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

The National Humanities Center,  Research Triangle Park, North Carolina
March 13-15, 1998

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Second Year Theme: Teaching of Religion and the Role of Religion in Teaching

Lilly Seminar Members in Attendance:
Nancy Ammerman (Hartford Seminary)
Michael Beaty (Baylor University)
Richard Bernstein (New School for Social Research)
Alan Boesak
Denis Donoghue (New York University)
Craig Dykstra (Lilly Endowment)
Jean Bethke Elshtain (The Divinity School, University of Chicago)
Philip Gleason (University of Notre Dame)
Nathan Hatch (University of Notre Dame)
Stephen Haynes (Rhodes College)
James L. Heft (University of Dayton)
Monika Hellwig (Association of Catholic Colleges & Universities)
David Hollinger (University of California-Berkeley)
Richard Hughes (Pepperdine University)
Eugene Y. Lowe, Jr. (Northwestern University)
Richard Mouw (Fuller Theological Seminary)
Mark Noll (Wheaton College)
Francis Oakley (Williams College)
Mark Schwehn (Valparaiso University)
Peter Steinfels (Georgetown University, New York Times)
Eleonore Stump (St. Louis University)
James Turner * (University of Notre Dame)
Frank Turner (Yale University)
Alan Wolfe (Boston University)
Nicholas Wolterstorff* (The Divinity School, Yale University)
Robert Wuthnow (Princeton University)

*Co-directors

Seminar Members Unable to Attend:
Barbara DeConcini (American Academy of Religion)
Jeanne Knoerle (Lilly Endowment)
Douglas Sloan (Teachers College, Columbia University)

Guest Presenters:
Wayne Proudfoot ((Dept. of  Religion, Columbia University)
Charles Wood (Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University)

Lilly Seminar Staff:
Jeanne Heffernan
Donna Ring

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 SESSION I - FRIDAY AFTERNOON

FRAMING THE CONVERSATION
(Craig Dykstra, The Lilly Endowment, Inc.)

 The purpose of this first session was to introduce the topic of religion and teaching in higher education and to help frame the conversation for this meeting and the one to follow in September.  To begin the discussion Craig Cykstra focused on four elements involved in teaching religion in higher education and asked a series of questions about each.

 Subject matter  -  Can and should Christian (or any) theology be taught in a college or university?  If so, what, where and to whom and under what conditions?  Is it only appropriate to teach in the Divinity school or can and should it be taught in other parts of the college or university?
 Substance  -  What should the substance of that subject matter be understood to include?  Texts and artifacts or also practices and participation in the performance of those practices?
 Telos  -  To what ends can and should a religious faith be taught? For knowledge? For understanding? For belief? For actual performance of the faith tradition's practices?  Dykstra stressed that in the following discussions the members strive to clarify the aims; to be clear about the great variety of purposes there may be in teaching of religion and how these purposes are built in to the ways of teaching; the texts used and activities required.  Would it make a difference if engineering was taught with a religious purpose?

 Teachers/Learners  -  Who are they? What are their individual aims and are those aims compatible or in conflict with the aims of others? What are the relationships involved?  Dykstra raised the issue of formation here to note that it not only happens in extra-curricular activities but even more powerfully in the context of the teacher/learner engagement.
 In times of conflict over the nature and purpose of higher education he believes that it is crucial to engage in a process of thinking through the human activity of teaching as thoroughly and systematically as possible.  A key question for higher education and the interplay between religion and higher education is not what makes teaching religious or theological, but what makes teaching excellent. He hopes that the rich theological and religious resources from a wide variety of traditions will be used in answering that question.

 Dykstra returned to the formation question and put it in the context of the current debate on values.  He referenced Glen Tinder who in his book The Political Meaning of Christianity develops the political implications of Christian concepts and values and presents them as making descriptive sense of our contemporary situation. He challenges the contemporary notion that politics is best described on the secular assumptions of the Enlightenment by arguing that politics is spiritual and has been thought to be so since Plato.  The inevitable result of thinking it is only secular is the demoralization of politics where it becomes an affair of group interest and personal ambition.  Dykstra asked the question: Is this description also true for higher education?  Is higher education loosing its moral, spiritual structure and purpose and becoming an affair of group interest and personal ambition?

 The most vocal on this is Stanley Hauerwas who claims that the most significant corruption coming from the colleges and universities (especially Christian ones) is the assumption made by the university that the moral and spiritual life is created through individual choice rather than by the shaping of a thoroughly disciplined study of the good. Higher education has adopted the consumerist culture mentality which has resulted in the cafeteria-style curriculum which attempts to meet every need of the students.  Dykstra asked if our life is fundamentally about choices or do humans require something more profound than options?

 Dykstra then introduced the idea of communities of conviction which included the following characteristics: a long, rich, historical tradition; a shared body of convictions, languages and behavior patterns; substantive convictions about the nature of reality; and  patterned processes of social interaction.  If it is accepted that societies are demoralized, than what is the relationship between these communities of conviction and institutes of higher education?

 He refered again to Hauerwas who suggests that the university should teach the discipline of confronting texts and figures from the past in order to continue the discussions of our forbearers and to know what is best about humankind. For the university to be thus engaged would challenge the reigning intellectual paradigm.

Dykstra sees Hauerwas's views as sectarian and offered another option--that of  seeing the university as a community of conviction.  He referenced Wayne Booth who looks at the university as a rhetorician and shows how faculty within the same department do not always speak the same language and understand each other's work.  Yet in the overall university community there is a common language and history and practice that is understood, trusted, and passed on.
 Colleges and universities might not be as fragmented as their critics claim, but have a latent yet powerful commonality that sustains and makes diverse cultures possible and actually form members morally and spiritually in ways that are good and worthy of celebration.  Dykstra suggested the idea that colleges and universities actually form students and faculty in even more satisfying and more powerful ways than that which is done by many religions communities of conviction.

 Instead of becoming foes, Dykstra suggested that the religious and the secular communities of conviction search out complimentarity and work to redeem each other where sins are being committed.  Religious communities of conviction should use their own language to describe what they see which could be a way to service the colleges and universities and to them improve the substance and character of their formative influence.

 For the academic community to take advantage of such input, they must recognize and validate other sources of insight and wisdom and deem them worthy of study.  The academic community might hesitate to do this because of such a high evaluation of criticism and analysis.  However, Dykstra added that religious communities have their own powerful, internal, and critical capacities (i.d. prophecy) and that critical inquiry, tolerance, and openness were not invented with the Enlightenment.  Rather, those elements have been a crucial part of every major religious tradition through the ages.

 Dykstra admited that some religious communities of conviction have become pathological but that in some cases colleges and universities have played a crucial, critical, and healing role.  He offered Simone Weil's two conditions which if met makes school studies as good a road to sanity as any other.  They are: 1) do a piece of work correctly; 2) take pains to examine each failure and determine origin of fault.  If these are followed then people are capable of paying attention with she says is the substance of prayer which is the substance of love.
 Dykstra closed by suggesting that differences in thinking about society, content of subject matter, the telos of education, and the people engaged in education should not make foes of religion and higher education.  Rather each should revitalize the other and supplement it in formation by means of virtues and resources each possesses.  Furthermore, religious and educational communities of conviction can incorporate certain portions of the other without threat to either's integrity.  The difficult task of formation requires the best of what both communities have to offer.

Discussion
 Richard Mouw asked that in our consumerist culture with cafeteria-style curriculum, should we be forming people for this kind of environment; to find ways of character formation that would allow them to go through the cafeteria line with purpose.  Dykstra said his emphasis was on the telos, the purpose and intentionalily as the fundamental issue and not just subject matter. The critical and complex thing to work out is how that subject matter is understood, the way it is taught and what part that plays in the narrative and intentionalities of the various peoples gathered around the subject matter.

 Steve Haynes asked for further explanation as to why he thought Hauerwas was problematic and sectarian.  The reason given was because of what Hauerwas says about ways to create community, his tendency towards the homogenous elements of language, rhetoric, prevailing patters of action, and shared ideology.  Elenore Stump asked if it wasn't  common sense that personal formation takes place with homogenous view.  Dykstra asked if it were true that there is no education which is powerfully formative of self that is not ideologically driven?  He then talked about how formation also happens in powerful ways in different movements giving the Civil Rights movement as an example.

 Richard Bernstein described the presentation as soothing, but lacking in any real guidance as to how to face any serious substantive issue.  Dykstra answered that the guidance he wanted to give was for the members to take the analytical categories of communities of conviction --shared language, memories, convictions, shared history--and ask them about their own institutions, teaching, and departments.  If these are not present, then the formation he's talking about is unlikely to happen.  He also claimed that in powerful religious communities there are conceptual tools available for working on those issues. The issue for religion and higher education is not just about the teaching of religion, but the various understandings of teaching of anything including the human encounters involved.

 Monika Hellwig thought it important that the term "ideology" be clarified so as not to confuse it with Marxism.  She described it as an overarching interpretative framework which engages new experiences and facts as they happen.  The one usually not recognized is the highly visible Enlightenment one.  The visible ones are the minority ones which often comes out of a religious tradition.

 Alan Wolfe was struck by Dykstra's comment that religious traditions have resources for criticism, especially the prophetic tradition.  He thinks the real question is not whether criticism is there or not, but what kind of criticism can be found in the prophetic tradition.  He mentioned two:  the "connected criticism" which is criticism within a tradition where the tradition is taken very seriously; and Hauerwasian tradition where there is no engaged kind of criticism, but a complete control of the formation of others--a kind of Christian Stalinism.  Wolfe believes it is wise to approach formation with a kind of indeterminacy.

 Linking together teaching, formation and cafeteria-style curriculum, Francis Oakley wonders how it is all experienced by the students themselves.  He suspects they create their own coherence by attaching themselves to individuals--some of the teachers--which is a very old notion of what teaching is all about.  There are complex ways of formation that go beyond intellectual formation.
 When Dykstra spoke of religious communities of conviction, Alan Bosek thought  he did not carry the idea far enough.  The question needs to be asked: "What kind of convictions are held by these communities?".  This is where the difference between faith and ideology is found.  He also added that the formation brought about by movements comes not from books, but from real life and death experiences and challenges that makes one see realities in a different way.

 Dykstra responded that if one wants to understand learners in the context of teaching, attention must be given to their larger lives. Students come with powerful conflicts and struggles which are unknown in the classroom, but who may be connected in some way with the teacher's intentionality and world view that bears on their situation.  He further stated that there should be no totalitarian formative power.  The most fruitful setting for formation is communities of conviction that have transcended over time, are composed of multiple people involved in multiple arguments, who intersect with and inform lives in a variety of ways.  Each of these involves individual relationships and intentionality which has to be worked out from the ground up with great detail rather than with broad strokes.

 David Hollinger changed the discussion to the implications to the subject matter of religion where he thinks a vital distinction should be made between religion as its own subject and religion as found in other disciplines (sociology of religion, etc.).  He suggested that a religion course be thought of as a study of orientations toward religious issues which would include all the classical religions and critiques of each.  He suggested texts of Hume, Ingersoll and Dewey--people serious about religious issues but not themselves professors of or witnesses to any of the classical religions.  Dykstra would also like there to be places in the university where serious religious practitioners have the opportunity to teach other serious practitioners in that same religion how to perform competently that religion.  This would include generous reading of Hume.

 This raised the question of the content of the curriculum.  Is it a set of texts or a practice in living a way of life, of doing something well?  Dykstra compared this to the study of music where Hollinger quickly commented that the comparison makes religion lose its relevance.  He would rather have an approach that recognizes religion as a category over which people have slaughtered one another and which provides a place for a critical discussion where solutions can be found so the violence isn't replicated.  Dykstra responded that the Enlightenment was fundamentally about ending that violence, that what the secular culture brings is a secular toleration which has enormous virtues.  However, liberal toleration of differences often flees when the difficulties get really difficult.  He advocated that there should be room within the university for teaching a way of life that speaks powerfully to ending violence by the welcome of the stranger and love for the enemy.

 Frank Turner added that toleration is not an Enlightenment product but has its roots in religious tradition.  He also admited to not knowing exactly what THE university is.  There are places like Brigham Young University where religion is taught because there are people who want it and pay for it to happen. Then there other places where different groups are trying to determine how to appropriate the existing university for their own ends.  Dykstra referenced Marsden's argument for pluralism of institutions.

 Jim Turner asked Dykstra what was his tacit understanding of the university. Why is subject x taught and subject y is not?  Why does the performance of religion fall on the x side as opposed to leaving it to other agencies?  Dykstra acknowledged that it is a question that is not often asked, but that the answer is tacitly assumed on both sides though the grounds for their decisions are not thought through. Should we assume that it is inappropriate to teach the practice of a religion within the secular university?  Should a private, secular university have a divinity school where some practices of religion are explicitly being taught?  If appropriate in the divinity school, why not in the law school?

 These questions and others raised in the presentation were addressed in the small discussion groups which immediately followed.
 

SMALL GROUP DISCUSSIONS

Group I  Nancy Ammerman, Leader
 Members:  Beaty, Donoghue, Dykstra, Gleason, Kaufman, Lowe, Noll, Oakley, Winston, Wolterstorff

Unfortunately it was not possbile to discern from the tape the majority of comments made in this discussion group.
 

Group II  Richard Bernstein, Leader
Members:  Haynes, Jeft, Hollinger, Hughes, Liu,Schwehn, Steinfels, Stump, Wood, Wuthnow

• David Hollinger stated that the university no longer strongly reacts to Christianity as the dominant religion, and that the dominant religion at Berkeley is now Asian religions.  Several in the group disagreed with him and gave several ancdetoes where the university does not allow freedom of Christian religion in teaching.
• Personal formation is allowed in Women's studies and in American Studies, but not in  anything religious.  Reasons offered as to why this is: These programs are more ideological and personal formation.  Formation is expected and accepted; these programs address a defect of the university where this content was neglected.
• "Higher Canons of University".  This phrase was used a lot.  Mark Schwehn felt the group was not in full agreement as to a) how widely and deeply those canons are still honored; b) to what extent they are under seige from various movements, and c) do we need to reexamine the originial roots and supports and character of those canons.

  Is there some notion of the overarching aims of a liberal education that could be used as a standard to judge whether certain sorts of teaching religion are acceptable or not?  The ideal liberal education used to include a certain core body of knowldege, but no longer the case.  No one can agree on what that is.  There still seems to be a continunity among faculty, deans and administrators as to what counts as good work in hiring new faculty, with the exception of Women's and Ethnic Studies.

Group III  Nathan Hatch, Leader
Members:  Boesak, Elshtain, Hellwig, Mouw, Proudfoot, F. Turner, J. Turner, Wacker, Wolfe, Woodward
 

• Some thought Dykstra's talk was incoherent; one explanation offered was that it had to be because all the issues being talked about are incapable of being resolved. People who believe in a more faith-based religious education in the modern university are trying to offer a theory to justify it and it's not possible.
• There are two major aras of complaint: those who think the academy is falling apart, there's no cohesion, no sense of community, but only fragmentation, etc. and those who believe religion is unhealthy for thinking people, that it fosters the wrong attitudes and is exclusive.  Craig is saying that the academy at its best and the resligious community at its best celebrate the same things. People who care about these things shouldn't be trashing each other.
• To answer the questions" What are we trying to do to students?" one suggested that minimally we're trying to put students in touch with wisdom and deep insights which has been passed on through the human community.  Future leaders need to know this so they don't reinvent the wheel.  The problems are that faculty no longer presume that this is their task and few students come to the university with the disposition to want to learn this.
• How do students handle the smorgosboard?  They are on vocational tracks; they latch on to a faculty or some group that helps them make sense of it all, much of the cafeteria is an illusion of choice rather than students really exploring different areas.

 SESSION II: SATURDAY MORNING

TEACHING IN A THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL
(Charles Wood, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University)

 Drawing upon his long experience as a divinity school professor and participant in several groups on theological education, Charles Wood addressed the topic of teaching in a divinity school.  Following David Kelsey, Wood cautioned against the abstractness of the topic and suggested that in approaching this subject one keep in mind the variety and complexity among theological schools.  Accordingly, Wood began his presentation with several observations of the particular divinity school in which he has taught for more than twenty years, the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University.
     After describing Perkins, Wood reflected on the character ? aims and methods ? of teaching in a university-based divinity school.  With some qualifications, Wood affirmed what he considers a classic statement as to the pedagogical purposes of university divinity schools written by George Burman Foster in 1916: "It may be said that usually the candidate for ministry ? young though he may sometimes be ? enters the divinity school as a finished religious and theological product, but that in consequence of his studies there he departs, unfinished, growing, aware that his personality, with its religion and its theology, are alike in the making.  A divinity school that achieves such a result has fulfilled its function in the life of the human spirit."
     Though the composition of students and their background have changed dramatically since Foster’s day, Wood argued that an essential continuity remains in the task of theological education, namely, to enable students to develop a capacity for critical reflection on Christian faith and practice, or, to put it differently, to help students become theologians, critical inquirers into the validity of Christian witness.  This theological reflection, Wood insists, is fundamental to responsible church leadership.
     Responding to Craig Dykstra’s earlier recommendation of a holistic pedagogy, Wood sketched a more detailed picture of the aims of theological education, outlining three in particular: to foster a basic intellectual grasp of the subject matter, as well as some level of self-involving or existential understanding; to develop in students a critical capacity for assessing the truthfulness and value of religious phenomena; and to open students up to the personally and socially transformative possibilities of the subject matter.

DISCUSSION
 Following Professor Wood’s presentation, a lively discussion ensued.  Eleanor Stump posed the initial question, asking Wood to clarify his endorsement of Foster, since it could be construed to mean that theological education is designed to produce "neurotic incompetents."
    Wood acknowledged the potential for confusion here, but explained that Foster’s claim was dialectical, a corrective for undue confidence of entering divinity students who don’t have the kind of self-transcendence and resilience they need to be able to function appropriately in religious leadership; they need to be encouraged to think beyond the "finish" they’ve got (not be turned into "neurotic incompetents") which means that theological education must speak constructively as well as "deconstructively."

 Mark Noll cautioned that one should not look for the revitalization of theology in university-based divinity schools, since they suffer from a "triple marginalization": university divinity schools do not speak for the growing, large body of believers in the U.S.; theological discourse seems to want to show its relevance according to standards set by those who neglect or disdain theology, and in so doing, it makes itself less relevant to the church; and, finally, contemporary theological writing lacks vibrance and potency (e.g., Kelsey’s "cautious talk" about how to make affirmations).  All of this suggests that the revitalization of theology in higher education is not going to come from university theological schools.

 Jim Heft then asked Wood what he includes in the idea of theological formation, to which Wood replied with an example from Perkins whose graduate students meet in small groups under a spiritually mature person with whom they discuss theological and pastoral questions bearing on the nature of their vocation.  Heft in turn offered his own view of the aim of theological schooling, namely: to bring about in the student a deeper love of Christ; a deeper grasp of the Christian community; a capacity to speak carefully but compellingly about faith; and a genuine capacity to help others.  Heft noted that he has rarely seen these things explicitly affirmed in the self-description of divinity schools.

 Richard Hughes followed Heft, asking what Wood takes to be the theological underpinnings for the task of fostering critical reflection on the Christian tradition.  Wood responded that theology is an inquiry into the validity of Christian witness.  Acts of Christian testimony, he explained, make or imply three types of validity claims to authenticity, truth, and fittingness.  The criteria by which you judge the validity of Christian witness are various and pertain to the nature of the claim under discussion.  The division one finds in the theological enterprise among historical, philosophical, and practical theology reflects the variety of these validity claims and the criteria by which they are tested.

 Nancy Ammerman then challenged Wood to defend the value of  a university-based divinity school, asking whether or not it in fact benefits the university or the church.  Richard Bernstein seconded the question, underscoring its importance by reminding Wood that many observers find university divinity schools becoming increasingly irrelevant to live religious phenomena experienced in a tradition.  Wood replied that while a university doesn’t need a divinity school to be a university, he does think that a university needs to provide a place in the curriculum, say, in its liberal studies program, for attention to religion and religious intellectual traditions represented in the culture.  A divinity school is best conceived of as a professional school, akin to others, and herein lies its relevance to the life of the university, the culture, and the churches.  Nancy Ammerman responded that Wood seemed to be suggesting that religious studies departments might do their curricular job better if there weren’t divinity schools over against which they had to define themselves, to which Wood replied that dismantling the divinity schools is not the solution for addressing the many identity difficulties religious studies has as a discipline.

 Following up on that response, Nick Wolterstorff questioned whether Wood thinks that divinity schools are a good, though not necessary, thing for universities.  Wood affirmed that they are and alluded to the positive role Perkins has played at S.M.U. by bringing to the fore a Christian understanding of higher education amidst discussion of the university’s identity as a church related school.  In a related vein, Ammerman asked what the rationale would be for a school of theology in a non-sectarian university, to which Wood responded that there is an argument to be made that a university has an obligation to provide for the welfare of the culture by providing competent leadership to various components of the cultural project, including religious institutions.
     Frank Turner turned the discussion toward the topic of how university-based divinity schools relate to the church, remarking that divinity faculty, such as those at Yale, seem loathe to discuss what is their raison d’etre: parish ministry.  Herein lies the distinctiveness of theological schools, and without it, divinity schools become little more than a "poor cousin" to Arts & Sciences.  Wood answered that divinity schools vary greatly with respect to this issue and noted that placement in parish ministry is a significant part of the mission of Perkins.

 Jean Elshtain returned to the question of Wood’s definition of theology.  Elshtain cautioned that we tend to fetishize "critical inquiry," and we’ve created a climate in which students are primed to criticize a tradition without a clear notion of what it is.  Instead, we must emphasize that the Christian tradition has critical inquiry as a constitutive, formative dimension of it; so that to teach the tradition is to teach critical inquiry, not dogmatic assertion; profound disagreements will surface in teaching the history of the tradition.  Wood agreed that there is a second order dimension within the first and suggested that in the contemporary context in which divinity students arrive without much background knowledge, theological education must explicitly integrate first level material with critical inquiry.

 Steve Hayes, recalling the suspicion with which ordinary believers often view seminaries, asked to what extent the divinity schools are sensitive to what the church thinks it needs when divinity faculty assess the "fittingness" of Christian witness.  Wood responded with reference to his experience at Perkins in which the vast majority of faculty are involved in local congregations and so learn daily what the church is thinking and needs.

 After recounting an example of an eager new convert from Fuller, Richard Mouw suggested that theological education ought foster, not squelch through skeptical questioning, the passion of the believing student; it ought to deepen her faith through a close reading of theological classics, for instance, and make her a more faithful and articulate spokesperson and agent of her faith.  Critique may be a moment in the process of this education, but it isn’t the compelling dynamic of the process.  In the end, it seems that seminary training at present is not the best way to get her prepared for the kind of ministry that she’s going into.  Wood maintained that the difference in question seems more rhetorical than real; he did not see a great difference between Mouw’s plan and his own description of the enterprise.

 Wolterstorff then added that Wood seems to be turning theology into methodology and epistemology (his use of words like "critical inquiry" and "validity" signal a second order process).  Classical theologians talked about God; whereas the contemporary theologian is inclined to move to this methodological/epistemological level away from the primary level.  He then offered his own speculation as to this turn: Kant-talk haunts the theologians who suppose that Kant showed that we can’t talk about God; we have to talk about something else ?  experience, language, or tradition ?  and, hence, theology can only become a second order inquiry that can help us understand the grammar but not the substance of God-talk.  If I’m right in the diagnosis, Wolterstorff then asked, can you help me understand why my theological colleagues want to slide into method?  I think as a theologian one ought to have the guts to say, No, I want to talk about God.  Wood acknowledged the accuracy of Wolterstorff’s description.  Contemporary theology is, on account of Kant’s influence, preoccupied with prolegomena.  It finds daunting the question of how we can actually talk about God.  But, Wood continued, if theology is rightly conceived of as a second order enterprise, it presupposes that there is a first order activity going on, namely, the way in which the churches, the culture talks about God.  Here Wood appealed to Barth’s claim that dogmatics is the criticism and revision of the church’s talk about God; dogmatics is a second order activity which makes corrections to the first order language of the church.  This does not reduce theology to a methodology inasmuch as it has the constructive task of rearticulating the faith in ways that make more sense; it is constructively critical.

 Frank Oakley next asked whether or not the historical study of Christianity done in a secular department like his would be considered "historical theology" according to Wood and what it means to do historical theology in a tradition.  Wood replied that he could not answer the first question, though he surmised that Oakley’s work would be much the same if it were done in a divinity school.  As to the second question, Wood pointed out that historical theology is in part normative and that its criteria for authenticity varies according to tradition.

 Eugene Lowe wrapped up the discussion by proposing that critical judgment can also mean the capacity to help people appropriate usefully and to contextualize the resources that form the body of memories that constitute a tradition.  He also observed that the transformative dimension of education differs according to context, churchly or secular.  In the church context, Low suggested that the task of theological education might consist in part in preparing people to preserve and protect the church, akin to the way in which the J.T.S. envisions its mission as preserving, protecting, and defending the Jewish community.

Small Groups: Questions proposed by Jim Turner

• Does the positioning of theological education within the university really belong with the intellectual standards and purposes of a university anymore?

 
• Does the positioning of theological education within the university really subserve the purposes of the church, given the way the university context shapes the work of a theological seminary?

To frame the context for these issues, Turner recounted Schleiermacher’s defense of university-based theological education and then pointed out the stark contrast between the cultural context of that time and our own.  If the existence of God is no longer a part of the common intellectual framework within which we do academic work, doesn’t theology necessarily become a sectarian enterprise outside the walls of the university?
 

Group I Nancy Ammerman, Leader
  Members: (partial list) Stump, Wolfe, Schwehn, Oakley, Donoghue, J. Turner

* We are addressing this question at a time when the universities are reconsidering their position with respect to all professional schools and vocations.  The whole liberal arts component is being lost in general.
* If divinity schools are separated from the university there is a great danger of provincialization.  The religious tradition needs the critical thinking of the university to keep it from corrupting the tradition.
* It's important for pastors to know how to engage with the dominant, intellectual world and that's harder the more removed it is from the university.
* The divinity schools represent the dominant forms of knowledge for most of the history of the west and serve as important reminders to alternate approaches to knowledge.  it's important for the university not to become captive to one single mode of knowledge.
* Divinity schools do have the practical task of training people for parish ministry.  It becomes a matter of stragety whether the purpose is to produce priests, pastors to go into the churches and minister to the flock or to confront the general culture from the perspective of the religious community.  If it's confronting the general sosciety, can it be done more effectively from within or from without the university?

Group II Richard Bernstein, Leader
  Members (partial list):  Elshtain, Dykstra, Lowe, Haynes, Hellwig, Beaty, Hughes, Mouw
 

• One member was struck by how little the discussion had to do with teaching.
• There is an enormous absense if the whole aspect of studying the existence of God is left out; it must be included for the integrity of the body of learning.
• The role of religion in the university is to serve as a tension the religious agnostics who are teaching realigion. Also, a God-centered reality provides a radical alternative to ways people can read the universe who don't believe in God.
• Storng voices for agressive Christian scholarship are not coming out of the religion and theological departmetns, but out of philosophy and history.

Group III Nathan Hatch, Leader
  Members (partial list): Boseak, Hollinger, Noll, Hughes, F. Turner, Heft, Wood, Hayner, Wolterstorf, Wuthnow
 

• The story was told of a man in the French Revolution who looked out the window and said, "There goes the mob.  I must follow them for I am their leader."  This was used to point out how seminary leadership is in a political situation in which it needs to make a decision about which elements in the inherited Christian tradition it wants to advance and which it wants to suppress.  It's a choice of constituency.  It's also very apt for would be Christian intellectuals who are in danger of identifying too close with simply the largest number of Christians. The danger is to become enslaved by the constituency rather than showing leadership.
• The morning's discussion was the best justification for why the African American churchs feel they need to protect themselves from mainline protestant churches.  Theologians set themselves up in competition with other sciences and that's where it ended.  It's dangerous that we do not engage in real issues that are felt by people living the faith, engaged in their communities.  Issues like poverty, abuse of power, gap between rich and poor--issues that are running the world.
• The discussion consisted almost totally of European westernized Christianity and did not take into account contributions made to Christianity from those in other cultures.  Maybe we should discuss how to have a better conversation.
• Richard Niebuhr's thoughts on the mission of theology in the university was to raise the critique; to ask questions as to what the university is up to?  What values does it honor?  This is to be based no upon some idea of the religious good, but on the basis to witness to ultimate reality that the religious tradition represents.  A lot of people can talk about God-talk, but few can talk about God.
• The point of theological education would be to try and revive the tradition from the best sources within the tradition.  Knowing what the Jesuits in the 16th century learned from the Chinese Rice controversy would give one better understanding of what went on in South Africa.  Too often that students can't tell Erasmus from Luther.  Abismal lack of knowledge and understanding of own tradition.
• Newman's arguments for the necessity of theology in the university are: if questions of religion and theology are not asked in university will not be asked in larger culture; religion is an enoumous part of the human experience; religious institutions are expanding throughout the world and the university should not separate themselves from this.
• Lower level of student at divinity school today than 30 years ago.  Need to think how to recruit the brightest and best for divinity school so we have a learned clergy.

 SESSION III: SATURDAY AFTERNOON

DEPARTMENTS OF RELIGION
(Wayne Proudfoot, Department of Religion, Columbia University)

 Professor Proudfoot began his presentation by outlining a general history of departments of religion.  A relatively new phenomenon of some thirty to forty years, departments of religion have been decisively shaped by the history of Protestant institutions.  They have tended to derive their academic framework and faculty from mainline American Protestant divinity schools.  Not surprisingly, religious studies curricula bear a distinct resemblance to the curricula of theological schools and reflect a traditionally Protestant concern with issues of religious experience and of the relationship between faith and reason and a concomitant downplaying of attention to religious law and ritual.  (In addition to the considerable influence of mainline Protestant theology on the undertandings of religion found in religious studies programs, European phenomenology distilled through such prominent figures as Mircea Eliade has informed the work of religious studies.)

 While the deep structure of religious studies programs noted above has remained, certain shifts in the composition of faculty and curricula have taken place since the 1970s.  The faculty have become more diverse, and the curricula have become broader in scope.  Principal among these shifts has been an increasing attention to non-Christian religious traditions, ranging from Judaism and Islam to Eastern religions, and an increasing interest in comparative studies of religion.  The ability to offer such a diversity of courses and to have them taught by a richly interdisciplinary faculty is, according to Proudfoot, one of the main advantages of a religious studies program, in addition to the more basic fact that if the scholarly study of religion were left to other departments in a university, it might not get done.

 Proudfoot then turned his attention to the tension between the scientific study of religion and the practice of religion, a problem related to Charles Wood’s observation that university-based divinity schools and religious studies departments have often perceived each other as competitors.  Proudfoot suggested that the separation between the scientific study and practice of religion is a false dichotomy.  Rather, one ought to follow the intellectual inquiry where it will lead, utilizing the best tools available, be they scientific or  philosophical, within a specific religious tradition or not.  Drawing upon his experience at Columbia, Proudfoot noted that the religious studies department in fact grew out of the chaplain’s office and at present includes faculty who practice as well as study religion.  Moreover, while some religious studies faculty might look with suspicion at the work of theological schools, the Columbia faculty do not view themselves in opposition to divinity faculty, but rather view one another as mutual resources.

Proposed discussion questions for the small groups:

• Does religion have such a distinctive historical or ontological character that it deserves a place of separate study in the university?  Is the study of religion in universities simply a hangover of Protestant hegemony in universities? Should it be studied in the university?
• Is Wayne right in suggesting that studying within or without a tradition is a false dichotomy?

Group I Nancy Ammerman, Leader
  Members (partial list):  Hellwig, Hughes, Mouw, Wolterstorff, Hollinger, Wolfe, Proudfoot, F. Turner
 

• The suggestion was made that each department have a religionist--one who focused on issues of religion as either studied by that department or in relationship with the religious enterprise and do away with religious studies departments.
• If this happened the study of religion as central for understanding the religious traditions themselves and the heart of cultures would disappear.  There is no course in religion at Kennedy School and so no one is coming out of there with an understanding of how to negotiate with a Muslim terrorist but only how to work out a cost/benefit analysis. A religious studies department could give those future diplomats an understanding of different world views.
• State funded schools go with where the larger interest is at the moment  (rational choice theorists are not now in social sciences); private universities with large endowments keep doing what the donors want whether it's important or not.

Group II Richard Bernstein, Leader
  Members (partial list): Heft, Elshtain; Oakley, Noll, Proudfoot, Haynes,
  Wuthnow, Kaufman
 

• There is a political reality which makes American religious studies departments distinctive and that is how the separation of church and State has come to be intrepreted.  Christian or Islamic theology can be taught in Canadian universities because they never took the position that they had to service all the people and that  they could not promote religion.  We think we have to service all the people. This approach presents a problem of forming coherence.
• It would be fruitful to have exchanges between religious studies programs and theological based programs within specific religious traditions.
• The best analogy for the religious studies department is that of the area studies model where there is a fairly arbitrary demarcation of the area and a range of disciplines to this area.  Whoever gets hired sets the agenda for the program. And they get hired based on student demand.
• Rather than seeing religious studies departments as having to continue even through they started as a protestant appendage to a theological or divinity faculty, they should be seen as opportunities to teach religion with the purpose of understanding what's happening in the world among different cultures i.e. the new wave of fundamentalism.
• Religious studies departments as practiced now if not incoherent then are intellectually imperalistic. Imperalistic was further defined to mean to hire in order to disabuse practioners.

Group III Nathan Hatch, Leader
  Members (partial list): Turner, Stump, Haynes, Donoghue, Gleason,   Wolfe,  Winsotn, Wood, Dykstra, Beaty, Steinfels

•  Majority in the group did not feel Columbia was representative of most religious studies departments because 1) Columbia has better relationships among faculty and have more interdisciplinary colaboration; 2) most depts. of religion are more closely tied to the AAR; 3) Columbia has more of a core curicullum than other programs.
• Growth of Religious Studies programs was driven by the
• The baby boomers and the growth of the university in general;

The court decision which legitimized the teaching about religion in State universities and public schools;  (Teachers were originally brought in from private, protestant, higher education religion departments who taught from a protestant religion and good citizen kind of vision. In State Universities strong opposition developed to that vision and became hegominc offering criticism but no clearly agreed upon alternatives.  Overtime the departments become pluralistic.)
-Students were offered the opportunity to do an area study in religion
-In oder to have longevity and status have to become a department and a PhD program;
-then came journals and growth of AAR (1971) and the growth of the institutional infrastructure.
• It's  much easier in an American university to teach something with the understanding that it is interesting rather than that it's true. We need to understand the academic rheteric; the buzz word for identifying what matters is "interesting".We've substituted knowldege for truth.  All we can do is construct knowledge; we can't say anything is true. Noted this is not true in philosophy.
• A reason for divinity schools is to have a place to teach truth.  There are realities there to be known and through faith you can know them, therefore it is appropriate to teach the faith in its convictions and practices.
• Christian faculty are empbarrased to bear witness to truth in their classroom.  One of the main reasons for this is market based.  One takes a great risk of not getting hired if it's known they speak out.
• There has to be a change in the climate in institutions so they are not prejudice against people of Christian faith--so they are willing to take serious religious voices.

SESSION IV: SATURDAY AFTERNOON

FINAL DISCUSSION SESSION

The question for discussion: What out of this one and a half days of discussion has been the most salient, the most significants points you have heard?

 Nancy Ammerman admited her thoughts might be contraversal, but after the discussions she thinks neither the relisgious studies department nor the university divinity schools should exist indefinitely into the future. The divinity schools seem not to be serving either the churches or the universities well and religious studies might better serve the universiity by despersing into various departments.

 The idea that teaching religion from outside the tradition is more scientific and scholarly than from within is an assumption that Monika Hellwig thinks is still made in their discussions. Eleanor Stump distinguished between studying religion scientifally or within the tradition and studing it from within or from without. Relgious studies are set up to study religion from without which requires a destinctive methodology because so many disciplines are involved. The salient point for Eleanor was that the roles seem to be reversed.  The divinity schools have backed away from teaching religion from within the tradition to meet the secular standards while the religious studies departments teach religion from within their tradition of atheiastic, secular, liberal intellectual culture.

 The question for Jean Elshtain was whether or not there is a distinctive subject matter that is only treated in religious studies departments or are they the collect-all department for interesting courses. Why do they exist if subject matter can be/is handled elsewhere?  She also commented on how the expectations of faculty are different in that one cannot assume religious studies faculty have a shared baseline knowledge that constitutes the field like one could with an economics professor.
     Richard Bernstein sees a failure on the part of intellectuals in both areas to speak to the spiritual hunger of the students. Instead there seems to be an anxiety about a lack of clarity and purpose and he has not found any coherence as to how to improve the situation.
     It is a big disappointment for Alan Wolfe that he still doesn't know what people of faith want from the universities. Also he has not heard what genuine believers with deep religious faith can offer in scholarhsip, teaching and the general life of the university that would be genuinely valuable to the university.  He suspects this isn't happening because of the embarrassment and defensiveness and failure of nerve.

 The issue of the decline of the university is what Richard Mouw thinks needs to be addressed directly.  Both good and bad things are happening in both churches and universities, but he sees there has been a fragmentation of knowledge and a correlative breakdown of community.  He added that a way of viewing the nature of the disciplines and what it means to engage in inquiry from within the discipline has taken hold in the last century that has not been healthy and he feels this should be debated.

 In answer to Wolfe's question, Hellwig suggested that what the religious community has to offer the university is a tradiation of wisdom which offers a way in which to order their lives and their societies. Wolfe suggested a ssssion by Mark Schwehn on what has happened to the university; is it in bad shape and would Monika's suggestion work?

 Mouw was asked for further clarification of his veiw of decline.  He added that in many ways the university is better off now in terms of inclusion of women and minorities, but that there is an overall loss of virtures which held the academic community together. Virtues like worship, confession, repentance and intellectual humility, charity, and love of reality which were embedded or generated by certain practices.  The practices have been eliminated and attention has not been paid as to how to maintain the virtues when they are no longer embedded in practice. Along with this has been the promotion of increased specialization and fragmentation.  He thinks there should be discussion as to whether there are problems and if there is anything in the traditions or appropriate substitutes which would promote a better sense of academic community.

 Instead of seeing it as decline, David Hollinger suggests four closely interlocking questions: 1) What is it that higher education seems to need that it doesn't have? 2) Are we really agreed about that? 3) Insofar as we are agreeing, why doesn't it have what it needs? What are the conditions that put us where we are? 4) Insofar as we want that thing that is missing, what can we do to get it with the least cost to other values that are viably shared by whatever communities are involved in the discussion?

 Jim Heft commented that the declention rhetoric often overlooks the benefit of the inclusion of diverse voices in the dealogue and that it's no wonder there is less coherence.  Think of who was in the colleges in the 1930s. Elshtain followed with the idea of not just achkowledging but celebrating the more inclusive, pluralistic university while at the same time making the point that in order to have really robust discussions there needs to be engagements with real depth to them.  What often happens in the name of being inclusive is a fleeing from the engagement and thereby loosing the chance to create a culture of robust argument.

 Bernstein noted that in the discussion of decline there is always an unspoken premise that what is lacking in the university can be ameliorated by the appeal in some way to religion.
     Woleterstorff gave two examples of contributions people of faith can make to the university: a colleague and a law professor team teache a course on theology and law; he teaches one on theological hermanutics.  Both are very popular classes for non-divinity school students.  Wolfe expressed his frustration that  he hears about the radical decline of the university that requires a massive transformation that faith commitments could address, and then there are these very sensible courses that are at a totally different level of apocolypic underwtanding of what the problem is.  He sees a radical disjuncture in the talk that goes on at these seminars.

 The real problem, Bernstein believes, is institutional-in the religious studies departments and divinity schools..  He thinks the issue of ruling out a committed believer is not an intellectual issue anymore and there is a tremendous revival of interest in religious and theological topics.
     Michael Beaty asked what religious communities should expect from the colleges and universities they support.  Wolterstorff strongly believes two things on thisg. The first is in Christian institutions where students have to be taught to honor the riches of human Christian tradition, and secondly, they must be taught to really think hard.  Beaty adds that part of formation includes the ability to take seriously the defects in one's own tradition and to see the riches in other traditions.  Wolterstorff adds that those questions should be questions of substance.

Respectfully submitted
Donna Ring
Jeanne Heffernan
July, 1998

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