This post was written by Patrick Rist on April 15, 2008
Recently I was talking with a Christian professor at a large state university, and asked her how her faith had informed her practice of her discipline (she was a sociologist). She replied that she tried to be a conscientious teacher and treat her students well. She also said she discouraged profanity in her classroom.
This was a good person, who undoubtedly is a sincere, pious Christian. But I was reminded of what Ken Myers (of Mars Hill Audio) calls “Adverbial Christianity.” The world sets the overall agenda of our lives, providing the nouns: the work, the goals, the purpose. The church only gets to provide the adverbs, so that things are done “peacefully,” or “lovingly,” or “gracefully.”
This adverbial posture is far cry from the vision of academic integration. And yet one suspects that this is where we might find the majority of Christian professors, whether they are at secular or church-related schools.
Why? Is the notion of integrating one’s scholarship with a Christian view of life and reality that difficult to grasp, simply as a concept? While it may be a challenge to flesh out in practice, particularly for some disciplines, it is deeply troubling to encounter academics to whom this notion has never even occurred as a possibility.
It may be time for us to re-visit some basic concepts surrounding the pursuit of the integration of the Christian worldview and the academic calling. We’ll try to do this in the next few entries.
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