tutoring & service projects.  Around 2000 ND students participate in their programs each year.  The Center works closely with campus ministry to promote a spiritual dimension to service.  The 20 lay & religious professionals who comprise the staff of "campus ministry" help in the training of hall rectors, assistants & RAs in their pastoral role.  They try to minister to the ministers offering days of recollection & opportunities for prayer & reflection for dorm staff.  They have programs for Hispanic & African-American Catholics, and they make arrangements for Christians of other denominations & student groups of other faiths (e.g., 2 Muslim prayer groups meet on campus).  They offer educational programs; train student catechists who work with youth groups in neighboring parishes; organize Bible study groups; & provide chaplains for all the varsity athletic teams.  They also run a variety of retreats.  Most effective is probably the Notre Dame Encounter with Christ, a weekend retreat led by student teams that witness to their own faith & Christian life.  They try to build student leadership into all these programs.  In general campus ministry tries to keep faith & practice at the heart of student life at Notre Dame.
 Jenky also said a little about what isn't working.  He hadn't said much about faculty or general academic life at the university and felt that this is where they face one of their greatest problems.  Synthesizing what students learn in the classroom with their experiences on retreats is a weakness.  Students don't seem particularly well prepared to articulate a synthesis of learning & action, of faith & the mind.  This is due partly to the religious formation they got before they came to ND.  Jenky suggested that what goes on in the classroom should help fill in some of these gaps, especially at church-related schools like ND, Wheaton & Calvin.
 

Presentation #2 - Bob Fryling, Executive Director, InterVarsity Press & Sr. V.P. of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF or Inter-Varsity)
 An offshoot of similar work in the U.K, IVCF-USA began in 1941.  It moved into a milieu in which the academy had largely abandoned concern for the spiritual development of students.  At the same time theological conservatives & fundamentalists of various traditions were growing in distrust of the academy & feared for their children who went there.  According to Fryling IVCF's vision was to fill this void by providing a biblically based, theologically informed, intellectually viable, trans-denominational Christian formation for students attending secular colleges & universities.  Historically there has been a consistent emphasis on 3 themes:
 1. Jesus Christ is Lord of all of life.  In practice IVCF has tried to be holistic in its approach seeing formation not as an isolated goal but as an issue of life stewardship.  They've been concerned about the implications of faith for relationships, ethical & moral concerns, issues of social justice, personal integrity, racial reconciliation, economic stewardship, etc.
 2. Affirmation of the life of the mind.  (Fryling addressed this more fully since it was most relevant to the Seminar.)  This theme has grown out of an understanding of Christ's Lordship & the command to love God with all our heart, soul & mind.  It has set IVCF at odds at times with some of its more fundamentalist constituencies.  It has meant the attempt to take seriously the work of academic disciplines, the pursuit of truth, the intellectual life, the nature of culture, while at the same time seeing the academy as an arena where a biblical world view needs to be represented.  The goal is not so much to meld faith with learning as to see students' intellectual lives, as every other part of life, springing from & molded by the character of God.
 Approximately 12% of students involved in IVCF are grad. students--c. 3000 students in some 80 grad. groups nationwide.  There are grad. groups now at most major research universities, with up to 40 or 50 students at places like Berkeley, Stanford & Wisconsin.  Grad. students seem very eager to deal with issues of spiritual formation.  This is not just a pietistic withdrawal but a quest for understanding of how life, how their research makes a difference--externally as well as internally.  In response to some of these concerns IVCF will conduct a conference in early January, 1999 for grad. students & faculty.
 3. Commitment to the Bible as a source for spiritual formation.  Practically, there is great emphasis on getting students into the Scriptures, studying them inductively, finding truth and applying it to life.
 There are currently IVCF groups on some 750 colleges & universities with some 400 staff.  Emphasis on indigenous student leadership causes a certain unevenness across the country with regard to cultural engagement & theological perspectives.  Fryling saw ethnic diversity as a strength of IVCF but noted the challenge of dealing with complex issues arising from this diversity.
 Among cultural challenges facing IVCF he spoke of postmodern relativism as the default operational philosophy of most students.  There are neither truth standards nor moral standards; truth is whatever one makes it.  Consequently, we cannot take for granted the meaning of words like truth, commitment, sacrifice, morality & conviction.  Students are responding more from a shame-based than a guilt-based orientation.  They don't feel bad about what they do or don't do; they feel bad because of who they are.  They feel they don't fit & long for people to affirm & support them.  Students often feel abandoned by parents & institutions.  In such an environment the love & community of Christian students is often the most attractive force in IVCF groups.
 Finally, Fryling described spiritual formation in the secular university not so much as the challenge of pluralism but as the challenge of paucity.  Students are rarely exposed to any coherent practice of spiritual insight or nurture.  He believes a principled pluralism is entirely possible & necessary on campuses today.  This is different from mere tolerance.  The biblical call is not to tolerance or sensitivity but to love.  This involves listening, open & civil dialogue, taking people & their convictions very seriously, identifying & examining presuppositions.  In this context he referred to a 1-page document IVCF has developed for students outlining what it means to take seriously other positions of faith or unbelief while still being actively involved in witness to one's own faith.  (Copies available from our office.)
 

Response (Alan Wolfe)
 Wolfe began by explaining that he considered himself a lapsed Jew & an active non-believer, yet he was part of the seminar because he disliked the terms of debate that had been emerging.  He didn't like the Christian victimization angle on the one hand, but he also didn't like the complete dismissal of that point of view from the secular side because it seemed to be missing a lot about the price that we who live in a very secular culture pay.  At Key Largo he heard the word "formation" being used for the first time in a long time.  He began to think it may offer a possibility of recasting the discussion in a more fruitful way so that those who have similar concerns on both sides of the secular-religious divide could talk & listen to each other.
 Formation is generally used in conjunction with an adjective--character formation, intellectual formation, etc.  The discussion seems to be about how these different kinds of formation relate.  Wolfe preferred to pose the issue differently.  There are probably certain features common to all kinds of formation--whether spiritual, intellectual or athletic.  If we talk about what it means to be "formed" it might help us find bridges over some of the rivers dividing us.  Wolfe described 3 different ways of thinking about formation:
 1. Predetermined approach.  Some people see formation in terms of a gap or inequality between former & formee.  The person responsible for formation already knows what the end result of the process will be; the formee is either young or wrong or whatever & must be formed in keeping with a set process.  Certain kinds of religious orthodoxies fit into this category, but many non-religious ways of thinking proceed in exactly the same way.  Wolfe finds this notion of formation in identity politics.  Underlying this approach- whether secular or religious--is a very similar kind of predetermined notion of what it means to be a formed person.  The assumption is that the formers know what the end should be, how the "formed product" will look.
 2. Free-form approach.  Very much the opposite is a free-form conception of formation reflecting a kind of relativism we've heard about plaguing the college campus.  No one form of formation should be privileged over any other.  A certain formlessness is the goal because someone who is "polyform" will have more potential to choose & will therefore be a richer human being.  This process of formation is entirely open-ended.  We might associate it with certain kinds of once-popular psychological movements.  In some ways, however, it is actually very similar to the first kind of formation since it establishes formlessness as the ultimate form.  In this sense it also inheres a certain non-pluralistic notion because there is a preferred kind of outcome.
 3. Grounded formation.  Wolfe spoke highly of 2 papers Jim Heft sent him which seemed to elaborate a much better model for thinking about formation.  He called this "grounded formation", formation that starts somewhere--with a ground or in a tradition.  It affirms the necessity of a kind of grounding (similar to the first form of formation) but uses that grounding to expose someone to the possibility of a wider world.  It comes down to a question of confidence in what one believes.  If we're confident about our tradition, we should be willing to allow people to use that tradition, not to seal themselves hermetically in it but to be exposed to others in the expectation that our tradition is so strong that people will want to come back to it.  It clearly means taking a risk that some people won't take.
 If there's anything to this idea at all, Wolfe concluded, then it seems the real conflict is not a conflict between right & left or between the secular & the religious.  It's a conflict between the confident & the fearful.  This is true for secular ideologies as much as for some religious groups.
 

Discussion

 Stump thought the idea of grounding & confident exploration on that basis is an excellent model, but she described a practical difficulty.  The first course she TAed was a course for freshmen in philosophy of religion.  The instructor was an internationally know philosopher, a very smart man at the peak of his career.  He was also a militant atheist and had no qualms about proselytizing for atheism in the classroom.  Students coming in were philosophically inept & inconfident and were meeting a barrage of arguments designed to show them that their faith was stupid.  If we want to have students who have some sort of grounding from which they can explore, then there ought to be something to help give them the kind of acquaintance with their own heritage & confidence in dialogue that would enable them to be partners in the exchange.  But at that time at Cornell if you would have looked for something inside or outside the classroom in any of the campus ministries that would help students get the kind of grounding that would enable them to participate in such a dialogue, you would have looked in vain.  She suspects that now too you would look in vain.  So, while she affirmed Wolfe's model of "grounded formation", it needs some help on the practical level in order to make it work with regard to grounding.

 Doug Sloan said he has had some engagement with so-called New Age activity and commented on one reason why such involvement is very widespread.  It's in congregations as far as he can tell, it's certainly among students, and it's very effective.  He agrees with Cherry that it's a disservice to dismiss it as "fluffy" in every respect, though there is a lot of fluff.  Some of it is extremely sensitive & highly intellectual, but what he finds appealing to many people involved is that it has practices, paths of inner discipline, a formation that a person can work on in a concentrated way.  He's heard again & again from people of all religious backgrounds that this is what they did not find in their traditional religions, i.e. no inner paths or disciplines.  He wondered whether this is a right interpretation & why there is this large appeal.  He specifically asked how the campus ministry people view this faith in terms of their own work with the concept of formation.
 Fryling affirmed that there is a tremendous spiritual hunger.  Certainly popular magazines indicate this.  It may be a reaction to the void left by a pure rationalism or a lack of parental love or something else, but something has been lost & the spiritual seems to be the way of trying to find it.  The significant part of Sloan's question, he thought, is what one gives to appease that hunger.  Are there things that are junk food & things that are steak, or is anything satisfying?  In a sense, almost anything is initially satisfying, but in IVCF they are concerned with the question, what is the fundamental hunger that people have.  He would point to that yearning of heart, the vacuum of Pascal that only God can fill.  It's not an ethereal type of hunger but a real hunger for being reconnected with the Creator.
 Jenky agreed entirely with Fryling.  He added that for Christians this is a generation in which we've not always explained sufficiently the role of Christ or some of the specificity of what we accept as divine revelation.  He's been at meetings in an entirely Catholic context in which you might hear something like, "Well it really doesn't matter because in your next incarnation you can straighten that out."  Though he has tremendous respect for Hinduism, he gets very uncomfortable in a Catholic context when people do not understand what Christians believe about the uniqueness of Christ or the specificity of the gospel.  Some of the spiritual hunger is because we're not giving what people need in their parishes, in the classrooms & in prayer groups.  They're ready to fly all over the world for odd things because we're not filling that hunger with nourishing food.

 Hollinger posed 2 questions--one for Jenky & one for Fryling.  He was struck by Jenky's plea for consultation on the matter of how faculty at Notre Dame & comparable institutions might be encouraged to make more effective use of a freedom that he says they have.  Jenky thought that this could be a productive part of the formation process.  Hollinger asked him to elaborate on what kinds of testimony on the part of faculty he had in mind, specifically in relation to the various disciplinary contexts in which people teach.
 Jenky described a man who used to teach English composition at Notre Dame explaining that it's hard to put your finger on what made him a great teacher.  He taught generations of students how to write, how to express ideas carefully.  What does that have to do with faith?  Nothing explicitly, yet his class was imbued with the core values of the institution.  He influenced by the witness of his integrity, by his own faith as a man who was not a saint but a convinced Christian.  There are teachers like that today as well, Jenky added, and he'd like to see more of a critical mass of them.  He wondered how to invite people to bring their faith into the classroom.  Of course there are atheists on the faculty as well, but he felt that at a confessional school the academic project should be grounded in its core confession.

 Hollinger asked Fryling about the "culture" of Inter-Varsity, about the perimeters & principles of the Gemeinshaft into which people are welcomed.  Almost all communities worth their name are bounded in ways that exclude as well as include, Hollinger noted, and he wanted to hear about what those boundaries are & how they function in IVCF.  In particular he asked about same sex relationships & stances on abortion.
 Fryling explained to Hollinger that IVCF speaks of having a well-defined center & ill defined boundaries.  Because of their missiological orientation they don't want to exclude people, so they try to keep their center as focused & as limited as is biblically appropriate.  There are 2 fundamental commitments they ask of their administration, staff team & student leaders:  1) belief in the authority of the Bible for practice & for faith, & 2) allegiance to Jesus Christ as Lord & Savior.  This is the core, but they don't require that of all who come to their meetings.  In fact, in many chapters 30-40% of students who attend on a weekly basis are not Christians but are seekers interested in what these Christians are doing there.
 In response to Hollinger's question about their stance on sexual issues Fryling gave an example from Smith College.  A student leader of the group was a closet lesbian & decided she could not remain part of the leadership team & pursue her particular lifestyle.  The broader gay-lesbian-bi-sexual alliance demanded that IVCF be thrown off campus because they did not allow freedom of sexual orientation on their leadership team.  As it turned out, the group was allowed to remain on campus when it was shown that this was a voluntary action on the student's part & that the group's perspective was associated with a commitment of faith & a certain understanding of Scripture.  The result was increased curiosity about this formerly small, struggling group, & Bible studies started cropping up to study the whole issue of sexual orientation.
 Fryling's comments provoked some debate--particularly on the part of Hollinger & Bernstein--about whether or not historically the weight of the Christian tradition was against same-sex relationships as he had suggested, and whether such interpretations of Scripture & tradition belied a claim to openness & undermined ideals of pluralism.
 Elshtain spoke to these concerns pointing out that no one is compelled to belong to IVCF.  There are many other possibilities--denominational forms of worship & other student Christian groups that may not interpret the authority of Scripture in precisely the same way.  So pluralism is not threatened by the particular understanding of one group like IVCF.  By way of contrast she pointed out that it is not possible on most American college campuses to belong to a student feminist group if you don't believe in Roe v. Wade.  E.g., at Princeton a few years ago a "feminists for life" group wanted to get started, but it was not permitted student organization status because of protests from the already extant feminist group.  That seemed to Elshtain to be a direct threat to pluralism, i.e. to a plurality of understandings of what feminism requires or implies.  Fryling was not in any way saying now not only are not a member of Inter-Varsity but you're not even a Christian.  There are other ways for students to express their Christian belief.  IVCF's boundaries are defined in such a way that this dimension is central to their understanding while it is not central to others, & presumably they're quite prepared to enter into a dialogue with Christians who do not see some of these issues in precisely that way.

 Like Stump, Elshtain appreciated Wolfe's idea of grounded formation but described a problem.  Grounding itself requires a prior formation.  You claim the ground on which you stand only because there has been some formation that has led to your understanding of what the ground is.  So if many institutions of formation before students get to higher education are faltering--whether families, public schools, or other institutions of formation--we can no longer assume that students have any confidence in some prior formation when they come to us.  Probably all of us who have been in the academy for some time know faculty who see it as their task to shatter prior formation which they think was in the hands of inept amateurs--like parents, priests, pastors & rabbis--and to re-form students in some particular way.  If the grounding students have is like a "bowl of jelly", there are serious implications for Wolfe's idea.  It presumes or presupposes some sturdiness to formation that perhaps we can't presume or presuppose any longer.
 She also suggested that one way to evaluate contrasting processes of formation would be to ask whether internal to the traditions Hughes described there are already grounds for challenge & questioning.  These traditions are not monistic; possibility for debate is internal to the traditions themselves.  She contrasted them with certain traditions in the '60s in which there was no criticism internal to the ideology.  Given our concerns with inquiry & the life of the mind, perhaps we could ask whether a process of formation is complex enough to generate continually the kind of hermeneutical debates that Bernstein referred to or whether it is not.  Perhaps Wolfe's suggestion tacitly has some grounds for evaluating contrasting forms of formation.

 Referring to Stump's remarks, Wolfe commented that when he started teaching in the '60s he often had students who were deeply religious, but it's very different now.  His students believe nothing.  In fact, he wishes he were religious enough to give them something so he could then debunk it!  He craves religious students who at least believe in something.
 Regarding internal dialogues within the Christian traditions to which Elshtain had just alluded, what struck Wolfe about Hughes' book was how many of the models failed.  All the resources described seemed very persuasive, but there were all kinds of problems in practice.  The sociologist in him looks more at the failure in practice rather than what's available in the theology.

 Barbara DeConcini was disturbed by some of the discomfort expressed about students' search for spiritual meaning.  In the Roman Catholic tradition spirituality is highly valued; it's even part of theological training.  It unnerves her if we suggest that students who are interested in "spirituality" more than "religion" have somehow had ineffective parents or have been harmed by some other sociological factor.  Why isn't Augustine still relevant, i.e. the notion that "our hearts are restless..."?  Isn't a search for meaning something we would expect to find in young people of this age?  DeConcini has found it important in her teaching to help students see that there are resources within the Christian traditions.  E.g., there is a tremendous resource in Roman Catholic religious women throughout history of which students, whether Catholic or not, are totally ignorant.  Formation has to start where people are.  It's good that IVCF is there for those who are ready to join such groups, she affirmed, but for others who are seeking we're short-changing our traditions if we don't find ways to deal with them as seekers without saying we have all the answers.  DeConcini also agreed with Elshtain that "grounded formation" is no longer possible.  Finally, she is increasingly uncomfortable with the denominationalism of religion.  Those of us who care about formation need to think of what it means to be religious in ways that are not strictly RC, evangelical, or Presbyterian, i.e., in a broader context.

 Heft spoke of a gap that has long bothered him between the ethos of campus ministry people & the academics.  He thought Jenky captured it, perhaps unwittingly, when he commented to the effect, "If only faculty would share their faith."  Most of the faculty Heft knows, some very well-disposed to the issue of formation, would scratch their heads at this -particularly those who are not in the humanities disciplines.  Second, most faculty wouldn't be aware of the ways in which their disciplines circumscribe some questions that would be very legitimate for them to pursue.  They've not been trained to look at these issues or their guild will not support this kind of research.  Third, a number of faculty committed to the Lutheran or Calvinist or whatever other vision stay so "churchy" in the kinds of questions they identify as really intellectual that they don't address the larger issues of society & hence fail to enter into a very helpful conversation.  Finally, he suggested that a real dialogue needs to take place between campus ministry people & faculty.  For all the good it does, Heft remarked, IVCF is really an outsider.  He noted efforts to step up this dimension through their publications in recent years & thought involvement with grad. students might be advantageous, especially if these students get positions at universities.  But he senses an unfortunate gap that comes from not taking time to sit down honestly & listen to each other.  A substantive dialogue with faculty is not taking place.  As a result, the real possibility of formation is lost to some extent to both camps.
 Discussion about faculty witnessing to their faith in the classroom suggested to Oakley the hunger students have for the manifestation in the lives of their teachers & their teaching of a type of moral & intellectual commitment that frequently doesn't come through.  After years of listening & observing colleagues it's difficult for him to analyze what it is those teachers do who convey this to students in their deportment & in their teaching.  Though he believes it is profoundly important, he would find it very hard to describe what it is to witness to our faith in religious institutions or to witness to the whole moral dimension of the intellectual quest.  Nevertheless, Oakley concluded, it might be a central issue in many of our institutions because we surely damage students when we fail to manifest this in some manner in the way we approach our work.

 Cherry & Fryling discussed what happens to students after graduation when they leave a campus Christian group for the institutional church.  Fryling explained that involvement in campus fellowships sometimes sets up expectations which students can't translate into the institutional church when they leave.  There are 2 problematic factors:  1) The university environment is somewhat artificial in terms of social relationships.  So IVCF needs to do a better job of helping students move into the real world where, e.g., you aren't living down the hall from someone in a Bible study group.  2) The church needs to respond to young people coming out of college with spiritual vitality & energy who are being squashed or are unable to participate as they'd like.  Cherry agreed that the institutional church may not be responding to the spiritual needs of students in the same way that parachurch groups are.  Fryling noted that students don't respond to any institution per se; they respond to relationships & evidence of spiritual vitality.  They tend to gravitate to environments where they find this.

 Bernstein turned back to Wolfe's presentation.  He too finds standard debates on the secular & the religious to be terribly unsatisfying.  They tend to be knee-jerk reactions on both sides.  We need to find another discourse.  However, he's not convinced that discourse about "formation" is very helpful.  First, formation is really an English translation of Bildung, and that concept has been around for a long time--in Aquinas in terms of habitus & perhaps even in Aristotle.  John Dewey also thought that there has to be a kind of "grounded formation".  In short, the notion is not a new invention or a way out.  Second, Wolfe had spoken of a variety of formations, and Bernstein expressed uneasiness in this regard.  Even if one accepts the integrity of the religious experience, the portrayal of students lacking something in their lives seems to suggest that one is not living a fully rich, spiritual life with depth & moral integrity unless in some sense one is religious.  He's not advocating atheism, but he wanted to introduce a note of skepticism.  Finally, he's not convinced that something radically new has happened among students in recent years.  He has heard this kind of discourse from the time he was at Yale in the '50s & Bill Buckley published God and Man at Yale.  He's skeptical that there was a good old time when there was a richness & religious integrity to students that has now passed away.  This lament has been sounding in American colleges for a long time.  Yet curiously, these seemingly empty, seeking students are going to grow up to be the mainstay of the churches!

 Frank Turner emphasized that there are going to be many different formations.  Various sincere religious groups have profoundly different views--on theological issues & certainly on social & sexual issues.  So if certain institutions decide to go into formation, there will be conflict.  We'll also see a dehomogenization in higher education (though he thinks this will happen anyway because of budgetary factors).  The situation will look more like the '40s & '50s where different colleges & universities had profoundly different characters because they were forming people according to different religious & even regional traditions.  If we think character formation is desirable in higher ed., then we're going to have different kinds of people doing that formation.  There will be broad areas of agreement on issues like honesty, but then we'll reach boundaries where we don't agree.  Today these would be on issues of gender & sexual orientation; in 5 years it will be something else.  The question is, are we willing to watch this dehomogenization take place?  Turner thinks it will be much more interesting, but there will be winners & losers.  And, Elshtain added, it will be much more pluralistic.

 Steinfels posed 2 related questions to Jenky regarding mentoring.  He asked whether there is any aspect of campus ministry at ND that is directed in a serious way toward the faculty, especially with some kind of intellectual content or cognitive dimension to it?  Conversely, is there any significant faculty participation in the various student ministries?  Jenky replied "yes & yes" to Steinfels' 2 questions adding "but not as much as we should have."  There are groups of faculty in departments who get together to consider issues like how their faith influences their teaching, research or interaction with students.  There are also faculty active in social concern & campus ministry programs at almost every level.  But they tend to do it in an odd way, almost as members of a parish.  It isn't systemically built into their faculty role.
 Lowe said he does not consider it axiomatic that it's important for faculty to be able to share their faith.  He's not convinced that in every situation it is really a help.  He suggested that the grounds of knowledge & teaching are different in some very fundamental ways from the grounds that affect nurture, formation & faith.  We would do well to distinguish these things before we continue a broadscale lament about the way in which they're disconnected.  It's not so much that they're disconnected, but that they're different.  We talk about bringing faculty into this process of formation in ways that seem to him to be a bit too simple.  Our discussion doesn't seem to acknowledge the ways in which what is important to know may be different in different spheres of the whole educational process.

 Craig Dykstra connected what Noll had said earlier with Frank Turner's comments about possible greater heterogeneity in higher education.  Dykstra described the issue as one of particularity in relationship to pluralism.  In this light he wondered whether different kinds of institutions of higher education have different roles.  Some focus on formation into a particular way of life or religious subculture which sustains that way of life.  In order to do so they create a place where there are, e.g., over 50% Catholics, a strong religious ministry, etc.--as Notre Dame was described by Father Malloy (over lunch) & Dan Jenky.  (ND is a big institution of this type so there is more heterogeneity than at some smaller ones.)  Another approach is to create a context in which "substantive particularities" may be put into serious interplay, in which there is a contestation of particularities rather than a formation into a particularity.  Dykstra thought the reigning paradigm in higher ed. at least in the mid- to late 20th century has been the latter.
 He posed 2 questions in relation to all this.  1) Can one institution be expected to do both?  He thinks ND is a place where they're trying to do both, but he doubts that institutions are often very successful at doing both.  2) Is any institution really doing either?  Are there institutions of higher education which are doing formative work in a serious way?  Examples of this would be very interesting.  He thinks there are a few.  Also, is there any institution that is putting substantive particularities into a serious & respectful interplay that asks powerful questions of one another?
 Dykstra expects that in people's education & careers there is a time both to be part of a deeply formative institution & a time to be part of one that puts one particularity alongside others.  A plurality of institutions may be needed for people to be formed in the grounded way that has been described.

 Picking up on Dykstra's comments, Ammerman thought that one of the fundamental underlying questions of our conversation has been whether in fact we think it is a good thing for there to be distinctively particular institutions of higher education, formed in religious traditions.  A number of related questions arise concerning the relationship of a more particularistic institution to a series of other institutions that might prepare people for or receive people from them.  The 2 different kinds of institutions Dykstra just outlined look very different depending on what other array of institutions exist relative to them.  Where does the particularistic institution sit in a larger community context?  Ammerman also responded to Frank Turner's remarks about the inevitability of conflict in formations.  She suggested that as we consider our larger world & the way in which such institutions might fit in such a world, part of the task is to think about structures, strategies & practices that need to be put in place to enable particularist, distinctive institutions to engage in conflict, but to do so in a way that furthers rather than destroys the overall well-being of society.
 Winston also commented on particularism & formation noting that we think of formation basically in terms of the models Hughes outlined.  Formation does to some degree have a religious character to it, even when we don't realize it.  There is a particular problem for those who aren't at small or mid-sized church-related schools yet who do believe in a process of formation.  (Even if you don't like the word formation, she pointed out, something always goes on in the educational process that involves give & take, a change & maturing of students.)  What it is that we want to happen?  If we're not in a particular religious context perhaps we don't even have a name for it.  How can we think of this process in non-religious but meaningful terms that aren't particularisitic but speak to students?  At an institution like Princeton how you do formation with students without using religious language?  And even if you could form them, what would you want to form them into--again, if you're not thinking in particularistic terms.  If you don't want to make them good Presbyterians, just who or what do you want to make them & how do you do it?
 

SESSION III - Sunday Morning

Presentation #3 - Rabbi Jeffrey Summit, Director of the Hillel Foundation at Tufts University, Jewish chaplain on campus, & member of the music & Judaic studies departments
 Continuing our treatment of formation, Rabbi Summit discussed the contribution of Hillel.  He constantly hears students ask "religious" questions, though they're not always framed in that way.  (E.g., What's really important in life?  What's the right way to act in a given situation?  If I get married, what type of marriage do I want to have?  What do I want to teach my children?  How do I balance my to desire to enjoy the world & my desire to improve the world?)  He believes the university should provide students with structured opportunities to discuss such questions & integrate answers with the totality of their university experience.  He had 2 goals for this session: 1) to introduce current programmatic initiatives of Hillel to engage students with ethical issues; & 2) to immerse us briefly in the most common methodology used to address & study ethical issues on campus from a Jewish perspective.
 The major part of Summit's presentation was, as he described it, the recreation of a Bet Midrash, a classical Jewish house of study, with the members of the Seminar.  He explained that this is increasingly how ethical material is taught in Jewish settings on the college campus today, and it's difficult to get a sense of what's happening without experiencing it.  The methodology is not new, but it was once reserved for the Yeshiva (an all-male, orthodox Jewish learning environment).  Now it is used to introduce both Jewish & non-Jewish students to classical Jewish texts.  The choice of classical texts, Summit suggested, is a way to find a locus of authority in a post-modern world, but the texts being studied are also full of argument, discussion, debate, and minority as well as majority opinions.  Students are studying Talmud, the debates & discussions of the rabbis about how one comes to the right ethical decisions.
 He handed out a page from Maimonides' 12th-century Mishnah-Torah on the relationship between students & teachers, a section that relates to the importance of moral & ethical formation for students.  For some 15 minutes seminar members engaged in a process of reading aloud, interpreting & challenging explanations of this text with a study partner.  Summit then brought the group back together to discuss the methodology.  Comments from the group included the point that the process takes the student & his or her starting point very seriously; it lets the students talk & argue; it has many similarities to the approach of inductive Bible study groups in evangelical circles; it forces the teacher to question & expose himself or herself.
 Summit discussed other ways in which Hillel, a non-denominational, broad based organization, promotes ethical formation.  In particular he spoke of the Jacob Burns endowment, a million-dollar grant for the promotion of ethics on campus.  It has been used by hundreds of colleges & universities to sponsor programs that engage students & faculty with a wide variety of ethical issues.
 In closing Summit made several summary observations.  Hillel programs are very integrated with universities.  They often co-sponsor programs with other faith communities or organizations on campus.  As Hillel has become a more visible presence on campus programs have become more inclusive.  They don't want to be seen merely as a Jewish enclave but as a place for dialogue & debate between different religious, racial & ethnic groups on campus.  There is a lot of focus in the Jewish community on issues of pluralism & the necessity of dialogue.  Finally, Hillel has embraced the idea that Judaism has a lot to contribute to the university community as a whole from a long tradition, particularly in the areas of moral & ethical guidance.
 

Discussion

 Winston asked Summit for further comment on the role of Jewish faculty on campus.  She also wondered whether he'd observed the kind of seeking among students or signs of spiritual revival that had been discussed earlier in the meeting.  Summit responded affirmatively to this second question.  Students are asking questions that they would never say are religious but are in fact deeply spiritual.  Also, attendance at Hillel programs has tripled in the last 4 years.  This certainly has to do with new buildings, but the same thing is happening across the country.  Regarding faculty, Summit said they run the gamut from those who wouldn't be caught dead talking about their own religious life or moral issues to those who are very involved.  He thinks it's the role of the campus minister to make a place for dialogue & debate on campus.

 Wuthnow asked about Jewish-Christian relationships, especially regarding the hotter issues of inter-religious marriage & proselytization of Jews.  He also asked about Jewish students who might be at church-related colleges.  To the second question Summit replied that these students have less opportunity to explore Jewish tradition, fewer options in their religious & cultural life as a Jew.  Summit said that Hillel has sponsored many programs that deal with what happens in situations of inter-marriage, but inter-marriage has a lot to do with American society in general and not campus ministry in particular.  On the issue of proselytism he noted that Tufts united campus ministry has adopted a platform that basically prohibits active proselytism for members of this group.  Students may talk to others about their faith or what's really important to them, but they must not target a group for conversion.
 Haynes tried to relate Summit's presentation with Fryling's presentation on Saturday.  Though Hillel's goal is not proselytism, he asked whether there is a sense in which their objective is to give students who are perhaps ethnically Jewish or Jewish by descent a deeper sense of their Jewishness or a deeper commitment to Judaism or the Jewish community.  Yes, Summit said.  For example, in the '60s & '70s Hillel was strongly oriented toward social action for Soviet Jewry, and one of their main cries was, "Let my people go."  Now there is a much larger enemy--colossal ignorance among Jewish students--and the new cry is "Let my people know".  The goal is to educate people to their traditions & their culture & to create knowledgeable, engaged Jews.

 Hellwig commented on the wisdom in Summit's text.  For most of Western history we thought of advanced education as having very much to do with moral formation for leadership in society.  Since the Enlightenment we have tended to make the separation between technical competencies at whatever level & personal formation.  Hellwig thinks it's an extremely urgent question whether at least the religiously-affiliated colleges ought to begin to recapture the integration of these; to think about formation for citizenship in our pluralistic society, about what the religious traditions have to offer in the way of wisdom, and the role model that technical professors play.  Inasmuch as they introduce people to fields in which great success is offered them in society--fame, leadership potential, influence--it is not irrelevant what they model in relation to the society and in terms of personal lifestyle.
 Allan Boesak didn't think Western people could do that because they're caught in Western ways of thinking in which the split between education & religion has been so thorough.  He thinks there has to be a deep conversion experience in western thinking itself before we can ever hope to begin to come to a level where students see education as an education for citizenship--meaning that what I do & what I know & what I am is an essential part of what my whole society is going to be like.

 Lowe asked whether Hillel operates in different ways on campuses like Brandeis or Yeshiva.  He raised this question because of the differences & complexities that exist in a community that continues in a very substantial way to preserve a religious identity.  Summit said that at Brandeis there are 5 different religious groups & a wonderful religious life, but a very small percentage of the student body is involved.  Though it's 70% Jewish, most of the Jews are secular.  In many ways he thinks he gets more support from the school at Tufts than his colleague does at Brandeis.

 Elshtain raised an epistemological question.  During the study of the text Summit had defined truth as that which is real & useful & what emerges through a process of interpretation.  She wondered how that made the truth that emerges from Torah any different from John Dewey's pragmatism.  Summit said there is a broad range of interpretations that are going to lead you to the truth, and it is in fact very pragmatic.
 

Directions and Suggestions for the Future

 This session was devoted to ideas for implementation, though a number of other comments are included.

 Jim Turner began by reading a list of suggestions submitted by DeConcini since she had to leave the meeting early.  (It is available on the listserve.)  Bernstein said he had no practical suggestions but wanted to comment on the direction of the Seminar particularly in light of DeConcini's observations.  He noted that the Seminar is entitled the Lilly Seminar on Religion & Higher Education.  The original presentation of the Seminar suggested that we were going to deal with this issue in different contexts & at a variety of different types of institutions, but he has a very strong impression that for many participants there is another agenda.  That agenda is what to do about one particular constituency, namely the church related school.  He wondered whether that was the real agenda of the Seminar.  He asked for clarity because many people seemed to be assuming that that's the main issue.  But alongside that current there was another current conceiving the issue much more broadly.   J. Turner explained that at the last meeting one of the issues that arose was the place of church-related schools.  The concerns of these schools needed to be addressed at some point, and he & Wolterstorff chose this meeting because the agenda for the next two years would focus on intellectual issues of teaching & research.

 As someone very much involved in administration & practical questions in higher education, Mouw recommended looking at how you organize a campus.  Organizational & administrative cultures are to some degree shaped by religious perspectives.  He referred to styles of leadership & patterns of administration that caused Fresno Pacific to do away with professorial rank.  This would be preposterous for some schools.  Mouw thought it would be interesting to look at Hughes' models with a focus on the question of how you organize a campus.  What do you want to do to students?  He suspected there would be preservationist themes, protectionist themes, sacramental realities, etc.  Regarding the public university the question would be how you think religiously or theologically about how a pluralistic campus ought to be run.

 Wolfe was disturbed by the point on DeConcini's memo about too much critique & too little empathy.  From his perspective the issue is not critique versus empathy; the issue is how you critique or how you're empathetic.  The best critique is always empathetic.  If we pose the issue in terms of such a dichotomy we're going to drive in a wedge, and he warned against this way of creating polarities.  This brought him to the issue of pluralism, which for Wolfe always comes down to one question: What am I prepared to give up?  It is not necessarily a question of giving up from one's faith.  But what am I prepared to give up to be in an institutional environment--whether it be a university or a country--with other people who think differently?  As a secular person, what am I willing to give up from a secular point of view to explore & have available for my students the richness of religious traditions?  As a practical exercise he suggested asking many different people to reflect at some meeting on this question: what am I prepared to jettison?

 Lowe finds the student-teacher exchange model limiting for trying to get a grip on the process of teaching value formation.  Since there are other people involved in that exchange he suggested we look at some of these non-academic mentors beyond the chaplains.  He also noted that especially in heterogeneous institutions the role of "process" is essential.  The ways in which institutions work merit some consideration since this bears directly on questions we're considering in the seminar.
 Picking up on Lowe's comments, Schwehn suggested we think about getting student affairs people involved in seminars on virtue ethics or formation.  This would give them another framework to think about organizing dorm life, the things they want to encourage, activities they want to promote.  People can mean wholly different things when they speak about formation.  Part of the way to break down some institutional walls is to have student affairs people in semester-long seminars with students on relevant issues of formation.

 Schwehn also posed the hypothesis that Hillel is better at engaging the central activities of the academy--argument, reading, discussion of books & ideas--than some Christian campus ministries.  Their approach seems to fit better with the academic context.  He would be interested in teasing out this hypothesis with the practical aim of trying to get more faculty seriously engaged.

 Bob Sullivan offered several brief observations.  Among them was the comment, related to Hughes' presentation, that there are many qualities that religious & serious secularly-minded people have in common, e.g. the ideal of civility.  This relates to an even more basic ideal, that of piety in the classical sense, i.e. reverence for the sources of one's being.  Sullivan suggested that these commonalities might be worth examining.

 Donoghue commented on the emphasis in the presentations on mentoring, value formation & ministry.  He has never seen himself or his career as having any specific relation to those activities, and he doesn't imagine his career will change much at this point.  He does not regard himself as teaching students.  He teaches the subject, and the subject is literature.  So he doesn't address students explicitly about his own values or about the relation between values.  If he teaches a class on George Eliot's Middlemarch, he explained, he wouldn't be so foolish to imply that that activity is totally value-free or remote from any question of values.  But he would feel ashamed of himself if his teaching of the novel involved any spirit of opportunism or of moral & ethical rhetoric.  He doesn't say anything in his classes that does not arise rather directly from the literature he's teaching, & he would feel perturbed if he found himself engaging in mentoring, formation or ministry with any degree of explicitness.  He wondered what he was doing in the Seminar & what anyone had in mind by inviting him to join it since he doesn't claim any degree of explicit relation to its major themes & preoccupations.
 J. Turner responded that Donoghue & all other seminar members were asked to be here because he & Wolterstorff never conceived the group as homogeneous in outlook.  They did not want a group of people who would pursue some single agenda.  They wanted to put together a wide range of voices & points of view, to include people who would question radically the assumptions that, for example, underlie a lot of church-related higher education.  So, everyone is here to speak from his or her own point of view, not from some agenda.
 Donoghue said that when Wolfe was talking about formation his only contribution would have been to say that there are many different forms of form--spatial, architectural, temporal, quasi-musical, etc.--and perhaps we should enliven the very term "formation" by considering the multiplicity of forms & what bearing it might have on the very notion of formation.  However, he didn't say anything because it didn't seem to be in the flow of things.  Turner stressed that we want people to break the flow & not let us fall into answers that are too easy.
 Winston interjected that part of what she was trying to question at the end of the last session was the form of formation & how we can think about formation in new forms.  She thought that part of the problem is that we're such a large group and suggested smaller discussion groups at some point.

 J. Turner asked for feedback on procedural issues, specifically the idea of breaking down into smaller groups for at least part of the sessions.  The problem, of course, is how do those two or three conversations come to be related to each other.  He asked for suggestions from the seminar members.
 Heft offered a few concrete suggestions:  1) clarifying terms as much as we possibly can; 2) inviting people to do specific brief papers on issues of importance; & 3) some dynamic of smaller & larger groups.  If we go into smaller groups, we should have something clear & concise to discuss.  (E.g., it would be helpful if we could have as much clarification as possible about unhelpful ways to think about religion, spirituality, dogma, etc.  These terms could easily be red flags & be misunderstood in many ways.)  Finally, as interesting as the presentations have been, Heft suggested less time on papers or having them written up beforehand so we'd have more time for discussion.  He thinks there's more conflict potential in the group than has yet been realized, & it might be more fruitful if that conflict could get on the floor.
 Several seminar members argued the pros & cons of breaking into smaller groups.  J. Turner took a quick poll which indicated greater preference for smaller groups for at least part of the time during future meetings.  There was also agreement on the need for highly focused questions for the small groups & a strict, efficient format for reporting to the larger group.  Frank Turner suggested working lunches, and this idea met with general support.
 Ammerman wanted to break the tyranny of the list since it was breaking the flow of the discussion.  She suggested asking whether anyone wanted to speak directly to a particular comment or topic under discussion before moving on to the next name on the list.

 J. Turner immediately implemented Ammerman's suggestion by asking Boesak to address Hellwig's earlier comments since several people expressed interest in a fuller response.  Boesak simply didn't see the possibility of education for citizenship happening in North America.  He explained that for Africans it is obvious that the whole of the community is diminished if one is not fully part of it.  Education has to do not just with upward mobility, finding one's niche, but in helping the village to become complete.  This seminar is about higher education in North America.  If we introduce a discussion of the magnitude that Monika raised, Boesak thought it would take us on a great tangent.  To do justice to such a topic we would almost need a separate conversation with people from other parts of the globe who are also involved in higher education.  Moreover, he thought the broader discussion would overload our agenda to such an extent that we would be incapacitated.  He sees it as his own role occasionally to remind us that there is a world outside where other people think differently.  Helliwg was left puzzled because she thought these issues were central to our agenda.

 Wolterstorff addressed Donoghue's concerns from his own experience.  When it comes to the graduate level he is very aware of the fact that he's dealing with fledgling scholars.  He's also aware of the fact that they're going to be mentored by him whether he likes it or not.  He is going to model certain things, and at times he's going to intervene because he thinks they're demonstrating bad practices or bad attitudes.  So he won't just talk about the philosophical material but also about how they should get engaged with it.  E.g., at one point in a seminar he couldn't refrain from a 5-minute outburst correcting wrong attitudes that had crept in about how one does philosophy.  On this occasion he emphasized the need for both agony & ecstasy in the task; otherwise one is doing it wrong.  This was a case of very specific mentoring.  Probably we all have colleagues who try to avoid such things, but Wolterstorff emphasized the reality that grad. students are setting out on a career that might be calamitous or that might be beneficial for them & others.
 Donoghue was uncomfortable with the degree of explicitness that seemed to arise in our discussions.  Most of what he does is done through the mediation of comment on works of literature.  This constitutes a kind of scruple for him.  Of course he advises students about where to apply to schools, but as far as any explicit engagement in formation, mentoring or ministry is concerned, it is a very distant vocabulary for him.  He doesn't think anyone in his classes would know he is a Roman Catholic from the way he talks about Jane Austen or T.S. Eliot, and he wouldn't wish them to know anything about his personal life- domestic, private or confessional--from the way he talks about these texts.  Moreover, he would have found it oppressive as a student if a teacher had foisted his or her confessional position on him.
 Wolterstorff asked whether students would absorb from him by explicit comments or implicit practices his attitude toward or evaluation of the life of learning & how one conducts it.  Donoghue admitted that he hoped they would.  If they absorb anything from his pedagogical procedure he hoped they would absorb an emphasis on paying attention, reading carefully, etc.

 Steinfels noted that there is going to be a variety of models of educating.  He has had teachers who were important models who more or less followed the course Donoghue has described, and others who were fairly explicit about their other career activities & commitments & who were not oppressive but in some ways very helpful.  We could probably benefit from seeing the variety of ways in which education can take place.  Perhaps this could be somehow included in upcoming meetings that focus on teaching.
 Stump felt very strongly about faculty involvement in formation.  There is a constant danger of oppression or of intellectual tyranny, but there is also a serious need for mentoring on the part of undergraduates & graduates. If faculty who have a religious commitment don't engage in mentoring, students will find mentoring somewhere else.  Students from Christian or Jewish perspectives often lack mentoring while others are finding it, e.g. in women's studies centers.  Finally, the very works we teach carry with them an opportunity for mentoring.  It's quite right to worry about the dangers of mentoring, but it is nevertheless a very important part of what we do.
 Bernstein agreed with Steinfels with regard to mentoring.  Even though Donoghue was saying what he doesn't want to do, in fact he described a very distinctive, important way of mentoring students.  Bernstein would like to see us get off the question of mentoring versus non-mentoring. We should rather talk about styles of mentoring because there are varieties of approaches.

 Cherry noted that the question of what goes on in the classroom--the teaching of religion & the role of religion in teaching--is both a descriptive & a normative question.  He suggested that we divide them.  He recommended a contribution from someone who has empirical information about what goes on in the classroom.  Failing that, we should have some discussion of models of teaching.  He thinks we presuppose too quickly that there is a broad ditch between what goes on in the classroom in the teaching of religion on the one hand & student interest in spirituality on the other.  By careful examination of models of what goes on in the classroom it's possible that that gap may be bridged.  The other issue is a normative examination of what should go on.  Cherry would like to see us move in that direction at the next meeting.
 Wuthnow reflected further on Cherry's distinction between normative & empirical.  He argued for bringing together or sponsoring more empirical research on religious formation on campus--primarily with regard to students, though faculty might be part of the mix.  He questioned the many assumptions he'd heard during the meeting about the nature of students' searching & spirituality.  He questioned them partly on normative grounds, but he'd like to have some empirical evidence with which to answer the normative questions.
 Oakley noted that with the exception of Winston's very interesting contribution, our focus has been entirely on residential institutions that now cater to no more than a fifth of our undergraduates nationally.  If Lilly wants to pursue the issue of formation, our focus should be on the other campuses, dealing with so-called non-traditional students.

 Frank Turner thought there were many more differences around the table than were coming out.  He recommended breaking up the topic & mentioned some specific issues, e.g. how academic institutions relate to religion in terms of things like selling land for religious buildings, the training of graduate students, religion & student life especially in light of the increase of students from active religious traditions.  Turner felt we need to sort out the problems so that the really different points of view could be put on the table.  In this group it will be civil, but it will at least be much more lively than constantly pulling back when we have substantive disagreements.

 One observation that followed from Hughes' presentation, Steinfels noted, was that faculty themselves do not know the traditions of their institutions for relating faith to learning.  He thinks there has to be an examination of the question of the legitimate role of the religious factor in terms of either scholarly interests or affiliation in the hiring process.  Everyone avoids this, and he thinks the issue has to be taken on--at least for the faith related institutions.

 Jeanne Knoerle encouraged seminar members to take a more active role with regard to ideas expressed during the meeting.  Some of them could be formed into very specific, fundable projects that may or may not be relevant to the specific focus of the Seminar.  A variety of practical suggestions had arisen, e.g. the need to look more closely at older students.  She noted that we hadn't talked at all about responsibilities of the administrative level of the university--presidents, provosts, trustees, etc.  Also, in the last 10 years since she's been at Lilly Knoerle has not gotten many good proposals related to campus ministry.  If Lilly doesn't get really good proposals, or at least phone calls or e-mail notes with ideas, then they assume there's not much good thinking going on about these issues.  Her plea was for people to take more personal responsibility for ideas that had arisen.
 

MAJOR RECURRING THEMES AND QUESTIONS
 

1. Secularization in the academy.  This issue was broached from various angles.  A variety of Christian views on the secular were described, and the widespread lament about secularization in the academy was challenged.  Several seminar members affirmed the need for more satisfactory discourse across the secular-religious divide.

2. The "spirituality" of students.  Though there seems to be little interest in religion per se or traditional expressions of religious belief, a number of people affirmed an increased interest in spirituality or spiritual questions among undergraduates.  Some described this in terms of religious revival on campuses.  Others were concerned about the apparent disconnection of faculty from the spiritual concerns & interests of students.

3. Religious beliefs of faculty.  Though this topic was never addressed directly, it arose several times in the form of questions or debate.  How do faculty view themselves and their role in relation to religion on campus?  Is it or is it not their place to share their religious beliefs with students?  What role should faculty play in mentoring students?  Do religious questions have a legitimate place in the hiring process for faculty?

4. Formation.  This theme arose in our first meeting, but new dimensions were addressed.  Is it possible to conceive of formation in non denominational, non-particularistic or even non-religious terms?  If so, what does this look like?  The notion of "grounded formation" was discussed as well as the role of different kinds of institutions in different kinds of formation.

5. Graduate students.  On the one hand, there is evidence of increased interest in issues of spiritual formation among graduate students.  On the other hand, their academic training includes no preparation for the task of formation.

6. Theological models of higher education.  How do particular theological traditions contribute to the task of higher education?  How should we understand the successes and failures of these traditions in sustaining the life of the mind?

7. Pluralism & particularism.  How does a pluralist environment affect the possibility of formation?  What is the role of particularist institutions in the wider scope of higher education, and how do they relate to other institutions?
 
 

       Respectfully submitted,
       Andrea Sterk
       November, 1997

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