CCCU Advance Spring 2012

Spring2012

Christ and Culture: The Challenge of Tomorrow’s World | 14 Christian Colleges Challenge ‘Contraceptive Mandate’ as Unconstitutional | 18 Not Your Grandmother’s Future | 30

Purposefully engaged: moving boldly into tomorrow

inadvance Christ and Culture: The Challenge of Tomorrow’s World

14 20 26 32

By The Right Reverend Professor Dr. N.T. Wright

Christian Colleges Challenge ‘Contraceptive Mandate’ as Unconstitutional

By Joy Pullmann

All in the Alumni Family–Nontraditional and Online Graduates, Too

By Luke Reiter

Not Your Grandmother’s Future: The Tension of Preparing Liberal Arts Graduates for Tomorrow’s Careers

By Jo Kadlecek

The Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) is an international higher education association of intentionally Christian colleges and universities. Founded in 1976 with 38 members, the Council has grown to 116 members in North America and 69 affiliates in 25 countries.

The CCCU is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. The mission of the CCCU is to advance the cause of Christ-centered higher education and to help our institutions transform lives by faithfully relating scholarship and service to biblical truth.

Distribution CCCU Advance is published each year in the fall and spring and is mailed to members, affiliates, and friends of the CCCU. It is also available online at www.cccu.org/advance. Direct questions and letters to the editor to editor@cccu.org.

Advertising CCCU Advance is now accepting advertising from organizations that serve the students, faculty, or administration of our campuses. For more information and/or to receive a CCCU Media Kit, please email orders@cccu.org.

People

48

The Benefits of Research Centers Extend Beyond the Edge of Campus

By Chris Turner

Paul R. Corts President Pamela K. Jones Vice President, Communications Kami L. Rice Editor Kevin Zwirble Graphic Designer

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From the President . . . . . . . 3

By Paul R. Corts

FOCUS ON SCHOLARSHIP & RESEARCH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Editor’s Note. . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

By Ronald P. Mahurin

By Kami L. Rice

On the Shelf . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Around the Council. . . . . . . 5 The news of the CCCU offices

From Capitol Hill . . . . . . . . . 9

Going Global. . . . . . . . . . . . 42 BestSemester: Voices. . . . . 46

By Shapri D. LoMaglio

The Last Word. . . . . . . . . . . 58

R&D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Q&A with James Davison Hunter

By P. Jesse Rine

Stay connected with the CCCU on twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, vimeo, & Issuu. Visit www.cccu.org/connect.

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From the president

Optimism for Today, Promise for Tomorrow

by Paul R. Corts, Ph.D.

W

e are having a good year in all areas of the Council’s work, and I am deeply grateful to the countless volunteers who serve the CCCU in extraordinary ways alongside our talented staff to help fulfill our mission. To count our blessings, I begin with our Commission and peer group meetings that have had remarkable programs with excellent participation. Our annual Presidents Conference was a stellar example of these meetings, with outstanding plenary speakers like Eric Metaxas, James Davison Hunter, Diana Oblinger, and N. T. Wright, along with a great lineup of concurrent programs, many led by our member presidents.

Our BestSemester student programs continue to attract and serve students from all across our member institutions. With superb work by staff and God’s blessing, our Middle East Studies Program in Egypt survived the political upheaval of the Arab Spring and is flourishing in its relocation to Jerusalem. Our new program in India is off to a good start.

In the area of finances and physical facilities, we are experiencing a solid year. We made several property transactions for student programs, including a sale, purchase, and lease for our Oxford programs and a purchase in Nashville for the Contemporary Music Center. These transactions will provide some immediate budget benefits and will over time create significant equity value.

We continue to make enhancements to our website to better serve our membership and will be adding even more resources. Our Christian College Guide search engine for prospective college students, a partnership with Christianity Today International, is online and serving our members. Communication materials have taken on a fresh look that has brought praise from members, and we produced several new publications this year, including Caring for the President, Sabbaticals for Leaders, The 2011 Governance Survey, and Charting the Terrain.

Our expanded programs for presidents, governing boards, and future leaders continue to grow. We have collaborated with the Association of Governing Boards to offer a special program and registration rate for our members at AGB’s National Conference

on Trusteeship. We’re adding modules to the Trustee Development Curriculum, offering new services for board self-assessment, and providing presidential assessment services for boards. We are seeking a major grant to assist expansion of our leadership development program with particular focus on women and minorities.

The public policy area applauded a major religious liberty victory in a Supreme Court decision relevant to CCCU institutions, but also faced two sets of troubling regulations from the Obama Administration. First, the Department of Education issued regulations defining a credit hour along with federal parameters for how states must authorize the institutions operating within their state.

We joined the higher education community in unanimous opposition to these matters, which will likely be resolved by legislation or the courts. Then the Department of Health and Human Services, as a result of passage of the Affordable Care Act, issued regulations containing a definition of “religious organizations” that has very serious implications for religious liberty. Under the HHS plan, our institutions are denied our normal religious exemption from rules that violate our Christian beliefs. Instead, we are offered an accommodation that is not yet fully articulated. We will work to influence the regulations to minimize the damage and to have all historically recognized religious organizations exempted.

Finally, let me offer a few closing words of personal gratitude and appreciation. I have been wonderfully blessed to have had the opportunity to serve the Council for the past

six years. I have visited nearly 130 member and affiliate campuses throughout the United States, Canada, and abroad, and it has warmed my heart to see God pouring out great blessings on our institutions that are serving so admirably. Focused on Christ, our membership testifies to a vibrant community that is honoring God through faith, knowledge, and service.

I am particularly grateful for the Council’s heritage, for presidents Werkema, Dellenback, Augsburger, and Andringa, and for the governing board members who served with me, especially board chairs David Dockery, Bob Brower, Carl Zylstra, and Kim Phipps.

Our movement is fortunate to have had these extremely dedicated leaders. A special thanks to two groups: the talented and dedicated staff colleagues who make so many good things happen under the CCCU banner and the hundreds of volunteers who weave a strong fabric throughout our association, providing great programming and service.

“What are you going to do in retirement?” is a question many are asking. The Council has provided my wife Diane and me with a sabbatical for travel and writing during late summer and early fall. Then perhaps a visiting professorship here or abroad and some consulting, but mostly we want to be available for what the Lord has in store for us— His ways are so much better than our ways!

Lately I’ve been speaking to a number of groups about “Why I am an optimist about Christ-centered higher education!” We face great challenges, but they bring great opportunity, and I believe our institutions are better positioned to take advantage of those opportunities than the rest of higher education. From retirement I look forward to watching the Lord continue to bless this good work. In the words of Dag Hammarskjold, “For all that has been, thank you. For all that is to come, yes.” May God bless the CCCU!

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

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Editor’s note

The Season of Hope

by Kami L. Rice

A

s I read and edit the articles for this issue of Advance against the welcome backdrop of spring’s bright colors, I am struck by a sense of hope and opportunity, a sense founded on more than the new life bustling outdoors. New life and energy are also bustling around our campuses and around Christian higher education in general, sometimes in unexpected places.

This year, I have had a front row seat for two of the major religious liberty dramas currently playing out in the United States.

First, when I’m not plying my writing skills, I serve Vanderbilt University graduate students as an InterVarsity campus minister. Since last spring, our Vanderbilt Graduate Christian Fellowship has had provisional status as a registered student organization while the university works out a new and incredibly restrictive policy that says it is discriminatory for religious student groups to require that student leaders profess the beliefs of the group they lead. In order to be a registered group next year, Graduate Christian Fellowship will have to remove a constitutional requirement that leaders commit to uphold GCF’s doctrinal statement. A move we are unwilling to make.

While I think this policy is not good for Vanderbilt, for campus pluralism and academic conversation, or for Vandy’s Christian students, the year’s frustration has been tempered with gladness that private universities like Vanderbilt, and like CCCU institutions, still have liberty to set policies regarding religious expression on their campuses.

I have also had a front row seat as the CCCU has engaged our government on another set of religious liberty threats delivered via the contraceptive mandate issued by the Department of Health and Human Services last August and covered in-depth in our feature article “Christian Colleges Challenge ‘Contraceptive Mandate’ as Unconstitutional.”

Instead of being weighed down by these challenges to free expression of faith, I have more often found myself hopeful, 4

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

delighting in the confidence that no matter what threats come our way, God is not threatened by them. Nothing Vanderbilt administrators or any presidential administration does changes who God is: “I Am Who I Am.” Ultimately, that is all the freedom we need.

This issue of Advance is full of stories of hope and opportunity, stories of the ways our campuses are offering hope to the communities they live in via research centers and institutes, of valuable partnerships between North American CCCU members and international affiliates, of ways to more wholeheartedly welcome growing numbers of online and nontraditional graduates into our alumni families, and of ways our liberal arts education is preparing our students for the jobs of tomorrow not just the jobs of today.

We also report on new CCCU research that is equipping our campuses to see and step into the opportunities surrounding our cultural moment.

These pages hold exhortations from two of our esteemed Presidents Conference speakers. In different ways, N.T. Wright and James Davison Hunter each exhort us to be confident in our identity in Christ as we navigate the opportunities created by the swirling current of culture.

Wright notes, “With scripture itself, while each generation is called to find new depths and heights in the ancient text, we will never get to the point where we understand everything so that the next generation can simply look up the answers we’ve already discovered. God wants each generation to grow up to be the wise and thoughtful body of the Messiah for the world of its own day, and that means each generation doing its

own hard work, building on the best of the past but going out into the unknown.”

Hunter writes of “faithful presence within,” a paradigm of incarnation. “This incarnational paradigm suggests that the calling of the church is to go into the fullness of the culture, bearing the fullness of the gospel, for the purposes of redemption.”

In this issue, the last issue under his watch, we also celebrate President Paul Corts’ tenure with the CCCU, thankful for the thoughtfulness and loyalty with which he has stewarded his gifts in service to us during the past six years.

With the advent of spring’s bright skies and warm temperatures, it is hard not to feel hope and anticipation, release from a winter that felt interminable even though we knew it would end. May this hopefulness and anticipation mark us, our students, and our graduates as we live as Christ’s ambassadors. May we always see the spring that is perpetually ours as children of God. “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.

But hope that is seen is no hope at all.

Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” – Romans 8:22-25 Please send letters to the editor, story ideas, and book review pitches to editor@cccu.org.

Based in Nashville, Tenn., freelance writer Kami Rice (www.kamirice.com) is an alumna of Asbury University and of BestSemester’s American Studies Program. Her articles have appeared in more than 40 publications.

Around the Council

The News of the CCCU Offices

President’s Office Annual Awards Given for Leadership, Advancing Racial Harmony, and Philanthropy At the CCCU Presidents Conference held in Washington, D.C., in February, N.T. Wright, the chair of New Testament and Early Christianity at the School of Divinity at the University of St. Andrews, received the Mark O. Hatfield Leadership Award, which is presented to individuals who have demonstrated uncommon leadership reflecting the values of Christian higher education.

Huntington University (IN) was awarded

The Green family, owner of Hobby

the Robert and Susan Andringa Award for

Lobby, Inc., was honored with the CCCU

Advancing Racial Harmony in recognition of

Philanthropy award. This award is presented

its programs in the area of racial and ethnic

to individuals who have made significant

diversity, including the Horizon Leadership

philanthropic contributions to the work of the

Program, which annually welcomes a cohort

CCCU and its membership. The Greens have

of students from racially and ethnically

provided generous support for endeavors at

diverse backgrounds and awards them full scholarships, and the Harmony Initiative, a group of local business leaders, elected

several CCCU institutions, including Indiana Wesleyan University (IN).

officials, clergy, educators, and social-service

For the text of N.T. Wright’s address at the

workers who are advancing the City of

awards ceremony, see the feature article

Huntington’s mission statement.

on page 14.

Top: Paul R. Corts presenting the Andriga Award to G. Blair Dowden, president of Huntington University.

Below: Paul R. Corts and Henry L. Smith, president of Indiana Wesleyan University, present the CCCU Philanthropy award to the Green family.

New Board of Directors Officer Named

Board of Directors Approves New Members and International Affiliate

At the CCCU’s annual business meeting

The CCCU Board of Directors has approved

conducted during the 36th Annual Presidents

three new member institutions and a new

Conference, held February 1-3 in Washington,

international affiliate. New members are

Andrea Cook, president of Warner Pacific

Concordia University Irvine in Irvine, Calif.;

College (OR), was elected to the board of

Emmanuel College in Franklin Springs, Ga.;

directors. Mike O’Neal, president of Oklahoma

and Regent University in Virginia Beach,

Christian University (OK), concluded his service

Va. Joining the CCCU as an international

on the board as he retires from his post at OC.

affiliate from the United Kingdom is Newbold College, located in Bracknell, Berkshire, England. There are now 185 CCCU members and affiliates around the world, with 116 member campuses in North America and 69

CCCU Members & Affiliates Spring 2012 Members 116 Affiliates 69 Totals 185

affiliate campuses in 25 countries.

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

5

Around the council

Results of Survey on Governance Released

Member President Testifies Before House Higher Education Subcommittee Regarding Reducing College Costs

In February the CCCU

On November 30, 2011, Ronald E. Manahan, president of Grace College

published a report on the

and Seminary (IN) testified before the House of Representatives Committee

results of the 2011 CCCU

on Education and the Workforce’s Subcommittee on Higher Education

Survey of Governance in

and Workforce Training. The hearing on “Keeping College within Reach:

Member Institutions. Key

Discussing Ways Institutions Can Streamline Costs and Reduce Tuition”

findings include: average size

sought to explore innovative strategies for curbing rising college costs.

of CCCU institution boards; relationship of boards with faculty; typical presidential compensation and evaluation procedures; board selection, development, and evaluation processes; governance structure; how institutions rank boards’ priorities; and board involvement in development of spiritual formation and academic outcomes.

Witnesses discussed the trends and patterns that contribute to rising costs as well as best practices their institutions have discovered for dealing with the problem. Manahan described four areas in which Grace has addressed cost: review of institutional programs, review of institutional operations, innovation, and partnerships and collaborations.

In his conclusion, Manahan stressed the urgency with which Grace is

The survey results were first presented during a concurrent breakout session at the Presidents

tackling the concern of rising education costs. He noted that Grace took upon itself the responsibility of finding ways through its educational mission to address the issue of cost concern and contribute to the health of the

Conference in early February. They will be

economy. “We could not simply stand by and wait for others to help us with

presented again at the CCCU affinity meeting during the National Conference on Trusteeship,

these concerns,” he said.

hosted in April by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges.

Four Representatives of CCCU Institutions Testify Before House Members Regarding Religious Freedom Four representatives of CCCU member

The committee heard testimony from two

institutions testified on February 16 before

panels of witnesses. C. Ben Mitchell, Graves

the House of Representatives Committee

Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union

on Oversight and Government Reform.

University (TN), testified on the first panel,

Prompted by the Obama administration’s

which also featured witnesses from the U.S.

controversial Health and Human Services

Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Lutheran

contraceptive mandate, the lengthy

Church – Missouri Synod, Yeshiva University

hearing on “Lines Crossed: Separation

and Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, and

of Church and State. Has the Obama

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Administration Trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?” addressed basic questions of religious freedom and whether protection will be afforded to religious institutions who wish to follow their conscience in refusing to pay for products and services they find morally objectionable.

The second panel included Allison Garrett, senior vice president of academic affairs at Oklahoma Christian University (OK); Laura Champion, medical director of Calvin College Health Services (MI); Samuel W. “Dub” Oliver, president of East Texas Baptist University (TX); and the presidents of The Catholic University of America and Belmont Abbey College.

6

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

AKA |

Presidential Changes

The following institutions have experienced presidential transitions in the last year. The new presidents are listed with their start dates for each campus.

Malone University (OH): David King, January 2012 MidAmerica Nazarene University (KS): David Spittal, February 2012

Around the council

CCCU Joins Higher Education Community to Support Bill to Repeal State Authorization and Credit Hour Regulations The CCCU signed a February 27 letter sent by the American Council on Education to House members urging them to vote for H.R. 2117, the “Protecting Academic Freedom in Higher Education Act.” On February 28 the House passed the bill with a bipartisan vote of 303 to 114. The bill repeals the new federal definition of a credit hour and the federal parameters for how states must authorize the institutions that operate within their state. Both of these provisions were included in the Education Department’s “Program Integrity” rules, which were completed in 2010 and went into effect on July 1, 2011.

The two provisions have been vastly unpopular in the higher education community, as evidenced by the 51 higher education associations (including the CCCU),

Professional Development & Research CCCU Releases Research Report on Christian Higher Education In February, the CCCU published “Charting the Terrain of Christian Higher Education in America: A Profile of the Member Institutions of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities.” The research study, authored by Jesse Rine, the CCCU’s director of research and grants initiatives, provides an overview of the member institutions of the CCCU in the context of important comparative data drawn from national research databases and CCCU longitudinal studies.

In 2008, the CCCU Board of Directors adopted the Blueprint for the Future strategic plan that called on the Council to become more data-driven in its own decision-making and to generate better research and data for its member institutions. Rine’s hiring last year and this first report reflect the CCCU’s work to fulfill this mandate.

For more in-depth information about “Charting the Terrain of Christian Higher Education in America,” see the Focus on Scholarship & Research article on page 11.

seven regional accreditation organizations, and 41 other accreditation organizations that signed ACE’s letter.

A related Senate bill, S. 1297, was introduced last June but has not yet been considered by the Committee on

CCCU Sends Letters to White House Regarding Contraceptive Mandate

Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

In a March 9 letter to the White House, the CCCU expressed its continued concern about the contraceptive mandate contained in the August 3, 2011, amendment to the

CCCU Director of Research & Grants Initiatives Earns Dissertation Award Jesse Rine, the CCCU’s director of research and grants initiatives, has been awarded the 2012 Outstanding Dissertation Award by the Religion and Education Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association.

AERA, a national research society with over 25,000 members internationally, strives to advance knowledge about education, to encourage scholarly inquiry related to education, and to promote the use of research to improve education and serve the public good. The Religion and Education Special Interest Group exists to provide an academic context in which to focus on the religious, ethical, and moral dimensions of educational contexts,

Department of Health and Human Services regulations entitled Group Health Plans and Health Insurance Issuers Relating to Coverage of Preventative Services Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This mandate requires all employers,

protect religious liberty, but concern about

including religious institutions, to

the narrowness of the religious exemption

cover contraceptive services in their

in the finalized regulations, including the

health care plans, including covering

fact that the regulations create two tiers of

the contraceptives Plan B and Ella,

religious institutions.

which are widely considered to be abortion-causing drugs. Though the final regulations published on February 15 exempt churches from this mandate, the regulations do not offer exemption for other types of religious organizations, including CCCU institutions.

processes, and policies at all levels and in all

In its March letter, the CCCU expressed

types of educational institutions. Rine joined the

appreciation for the president’s desire to

Previously, the CCCU wrote a December 23, 2011, letter to President Obama opposing the limited religious protection contained in the mandate. Also, on September 30, 2011, the CCCU submitted comments opposing the contraceptive mandate to HHS, the Department of Labor, and the Internal Revenue Service.

CCCU last year. He earned his doctorate in higher education from the University of Virginia.

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

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Around the council

Student Programs Study Trip to Cuba Now Part of Curriculum for All LASP Students For more than 10 years, students and faculty of BestSemester’s Latin American Studies Program, based in San José, Costa Rica, have found Cuba to be a vibrant classroom. But until the American government lifted travel restrictions last year, only a few LASP students each semester could travel to Cuba. Now curriculum for all LASP students includes two weeks in Cuba, a trip described by alumni as one of the most formative aspects of their Latin American semester.

In Cuba, students dialogue with church

Because access to Cuba has been so limited,

leaders; interact with political leaders,

almost no other academic institution has the

educators, and economists; and visit hospitals,

history and resulting relationships that LASP

schools, and art centers. They explore how

has for facilitating study for North American

Cubans unite faith with practice in response

students in Cuba. LASP’s trips are also unique

to their challenges. According to LASP faculty,

in their efforts to explore diverse expressions

the trip to Cuba also helps students understand

of faith in Cuba.

the history of U.S.-Latin American relations and observe first-hand the social-economic-political experiment of Cuban socialism.

The LASP faculty tour May 18-28 will include time in Costa Rica and Cuba.

SSO Curriculum Recognized as Model of Best Practice A monograph to be published by the National Collegiate Honors Council has recognized the curriculum of BestSemester’s Scholars’ Semester in Oxford as a model of best practice in honors and international education. A description of the program will be included in NCHC’s monograph on model honors study abroad courses. Best Practices in Honors International Education, the monograph’s working title, will also feature an article on pedagogy in study abroad programs by Elizabeth Baigent, SSO senior tutor and associate director. “[SSO] is a rich program that encourages academic rigor. We challenge and encourage students to go beyond their existing achievements,” says SSO Director Stan

CCCU Publications

Rosenberg. “Doing study abroad is a craft. We

New Monograph on Sabbaticals for Leaders

study abroad programs can gain something

The CCCU recently released a new title in its Monograph Series, which publishes monographs in both narrative and research formats.

Sabbaticals for Leaders, by CCCU President Paul Corts, is the second title in the Monograph narrative series. The first narrative series title, Caring for the President, is also by Corts. The Monograph research series also features two titles so far.

In Sabbaticals for Leaders, Corts combines insights from his academic sabbatical with the sabbatical experiences of others in higher education to offer a practical and inspirational guide for why and how to take a leadership sabbatical. The findings of a survey of administrators at CCCU U.S. member and affiliate institutions about sabbaticals are summarized and illustrated throughout the monograph. The complete set of data is published in an appendix. Corts demonstrates that there is great value, for the leader as well as the institution, in taking a sabbatical.

must constantly revise and reflect. But if other valuable from what we are currently doing, then we are glad to be recognized.”

MESP Resumes Student Home-Stays in Israel Last year when the events of the Arab Spring made Cairo, Egypt, an uncertain base for BestSemester’s Middle East Studies Program, MESP relocated to Jerusalem, Israel. This March MESP resumed the oneweek home-stays that were an important part of the MESP curriculum in Egypt.

Home-stays help enrich and frame students’

Digital editions of Monograph publications are available for purchase through the CCCU’s Amazon

academic experience, supporting MESP’s

storefront: www.cccu.org/advance.

goal of educating students experientially and spiritually.

Hand in Hand: BestSemester & International Affiliates

“Resuming home-stays so quickly says we are committed to resuming the same high standards for cultural engagement that guided

On page 40, Advance features an article on partnerships between U.S. member campuses and international affiliates. Beyond these types of partnerships, four CCCU international affiliates also host BestSemester culture-crossing programs, contributing to the high quality of the BestSemester experience.

CSI Bishop Appasamy College of Arts & Sciences in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India, hosts BestSemester’s India Studies Program.

•

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CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

Uganda Christian University in Mukono, Uganda, hosts BestSemester’s Uganda Studies Program.

the Cairo experience, and to do it as soon as

Wesley Institute in Drummoyne, New South Wales, Australia, hosts BestSemester’s Australia Studies Centre.

Cairo, it took at least three years to develop

•

•

Wycliffe Hall in Oxford, England, hosts BestSemester’s Scholars’ Semester in Oxford and Oxford Summer Programme.

•

possible,” says David Holt, MESP director. “In home-stays according to the standard we wanted. The fact that we are launching them during our first full academic year in Israel signals the importance MESP places on maintaining the same quality program it has long been known for over the years.”

from capitol hill

Boldly Proclaiming Our Religious Mission

By Shapri D. LoMaglio, J.D.

T

wo recent high profile court cases have affirmed the religious hiring rights of religious organizations. These cases highlight important principles for maintaining and defending the freedom of religious organizations to consider religion when hiring.

The first case, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Church and School v. E.E.O.C.,i decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in January, unanimously affirmed the doctrine of the ministerial exception—that churches and religious groups have the right under both the Establishment and the Free Exercise clauses to choose their leaders unconstrained by any federal law, because the government is barred from jurisdiction in this area. Important for CCCU schools, this case affirms that there are elements of religion the government is constitutionally barred from intervening in.

The Court also established that this doctrine can be applied more broadly than to just pastors, priests, rabbis, and imams—in this case, to a church school elementary teacher. Though the Court considered as a factor that the teacher was ordained and had received religious training, they emphasized that her “job duties reflected a role in conveying the Church’s message and carrying out its mission.”

Significantly, for CCCU institutions and our shared understanding of how faith and learning are inherently connected, the Court rejected the argument that the importance of the teacher’s sacred duties was diminished by the fact that she spent the majority of her day teaching math, science, and other “secular” subjects. “The amount of time an employee spends on particular activities is relevant in assessing that employee’s status, but that factor cannot be considered in isolation, without regard to the nature of the religious functions performed,” stated Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the unanimous Court. “The issue before us…is not one that can be resolved by a stopwatch.”

The other recent case to uphold and affirm the principles of religious hiring is Spencer v. World Vision. ii The plaintiffs were former

World Vision employees dismissed after World Vision learned they no longer believed in the deity of Jesus Christ or the doctrine of the Trinity. The plaintiffs did not challenge being dismissed for religious reasons or suggest World Vision did not state clear expectations of Christian belief when hiring. Instead, they claimed World Vision was not eligible for Title VII’s exemption for “a religious corporation, association, educational institution, or society with respect to the employment of individuals of a particular religion to perform work connected with the carrying on by such [entity] of its activities.” iii The plaintiffs argued that because secular organizations provide the same or similar relief services without “discriminating” in their hiring, World Vision should not be allowed to “discriminate.” As further support for the plaintiff’s argument that World Vision was not “religious enough,” they pointed to the fact that World Vision is not owned or affiliated with a church, does not limit relief services only to co-religionists, and primarily performs the function of secular aid instead of worship, study, or dissemination of religious doctrine.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected their argument, finding instead that “World Vision is a nonprofit organization whose humanitarian relief efforts flow from a profound sense of religious mission [t]hat… is evidenced in the organizations’ founding documents. Significantly, World Vision continues to act in accordance to those documents, and it explicitly and intentionally holds itself out to the public as a religious institution.” This affirmation of the Title VII exemption for parachurch organizations performing functions also performed by secular organizations (education, adoption, etc.) is critical for CCCU institutions.

These cases serve as important reminders to CCCU institutions not to diminish but instead to

boldly and publically proclaim and display their religious mission and practices. Specifically, these cases highlight several important best practices for CCCU institutions: Ground policies in Scripture. Referencing and even quoting the scriptural reason for a policy affirms the religious basis for the policy.

•

• When a role requires a Christian commitment, make the religious functions clear in the job description and state why only someone with Christian beliefs and behavior can perform these functions.

This affirms your expectation that faculty and staff embody, not only state, Christian faithfulness. If you hire for similar positions without regard to faith, make clear why and how these jobs are different.

• Only maintain policies you intend to enforce consistently. And enforce consistently those policies you have.

Also, articulate clearly any considerations of grace and redemption your institution may consider. If grace is shown in a particular situation, document clearly why, and document each step toward redemption, so it does not appear the employee was treated preferentially, or that others are being discriminated against.

Institutions that represent and uphold our shared Christian faith may increasingly be asked to give a defense for the hope of the Christian gospel (I Peter 3:15). Employing practices of consistency, clarity, and biblical purpose will leave us better equipped to defend the institutional policies we are called to have and hold each other accountable to as faithful servants of Christ Jesus. i 132 S. Ct. 694 (2012). ii 619 F.3d 1109 (9th Cir. 2010). iii 42 U.S.C § 2000e-2(a).

Shapri D. LoMaglio is the government relations and executive programs director at the CCCU. A native of Tucson, Ariz., Shapri is a graduate of Gordon College and of the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law. CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

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R&D

Crafting a Comprehensive CCCU Research Program

by P. Jesse Rine, Ph.D

L

ast November, CCCU President Paul Corts convened a Research Roundtable to discuss future directions for the research work of the Council. The event, hosted by Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, Calif., brought together a talented and experienced group of administrators and higher education scholars from across the Council, representing a diverse range of professional perspectives, denominational traditions, and geographic areas. Participants were asked to identify specific research questions whose answers, if known, would support the work of Christian higher education, from the day-to-day operations of individual campuses to the position held by Christian colleges within the wider sector of American postsecondary education.

The two-day gathering generated a tremendous amount of high-quality research questions designed to explore the present incarnations of perennial issues affecting Christian colleges and universities. A total of 36 research questions offered by participants at the Research Roundtable were selected to form the 2012 CCCU Research Agenda, which addresses seven distinct yet related topical areas: • Contexts & Foundations – Explores the

sociological, legal, philosophical, cultural, and historical contexts of Christian higher education. Examples: How is academic freedom negotiated in the context of institutional commitment at CCCU schools?

In what ways does Christian college identity enable or impede institutional persistence?

• Policy, Finance, & Economics – Considers

Christian college affordability, student financial aid, institutional finance, state and federal regulation, and government relations.

Examples: What is the relationship between institutional tuition dependence and student debt load? How do tuition increases affect the number and quality of applications for admission at CCCU schools?

• Organization, Administration, & Leadership

– Examines institutional governance and leadership, strategic planning, organizational change, and innovation at Christian colleges.

Examples: Which organizational policies and structures promote innovation and stability at CCCU schools? What role do denominations play in institutional governance at CCCU schools?

• Faculty – Contemplates the preparation,

employment, and productivity of Christian college faculty, including their professional

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CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

roles, evaluation, and promotion. Examples: How is faculty faith integration competence supported and assessed at CCCU institutions?

What factors contribute to effective recruitment and retention of women faculty and faculty of color at CCCU institutions?

• Teaching, Learning, & Assessment –

Studies pedagogy, curricula, and assessment of student learning within Christian higher education. Examples: What do exemplary Christian college teachers share in common?

Which pedagogical practices contribute to student faith development?

• Student Access, Success, & Outcomes

– Queries Christian college student choice, persistence, completion, and post-graduation outcomes. Examples: Are students of all socioeconomic backgrounds able to access Christian higher education? What percentage of CCCU graduates find employment in their field of study?

• Student Development – Investigates how

students learn and develop cognitively, spiritually, and psycho-socially, especially in the context of the Christian college experience.

Examples: What impact does spiritual life programming make on student development?

How well are the developmental needs of students of color met at CCCU schools?

The complete 2012 CCCU Research Agenda can be found on the research section of the Council’s website (www.cccu.org/research).

As evidenced by the examples listed above, the agenda’s research questions have been crafted broadly enough to enable scholars to engage from multiple vantage points using various approaches and methodologies. The agenda is not intended to be comprehensive or definitive; in time, it is expected that a

number of the questions currently part of the agenda will be replaced by new ones as progress is made and as additional challenges arise. However, we are confident that the collective efforts of those who attended the Research Roundtable have resulted in the identification of the most pressing issues presently facing Christian higher education and have, in turn, provided a clear direction for the Council’s research program going forward.

So how exactly do we accomplish this ambitious research agenda? Simply put, it will require leadership and support from CCCU staff in Washington, D.C., combined with engagement on the part of our campuses.

In practice, this translates to the Council continuing to conduct large-scale research on the most pressing issues facing our members. One current example of this level of involvement is the Council’s work on spiritual formation, a project that has already engaged multiple constituencies to craft a common definition for spiritual formation and that looks to eventually provide common assessments for student spiritual development.

Because the number of questions posed in the agenda is greater than the Council’s own capacity for research, the participation of our member institutions and their scholars will be essential to our success. This engagement may take many forms, from a campus participating in a longitudinal study that contributes to a national dataset, to a scholar lending personal expertise, to a research team convened by the CCCU. As we strive in the coming months to establish formal mechanisms for leveraging the tremendous collective expertise represented on our campuses, the purpose of the CCCU’s research program will remain thus: to advance the cause of Christ-centered higher education.

P. Jesse Rine, Ph.D., is the CCCU’s director of research & grants initiatives. A graduate of Grove City College, Jesse also holds a master’s degree in teaching in Latin from Washington University in St. Louis and a doctorate in higher education from the University of Virginia.

FOCUS ON SCHOLARSHIP & RESEARCH

Do You Know the Numbers?

Key Findings from the CCCU Report

By Ronald P. Mahurin, Ph.D

Charting The Terrain of

Christian Higher Education in America P

erhaps at no other time in the history of American higher education has there been more attention given to the “numbers.” The rising costs of higher education, declining state and federal support of higher education, increases in student borrowing for college, concerns about access and achievement gaps between different groups of students—each of these and many other realities mean colleges and universities of all sizes and types are increasingly focused on the cost, access, affordability, and sustainability of the model of higher education that has dominated the American landscape for more than a century.

So what do our numbers tell us about Christian higher education in the United States?

The recently released CCCU research study “Charting the Terrain of Christian Higher Education in America” is designed to provide an overview of the member institutions of the CCCU, helping to situate our campuses in the broader context of American higher education.

Undertaken at the direction and leadership of Dr. Jesse Rine, the CCCU’s director of research and grants initiatives, this profile is organized into eight chapters and is full of important comparative data drawn from national research databases, including the Department of Education’s Integrated Post-Secondary Education Data System (IPEDS), along with multiple longitudinal studies conducted by the CCCU covering a range of areas. The study focuses on the U.S. member campuses of the CCCU as of fall 2011.

In addition to regional diversity, there is rich diversity of Christian church traditions and denominations. Today the CCCU represents 28 distinct denominations drawn from a broad range of theological traditions. From Anabaptist, Anglican, Calvinist, and Lutheran branches of the Protestant Reformation, the “tree” of North American CCCU colleges and universities has blossomed into a rich representation of the Protestant church.

Institutional Diversity For many in the higher education community, it may come as some surprise to learn that the CCCU membership represents richness and diversity across a number of factors. Represented in each region of the country, the membership has grown from 38 campuses in 16 states in 1976 to 110 members in 36 states.

Further adding to this diversity is the range of institutional types, as defined by the Carnegie Classification system. Nearly half of Continued on Page 13 >>

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FOCUS ON SCHOLARSHIP & RESEARCH all Council members are classified as Baccalaureate Colleges, either Arts & Sciences or Diverse Fields, a reality reflecting the requirement that all CCCU members offer a comprehensive undergraduate curriculum grounded in the arts and sciences. However, the Council also includes 39 members designated as Master’s Colleges & Universities—small, medium, and large programs—and four Doctoral/Research Universities, each awarding at least 20 research doctorates annually.

Faculty While CCCU faculty are not as diverse as faculty in the rest of higher education, the study’s data includes some encouraging news regarding the composition of CCCU faculty, who number over 20,000 on our member campuses.

On gender diversity, as of fall 2009, women represented 42.9 percent of all postsecondary faculty in the United States. On CCCU campuses women represented 38.4 percent of all faculty. While this gender gap persists, the good news is that CCCU schools are making progress in closing it, with a net increase in female faculty of 11.4 percent from fall 2001 to fall 2009. Work still needs to be done in the area of promotion and tenure, though, as the majority of male faculty in tenure track positions were tenured (62.3 percent), yet less than half (48 percent) of women faculty in similar full-time positions were tenured.

In the area of racial and ethnic diversity, CCCU members have made important gains in the past decade, appointing faculty from diverse backgrounds at a rate that outpaced the overall growth of the faculty ranks. Yet a diversity gap also persists at CCCU campuses when compared to the rest of private higher education. For example, in fall 2007, 19.4 percent of full-time faculty at all private fouryear institutions identified as members of an underrepresented racial or ethnic group, compared with only 8.7 percent of faculty at CCCU member campuses that same year.

Students With over 323,000 students attending our 110 U.S. campuses in 2009-10, total enrollment, including both traditional

and adult learning populations, at CCCU member campuses has grown at an average rate of 9.8 percent during the last decade. In contrast, the average admissions yield rate, the percentage of students who actually enrolled, dropped from 46 percent for all CCCU members in 2002 to just 35 percent in 2010, a trend one might expect given the increased competition for students across all sectors of American postsecondary education.

The profile of our students exhibits both stability and change over time. While the gender composition of CCCU campuses’ student bodies remained stable at 40 percent men and 60 percent women for the period of 2001-2007, student populations at Council institutions did become more racially diverse. White student enrollment increased by 4.2 percent, while students identifying as Native American, Asian, African American, and Hispanic increased by an average of 12 percent, 28.7 percent, 62.4 percent, and 38.2 percent, respectively. Yet on average, 80 percent of all students enrolled at CCCU campuses identified as White, compared to 71 percent at all private nonprofit institutions during this same period. Thus, just as in the faculty profile, CCCU campuses continue to have a racial-ethnic diversity gap compared to all of private nonprofit higher education.

Finances Compared to our counterparts in private higher education as a whole, CCCU institutions are significantly more financially dependent upon student tuition and fees as a percentage of institutional revenue. As is the case at many small, private colleges dedicated primarily to undergraduate instruction, Council schools are heavily tuition dependent, meaning that student tuition and fees constitute a large percentage of institutional revenue. On average, tuition and fees accounted for 60 percent of all revenues at CCCU institutions in 2007-08, versus only 36 percent of all revenues at all private nonprofit four-year institutions. If you include auxiliary enterprises (17 percent CCCU versus 9 percent all privates)—selfsupporting operations that furnish a service to students, faculty, or staff for a fee, such as residence halls, food services, student health services, college stores, etc.—more than three quarters of the average annual

revenue at CCCU institutions is provided by students. Consequently, successful student recruitment is absolutely vital to the financial survival of most CCCU institutions.

Telling the stories What stories do these numbers tell about Christian higher education in America? As is the case with any large set of data, many different stories may be told. This study is not intended to draw specific conclusions or recommendations for particular changes or decisions on our member campuses. Ours is a rich, diverse, and complex group of Christcentered colleges and universities, or as we like to say sometimes, “We’re a pretty big tent in the CCCU.” Our goal in publishing what is the first of many planned studies on various elements of Christian higher education is to provide an overview and context for individual campuses to evaluate where they stand both in relation to fellow CCCU campuses and to the broader world of higher education.

These are truly challenging times for higher education, and campus leaders—faculty, administration, board, and staff members together—need to be informed not simply by the numbers, but by the significance of the work each campus has been called to undertake in this critical work of Christian higher education.

While the “Charting the Terrain” study doesn’t purport to have all the answers, we do hope this resource, and others to follow, will help each campus focus on those things that will help them move toward institutional flourishing where all members of the academic community are fully engaged in the high calling of Christ-centered teaching and learning.

Copies of “Charting the Terrain of Christian Higher Education in America” can be purchased for $5 each (plus S&H) by contacting Andrea Kiser, administrative assistant to the president, at akiser@cccu.org.

Ronald P. Mahurin, Ph.D., is the CCCU’s vice president for professional development & research. A graduate of Gordon College, Ron also holds a master’s degree and doctorate from Miami University of Ohio. He has served in faculty and administrative roles at Westmont College, Gordon College, and Houghton College.

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

13

By the Right Reverend Professor Dr. N. T. Wright

Thank you for the honor you have done me with this invitation and especially this award. I never had the privilege of meeting the late Sen. Mark Hatfield. But

N.T. Wright delivered this plenary address during the CCCU’s Presidents Conference in February where he was awarded the

having read and heard about him, I realize all the more just what an honor it is you have conferred on me. Politics and society

2012 Sen. Mark O. Hatfield Leadership Award. Wright is the

are increasingly and dangerously polarized

former Bishop of Durham in the Church of England, one of the

here and worldwide, and we urgently

world’s leading Bible scholars, and a prolific author. He now

need mature Christian wisdom such as

serves as the chair of New Testament and Early Christianity at

that of Sen. Hatfield, able to challenge the

the School of Divinity at the University of St. Andrews.

false extremes and to be a voice of sober reflection and reconciliation in the midst of shrill rhetoric and recrimination. May

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CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

christ and culture

Christ and Culture:

The Challenge of Tomorrow’s World don’t seem to work how they were supposed to. This is a tough time to be a leader in any walk of life.

I begin there because Christian leaders sometimes suppose that their own challenges are unique. Of course, there are unique he rest in peace and rise in glory, and may God raise up a new

elements. But many pressure points which we—you!—feel are

generation with the same fearless, Christ-centered passion for

things we share with leaders in politics, in medicine, business,

public service.

diplomacy, and international relations, here and abroad. Old

We need this especially because tomorrow’s world poses a challenge to all of us, whatever our faith or lack of it. The world is changing as well as shrinking; events have forced us radically to revise our assumptions about where things were going. I think of Francis Fukuyama’s suggestion that history had ended with the triumph of liberal democracy. Things haven’t worked out like that, as Fukuyama himself has acknowledged. Many countries have seen the chance of genuine democracy come and go. Others have voted enthusiastically, but have chosen parties and policies that

certainties have been eroded past recognition. The danger in any of these worlds, perhaps particularly in your world of Christian colleges and universities, is to cling to past certainties.

We rightly affirm the unchangeability of God himself, but we too readily construe that in terms of our own desire for stability and continuity, both personal and institutional. Every generation faces this danger. But I think our own challenges, as the postmodern world produces more surprises and confusions, are of a different kind from any we have seen in my lifetime at least.

seem anathema to us. The world is confusing and puzzling. The

You might guess from this introduction that I am going to

solutions we in the West thought were ours to bestow on the world

encourage you to be bold in facing these challenges and finding

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

15

struggle hard, as we see in Paul, to figure out what following him would mean in relation to their traditional Jewish way of life. But that struggle was small compared to the larger one. If Israel’s Messiah is the Lord of the world then the line between Christ and culture, between the Messiah and the mores of the world, is a line not simply between two different ways of life but between the ambitious and powerful pagan world as a whole and the man, the human embodiment of Israel’s God, who claimed to be the rightful lord and master of that world. It isn’t simply a matter of navigating between competing pressures. It’s about being loyal to Jesus as new ways forward, and you’d be right. But I am certainly not a “change-for-change’s-sake” person. I went to a boarding school with compulsory worship morning and evening and twice on Sundays. I then attended Oxford University, whose motto, “Dominus Illuminatio Mea,” may have been honored in the breach but was still there to encourage many of us to build on Christian foundations. For much of my life, I have been a member and office-holder in the established Church of England. I have been richly blessed by all of this and have never felt the itch to embrace iconoclasm or sudden revolution for its own sake.

Christian educational institutions can, of course, find it hard to stick with the original vision. In Oxford, you might say, only slightly tongue in cheek, that the rot began with two 19th-century decisions: first, when College Fellows were no longer required to subscribe to the 39 Articles of the Church of England (1854) and, second, when they were allowed to marry (1860s). Tests of belief and behavior; we might draw the lines differently, but actually the challenges you face now are not that unlike the earlier challenges faced by devout and learned folk wrestling with new times and situations. So I want to offer you some map-work to help you see what is going on when Christian institutions face new questions both about their internal life and about their relation to their wider contexts.

the true Lord of the world and believing, in consequence, that his way of life is what the world most truly needs. It is, in other words, an agenda for mission and service. But since Jesus’ way of life is precisely the way of self-giving love, that mission and service can never be about imposing a would-be Christian policy or ethic on an unwilling or unready public, but rather allowing Jesus’ way of bringing his kingdom to be at work through us and in us. The church at its best has always sought to transform society from within. That, I take it, is the work to which Mark Hatfield devoted his life. I am encouraged by his example to press on in exploring what this will mean in tomorrow’s dangerous world.

The early Christian answers shifted this way and that, partly in response to the position the local culture itself took. When Paul was in Greece, a leading magistrate ruled that Christianity was an internal division within Judaism. Since Judaism was legally permitted, there was no problem with Christianity either.

The Greek church was then able to grow without state interference. However, in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) there was a problem. Most Christians were ex-pagans, and following Jesus meant not worshipping the local deities anymore. But the local deities now included the imperial cult. The Jewish people had official exemption from pagan worship, including imperial worship. But when the Christians opted out as well, the trouble started. Pressure was put on the Jewish community, and the

Christ and Culture: Introductory Reflections

Y

ou are called, I believe, to live and work at one particular sharp edge of the much larger fault line we refer to as “Christ and culture.” Let me sketch

having them circumcised. It’s complicated, isn’t it? But no more complicated than the situation of many Christians in today’s world, and increasingly of Christian citizens and institutions in our own world. Where do you draw the line? What counts as compromise? Take heart: these questions are not new.

briefly how that fault line has shifted over time.

They are as old as the gospel itself. The fact that you face them

The fault line between Christ and culture has been there ever since

This is Christian normality. And Jesus remains sovereign over it.

Jesus’ own public career, and particularly ever since Easter. Jesus fulfilled Israel’s age-old hope but not in the way anyone expected or wanted. The fault lines apparent during his public career were even stronger after his resurrection, and his first followers had to

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Jewish Christians as well, to bring the ex-pagans into line by

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

today doesn’t mean you’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere.

In fact, by struggling with those questions, the early church was living out its own version of what the Jewish people had been doing ever since the exile. They moved to and fro along a spectrum.

Sometimes their pagan rulers were helpful, such as when Cyrus

Christ and culture

gave the command to rebuild the Temple.

Sometimes they weren’t, as when Antiochus Epiphanes tried to stamp out the Jewish food laws or when Hadrian tried to ban circumcision. The book of Daniel shows the full range, from violent persecution to promotion within the civil service. The questions then press thick and fast, as they did for both Jews and Christians in the pagan diaspora: What counts as loyalty and disloyalty? What counts as dangerous

“If I was running a Christian college or university, this is the first thing I would be praying for: that every single student would realize that this is their calling and would be equipped for a lifetime of making it come true.”

compromise, and what counts as wise flexibility? When do you resist, when do you run away, when do you stay and try to improve things from within, and when do you stay and face martyrdom? How do you know, and who says?

The New Testament as a whole suggests that it is part of normal Christian life to face

the growth of certain institutions within that,

enslaving monks and pillaging treasures.

what were they then to do when the empire

Many monks fled, taking Cuthbert’s body

itself came under attack?

with them. They wandered around with Cuthbert for over 200 years, stopping here

these questions. A quick flip through 1 Peter

Though you in America have often

or Revelation would indicate that the

denounced Constantinianism, you have

Christian’s normal state is to be out of sorts

nevertheless lived for many years within

with the rulers and authorities, which is

a state which has allowed the church

why it’s all the more important, as Peter

considerably more room to be itself than

insists, that Christians should be blameless

it has been in many states across time

in all things except their faith and what it

and space, including many today. If that

requires. If they’re going to attack us, at least

is now starting to change, as it certainly is

let them attack us—like Darius’s men with

in my country, I suspect that our Lenten

Daniel—for the right reasons. And when we

or Easter reading should include a fresh

get into the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries, we

look at Augustine’s City of God, one of

find a wide variety of stances, as the church

the great theological treatises of all time.

made its way deep into pagan society,

it’s going to be harder from now on (Luke

Augustine was writing in precisely that kind

sometimes incurring massive opposition,

22:35-38, ending with the cryptic word

of situation, pondering the certainties of

persecution, torture, and martyrdom, and

about the two swords). The church always

God and the gospel within a world that had

sometimes not. You in America are, I think,

has to reckon with the possibility that Jesus

suddenly become radically uncertain, with

may say the same to us as well.

more worried than we English often are about the Constantinian settlement. Perhaps that’s because you identify it somewhat too closely with George III sending bishops to the colonies in the 1770s. But of course the Constantinian settlement was itself deeply

the barbarians at the gates. I’m not sure Augustine got the answers right, but these were and are normal Christian questions to face. If they are new to us, that constitutes a vocation to learn and to grow.

and there, but eventually coming to rest in Durham. The monks had to accept that after an early period of stability and rich blessing they should go out into the unknown, only finding a new permanent home after several generations. Like the wilderness tabernacle, God was on the move. Their task was not to look nostalgically over their shoulders at more stable days, but to go with him and see what he would do next. As Jesus once said to the disciples, it was easy before, but

Jump forward several centuries and ponder the 16th and 17th centuries, when the church found itself having to adapt and do what could be done within widely differing social and political circumstances

ambiguous. It was easy to be a shallow,

I cherish a particular example of this.

of different countries and regimes. I have

nominal Christian, but it was possible, too, for

England was evangelized from the island

heard that some English Christians in the

a bishop to challenge an emperor in relation

monastery at Lindisfarne, just off the

17th century even decided to set sail and

to state policy, for instance over the use of

northeast coast. Lindisfarne, under leaders

go elsewhere, and I sometimes wonder

the death penalty. And when the empire had

like Aidan and Cuthbert, became a place of

what became of them. Did they find a

become Christian, and the Christians had

holiness, wisdom, spirituality, and mission.

home? Did they suppose it would never

become used to a certain way of life and

And yet the Vikings came and raided it,

happen again?

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

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Christ and culture

The famous institutions which you represent

He is the image of God, the invisible one,

have been founded, and have thrived, in

The firstborn of all creation.

very different circumstances. Yet no times are neutral. The purest commonwealths

For in him all things were created,

set up by the most devout Christians have

In the heavens and here on the earth.

quickly led to problems and puzzles. The

Things we can see and things we cannot—

danger, therefore, is that when Christians

Thrones and lordships and rulers and powers—

find themselves able to settle down and develop a sustained and coherent life, they

All things were created both through him and for him.

regard that as the norm and imagine that if

And so on. We need to let Paul remind us, precisely when major cultural change is upon

things change it’s a sign that something has

us, that our confidence is not in the solidity of Western culture or the basic goodness of

gone very wrong. Yet times do change, and change suddenly. In my own country the

modern democracy. Our confidence is in

a priori. God made the world to be looked

Roman Catholic church has for many years

Jesus himself and him alone. We need

after by human beings; that’s part of being

run very successful adoption agencies, but

this message ourselves, with every fiber

made in God’s image.

our last government suddenly decided on

of our beings. And we need to generate

new rules which the Catholics were unable

and sustain communities and educational

in conscience to accept, and suddenly

institutions where this extraordinary,

they found themselves having to shut down

breathtaking, ridiculous truth is woven into

rather than compromise. A quiet social

the very fabric of all we do.

disaster which nobody saw coming. I gather similar things have happened here, too.

purposes to bring order and harmony to his world through human agents, though of course, because they are still rebels, that order and harmony often becomes sterile,

Some, of course, might see this great

dehumanizing tyranny. God still takes that

claim as entailing the shutting down of all

risk. But within this world of rebels and risks,

So what are the starting points for wise

academic inquiry: Christ is the answer, [so]

God has established in the Messiah, Jesus,

Christian reflection on where we are and how

what’s the point of asking the question? I

a new people who are his body, the place

we can take courage to face the confusions

see it exactly the other way around: Jesus

where his glory already shines in the world.

and challenges of tomorrow’s world? In

is Lord of the world, so all truth is his truth;

The church is not simply a “religious” body

addition to the whole achievement of Jesus

let’s go and explore it with reverence and

looking for a safe place to do its own thing

delight. Whether you look through the

within a wider “political” or “social” world.

telescope or the microscope, whether

The church is neither more nor less than

you study texts or traditions, whether it’s

the people who bear witness, by their very

oceanography or palaeography, you are

existence and in particular [by] their holiness

thinking Jesus’ thoughts after him.

and their unity (Colossians 3), that Jesus

himself, whose consequences I have tried to spell out in my recent book Simply Jesus, I want to touch on two passages: Paul’s letter to the Colossians and the gospel of John.

These texts will provide a platform for the specific things I want to say to you today.

In particular, Paul declares—despite languishing in prison!—that all rulers and

Christ, Culture, and Colosse

P

aul’s letter to Colosse

authorities were created through and for Jesus the Messiah. We are called today to think afresh what that might mean in

carries an explosive

terms of modern Western democracy.

charge in inverse

What has Colossians 1 to do with the

is the world’s true Lord, ridiculous or even scandalous though this may seem. If I was running a Christian college or university, this is the first thing I would be praying for: that every single student would realize that this is their calling and would be equipped for a lifetime of making it come true.

present wrangling in the European Union

The danger, as you all well know, is that

and Britain’s edgy position in relation to it?

though we in the West have retained our

Paul wrote it from prison. When

What, to take another random example,

distinctive Christian witness in some areas,

he makes his sweeping and all-

has Colossians to do with primary polls

we have undoubtedly compromised it in

embracing statements about

and party structures, expensive advertising

others. It is part of the basic Enlightenment

and showpiece debates? For Paul it wasn’t

settlement, to which your country gave

Jesus, he knows he is flying in the face of

a matter of looking at a particular political

explicit allegiance in your Declaration

the apparent realities. And yet he doesn’t

structure and assessing how well or badly

and Constitution and to which mine gives

hold back:

it might serve God’s purposes. This was an

backhanded allegiance in a thousand

proportion to its short length.

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Even though humans rebelled, God still

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

Christ and culture

unwritten ways, that “the church” should

creation/evolution debate generates so much

recently to Abraham Kuyper and ultimately

step back from public life and do its own

heat in America—far more than anywhere

to Paul himself; but in doing so he, and they,

thing in private. This reflects exactly the

else—is that people can hear all the other

stand out firmly against the great division

latent Epicurean philosophy which has

overtones—social, cultural, and political—

which has come upon us in the West.

been such a feature of mainstream Western

which it throws off. The idea of God having

thought since at least the 15th century but

anything to do with the ongoing process of

with a crescendo in the 18th and 19th:

the world flies in the face of all that Western

God, or the gods, are a long way away, and

culture has stood for, including Western

the world will get on under its own steam,

Christian culture.

whether through an immanent process of

But taking this stand is dangerous.

Attacks do not usually come head-on.

Satan regularly disguises himself as an angel of light. Every time a church, or a Christian organization, hears the reminder

biological evolution or a democratic system

But Paul would have no truck with that. The

that it is dealing with “spiritual” matters

without interference from above. Within

reason he was in prison was precisely that he

and must back off and let the world run

that worldview, the church can purchase its

was announcing, and teaching people to live

everything else, we may not glimpse the

independence by colluding with the implied

by, a message in which Jesus claimed all the

horns, the hooves, and the pointy tail, but

pagan philosophy. All right, we say, if God

ultimate rights over every aspect of life. C. S.

and the world are split so far apart, we’ll just

Lewis famously summed this up by saying

do the “God” bit, giving people a private

that there was no neutral ground in the

spirituality in the present and a blissful hope

universe. Every square inch, he wrote, every

for the future but not engaging in radical

split second, is claimed by God and counter-

questioning of the systems that result. I

claimed by Satan. Lewis was echoing the

suspect that one of the reasons why the

view of many Christian thinkers, going back

the challenge to the lordship of Jesus the Messiah is real nonetheless. And, knowing little about your specific institutions but a certain amount about the Western culture we share, I ask myself, and I ask you, whether the problems of this new Continued on Page 53 >>

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Contraceptive mandate

Christian Colleges Challenge ‘Contraceptive Mandate’ as Unconstitutional

From Left: John H. Garvey, president of The Catholic University of America; William K.Thierfelder, president of Belmont Abbey College; Samuel W. “Dub” Oliver, president of East Texas Baptist University; Allison Garrett, senior vice president for academic affairs at Oklahoma Christian University; and Laura Champion, medical director of Calvin College Health Services

By Joy Pullmann

T

hree CCCU member institutions have filed suit against the federal government for requiring their health insurance plans to cover abortifacients and sterilization, on the grounds

that this requirement violates their First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion and freedom of speech and violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA). Several other CCCU

schools are expected to file similar suits. That so many institutions have filed suit on the same issue is unprecedented in CCCU history.

In August 2011, the Obama administration issued a rule, pursuant to the 2010 health care law, that requires all employers to provide health insurance that covers all forms of contraceptives and sterilization at no cost to the recipient. In addition to traditional forms of birth control, the FDA also classifies Plan B, the “morning after pill,” and Ella, the “week after pill,” as contraceptives, though many religious people consider them to be abortion-causing drugs, otherwise known as abortifacients.

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CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

“This is all about who pays for morally objectionable medicine

letters directly to the White House regarding the CCCU’s position. “While

that is cheap and widely available,” says Alliance Defense Fund

our schools take different positions on the services mandated by the

attorney Greg Baylor. ADF is representing two CCCU members

regulations [contraception, emergency contraception, and sterilization],

in lawsuits challenging the mandate: Geneva College in Beaver

they are united in their belief that compelling those with a religious

Falls, Pa., and Louisiana College, located in Pineville, La.

objection to support services that their religious convictions forbid

“Most CCCU schools are pro-life and think the destruction of a human being in its mother’s womb is morally wrong and sinful,” Baylor says. “Many, if not most, of them believe that facilitating

violates the Constitution,” he wrote. Thirty CCCU presidents signed a December 21 letter to President Obama organized by the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance.

that by paying for abortion-causing drugs is inappropriate and biblically wrong.”

At time of publication, including the three suits by CCCU institutions, lawsuits against the “contraceptive mandate” have been filed by seven religious organizations, one private business owner, and seven states.

More than a dozen state attorneys have signed a joint letter to the Department of Health and Human Services protesting its decision.

Compromises and exceptions Following a national outcry and vigorous lobbying by the Roman Catholic Church, Protestant denominations, members of Congress, and religious organizations, including the CCCU, on February 10 the administration held a press conference to issue what it called a compromise. It said that instead of requiring religious employers

After filing September 30 comments to HHS objecting to the new rule,

to pay for contraceptives, it would require their health insurance

on December 23, CCCU President Paul Corts sent the first of two

companies to provide that coverage for free.

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

21

Contraceptive mandate

Top Left: Allison Garrett, senior vice president for academic affairs at Oklahoma Christian University Top Right: C. Ben Mitchell, Graves Professor of Moral History at Union University Bottom: From left is Rep. Justin Amash (MI-3) and James Lankford (OK-5).

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CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

Contraceptive mandate

This publicly-stated compromise did not, however, change the final published regulation the administration issued, which was the same as the version released before the compromise was announced. The mandate does contain a “religious exemption,” but legal experts such as Allison Garrett, a lawyer and head of academic affairs for Oklahoma Christian University in Edmond, Okla., say it only applies to houses of worship, not to parachurch organizations like schools or

“Unfortunately, the hearing was a good example of how political white noise can sometimes drown out the real issue...Here, the real issue is: is there another way for the government to achieve its goal [of cost-free access to contraception and sterilization] without trampling religious liberty?”

hospitals.

Shapri D. LoMaglio Government Relations & Executive Programs Director CCCU

“The exemption is the narrowest definition that’s ever been in the law,” she explains.

“If Catholic organizations can be forced by our federal government to give contraception when they’ve taught against that for hundreds of years, what can’t the federal government do that infringes on our First Amendment rights?”

In the CCCU’s second letter to

Congress holds a hearing

The other narrative to emerge from the hearing was that these religious leaders were

President Obama, sent March 9, Corts

On February 16 the House of

expounded, “First and foremost among

Representatives held a hearing entitled

our objections is that the framework

“Lines Crossed: Separation of Church

of this accommodation will create two

and State. Has the Obama Administration

tiers of religious groups: ones which

Trampled on Freedom of Religion and

are exempt and ones which are merely

Freedom of Conscience?” Ministers and

accommodated. We believe the role of

leaders from religious institutions, including

separating religious groups into two tiers,

Garrett and three other representatives

groups that are religious enough to be

from CCCU schools, testified against the

exempt and groups that are deemed

mandate at the hearing.

religious liberties.

Though the first panel to testify was

Most Protestant organizations testifying

composed of five male clergy, Garrett and

and filing lawsuits have done so not over

Laura Champion, an M.D. and medical

traditional forms of birth control, but over

director of Calvin College Health Services

having their constitutional rights violated

in Grand Rapids, Mich., sat behind them

by being forced to include coverage of

awaiting their turn on the second panel.

Plan B and Ella in insurance plans they

However, when Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y.,

provide, despite their religious objections

complained that women were not present in a

to what these drugs do. “Many Christians

less religious and must therefore only be ‘accommodated,’ is not an appropriate role for the federal government…We believe this is a precedent that could have long-term harmful effects on faith-based organizations, that are neither churches nor run by churches, yet are just as deeply committed to the principles of their faith as are centers of worship.”

waging a “war on women’s health care.”

However, all of the organizations testifying before Congress said they have no objection to providing birth control for women using it to manage disease, and most of their current health plans cover such use. Champion says women can “receive the health care they need and deserve” without infringing on

discussion about women’s health, and when

recognize conception as a unique human

Speaking for the CCCU, Corts wrote, “We

the Democratic representatives subsequently

life, even in the un-implanted state,

believe the only real solution is to include

left the room to hold a press conference

deserving of human protection,” Champion

religious colleges and universities, and

saying women hadn’t testified, that became

explains. “Many believe that conception

their student health plans, in the category

the dominant media narrative. “We [women]

starts as a fertilized egg, and therefore

of exempt organizations, with some new

were on the agenda from the beginning,

medications that may prevent a fertilized

method devised to further the policy goal

and that we would be testifying was known,”

egg from implantation would be causing

of cost-free access to contraceptives.”

Garrett notes.

iatrogenic abortions.”

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

23

Contraceptive mandate

The two primary narratives that emerged

religious or moral objections to elements

as a fertilized egg (pre-implantation),”

in media coverage of the hearing distracted

of the health care law to opt out of that

explains Champion. “Therefore, when

from its original intent of focusing on the

coverage and instead to offer additional

HHS added these drugs to the list of FDA-

religious liberty violations initiated by

coverage of equal value for other services

approved contraceptives, they did not allow

the contraceptive mandate, says Shapri

not found objectionable by the provider.

religious institutions to opt out; thereby, they

D. LoMaglio, the CCCU’s government

Many senators viewed the “moral objection”

infringed on our religious liberty.”

relations and executive programs director.

provision as too wide, and on March 1 the

“Unfortunately, the hearing was a good

Senate voted against the bill, 51-48.

example of how political white noise can Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., has also

from substantially burdening religious

adds. “Here, the real issue is: is there

filed H.R. 1179 to repeal the contraceptive

exercise unless the government has a

another way for the government to achieve

mandate.

compelling interest and employs the least

sometimes drown out the real issue,” she

its goal [of cost-free access to contraception and sterilization] without trampling religious liberty? As there are multiple alternative ways for the administration to accomplish its goal, its use of federal power to force religious organizations to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs is an unconstitutional burden on the free exercise of their religion.”

If HHS doesn’t change the regulation, lawsuits may provide relief. The filed lawsuits cite violations of First Amendment free exercise and free speech protections, says Emily Hardman, communications director and attorney for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty,

Legal and legislative options Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who previously

restrictive means possible. Even though the government has coercive power to, say, set speed limits and punish theft, for it to abrogate constitutional rights requires an extremely strong justification, Baylor notes.

“The government’s justification here is totally lacking.”

which is representing Colorado Christian University, located in Lakewood, Colo., and several other organizations in lawsuits against the mandate.

Uncertain future Institutions that do not comply with the mandate must pay a fine of at least $2,000

served as president of CCCU member

“The administration and HHS mandate does

per employee each year. That could

Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Mo.,

not acknowledge the right for those working

bankrupt some institutions, Garrett says.

introduced legislation to allow providers with

at religious institutions to identify conception

The administration’s compromise also

Rep. Darrell E. Issa (CA-49), Chairman, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

24

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, or RFRA, prevents the government

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

Contraceptive mandate

does nothing for schools that self-insure, she explains, since such institutions pay their employees’ health costs directly and cannot transfer birth control costs to their insurer. For schools that don’t self-insure,

Statements from testimony given before the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

not only does the ethical conflict remain, but they will still pay for the disputed services through higher premiums. “Just as the government can’t swoop in and take your property without compensation, the idea an insurance company will provide a benefit for free is not the real world,” Garrett says.

On March 16 the administration announced intent to extend the terms of the compromise to self-insured institutions and to student plans that are contracted through third-party providers. However, until these yet-to-beproposed changes are finalized, CCCU institutions remain unsure whether the compromise will fully accommodate them.

In March the Supreme Court heard arguments on several aspects of the 2010 health care bill, and the Court’s decision, expected in June, may impact

Four representatives of CCCU member institutions testified on February 16 before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Prompted by the Obama administration’s controversial Health and Human Services contraceptive mandate, the lengthy hearing on “Lines Crossed: Separation of Church and State. Has the Obama Administration Trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?” addressed basic questions of religious freedom and whether protection will be afforded to religious institutions who wish to follow their conscience in refusing to pay for products and services they find morally objectionable.

“This issue is not about women’s health, it

Requiring a religiously-affiliated employer to

is about religious liberty. It is about whether

fund abortifacients that are viewed by it and

the government will force religious people

by many of its employees as the destruction

and organizations to do something they

of a human life violates our right to the free

believe is wrong. Everyone here wants

exercise of our religious beliefs.”

women to have access to good health care.

We are asking that our religious views be respected.”

-Allison Garrett, senior vice president of academic affairs at Oklahoma Christian University in Edmond, Oklahoma

-Samuel W. “Dub” Oliver, president of East Texas Baptist University in Marshall, Texas

“The policy [requiring the health insurance provided by most religious institutions,

the contraceptive mandate. Until then, the legal pieces will likely continue to shift,

“Even when Americans hold vastly different

including CCCU institutions, to cover

and the mandate itself will likely land in

views on the sanctity of life, this mandate

all FDA-approved contraceptives] is an

the Supreme Court if no redress happens

raises a point that should be examined by

unconscionable intrusion by the state into

elsewhere first, Hardman says.

all: do we value religious freedom in our

the consciences of American citizens…

country or not?...A government that is of the

Contrary to portrayals in some of the

“The right to worship and believe is

people, by the people, and for the people,

popular media, this is not only a Catholic

a fundamental human right that no

should not force the people to violate their

issue. All people of faith—and even those

government can deny,” she says. “A

consciences.”

who claim no faith—have a stake in whether

threat to one religious minority or set of beliefs is a threat to everyone. If the

-Dr. Laura Champion, medical director of

Obama administration can [disregard]

Calvin College Health Services in Grand

all these religious protections, what can’t

Rapids, Michigan

the government do? This is not about contraception, this is about freedom.”

For the February 16 hearing video, the witnesses’ written testimonies, and all of the CCCU’s correspondence to the administration on this issue,

or not the government can violate the consciences of its citizenry. Religious liberty and the freedom to obey one’s conscience is also not just a Baptist issue. It is an American issue that is enshrined in our

“Just as many pharmacists choose not to dispense abortion-causing drugs because to do so violates their core religious beliefs, we do not believe abortifacients should be covered in our University health plan.

founding documents.”

- C. Ben Mitchell, Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee

visit www.cccu.org/advance.

Joy Pullmann is managing editor of School Reform News and an education research fellow at The Heartland Institute.

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

25

A Northwest adult education program student receives his degree. (Image courtesy of Northwest University)

By Luke Reiter

I

t used to be a simple process: the seeds of a CCCU school’s alumni relations were planted in the classroom, embedded in a high-quality, Christ-centered education molding students

as scholars and individuals. With gentle prompts after graduation, many of those students would recall the campus experience with gratitude and return the favor as donors and honorary recruiters.

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CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

alumni relations

All in the Alumni Family— Nontraditional and Online Graduates, Too

With online programs and satellite classrooms expanding, CCCU institutions are looking for better ways to relate to alumni of their nontraditional programs.

“I think the challenge is that most of our

Last year the school saw its online

nontraditional alumni have never set foot

enrollment exceed 1,000 students for the

on our traditional campus, so they’re less

first time, compared to a total classroom

emotionally attached to our campus than

student body of 3,000, including

our traditional alumni,” Steed says.

adult learners and graduate students.

Janet Ragland, director for university

Nontraditional alumni already rival their

relations, says so far the labor-intensive,

traditional peers in number with about

low-yield process of reaching out to

15,000 of each.

nontraditionals has kept LeTourneau from adapting its outreach strategies significantly.

“The traditional tend to give at a rate about

Nontraditional contributions from nontraditional alumni

But as more students earn their degrees

10 times more than the nontraditional, so it

later in life through accelerated programs,

really makes more sense to focus on those

The contrast between the two groups has

campuses are facing a new variable in the

that have that stronger emotional tie and

been less distinct at Northwest University,

once simple equation. How can they expect

tend to be givers,” Ragland says.

in Kirkland, Wash., although alumni director

alumni to become the face of an institution they themselves have never physically

But both Steed and Ragland say

Dustin Shirley says nontraditional alumni

that approach can’t last. LeTourneau

relate to their alma mater differently. He

has experienced steady growth in its

says older students tend to appreciate the

That is a question on the mind of Martha

nontraditional programs since they started

school on a more conscious, pragmatic level

Steed, director of alumni relations at

more than 20 years ago, and online classes

versus the sentimental bond commonly felt

LeTourneau University in Longview, Texas.

have recently surged.

among traditional alumni.

encountered face-to-face?

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

27

alumni relations

“I think the appreciation [of nontraditional alumni] is higher, and so is the understanding that they can really make a difference by staying engaged with the university,” Shirley says.

Shirley has learned that with nontraditional alumni the school has to be open to contributions in a variety of forms. For

“I think the challenge is that most of our nontraditional alumni have never set foot on our traditional campus, so they’re less emotionally attached to our campus than our traditional alumni.”

example, Northwest encourages alumni

Martha Steed Director of Alumni Relations LeTourneau University

unable to donate financially to volunteer for the school instead. And Shirley says by maintaining that same open-mindedness with the work performed by volunteers, both Northwest and alumni benefit in unexpected ways.

“We’ve tried to go away from the approach of ‘These are the roles we want you to fill as a

“They love being together,” Steed says.

obligation to contribute. That’s why Brighi

as a volunteer? Let’s create a new role that

“We just need to give them opportunities.”

is developing ideas to socially integrate

fits in with what you’re passionate about.’”

It was at one such gathering in Houston that

volunteer,’ to ‘What are you passionate about

alumna Kelly Brighi got her first real taste of

Meet your alma mater

she completed her bachelor’s degree online,

When possible, Brighi wants the university to host get-togethers for students who want to meet nearby peers. She also says online initiatives like class-wide video chats would

LeTourneau’s Steed agrees the key to

never met her professors or peers prior

cultivating responsive alumni is personal

to her graduation ceremony in December

connections. She now visits the school’s

2010. Afterward, she felt she had perhaps

satellite locations monthly, meeting with

missed out on the social experience of

students and talking about the importance

college and decided to attend the alumni

of keeping in touch.

gathering the following month.

For online students, LeTourneau is beefing

There Brighi met representatives from

up its internet presence through its website,

LeTourneau’s alumni advisory council,

Using existing resources to keep alumni connected

who encouraged her to bring her unique

Indiana Wesleyan University, with its main

email newsletters, Facebook, and LinkedIn. In addition to opening lines of communication to distant places, social media also provides Steed a way to broadcast news, job openings, and upcoming events to alumni who do not update their contact information with the university.

Steed is particularly excited about university-facilitated social gatherings that allow nontraditional alumni to meet with fellow LeTourneau graduates in their area.

The events feature photographs and videos that give alumni a better sense of the

28

her alma mater. Brighi, who was 38 when

students and professors of online programs.

perspective to the council. “I put on my application the reason I wanted to get involved is because I want to help draw in students who were just like me, who did feel disconnected,” Brighi explains.

Last October Brighi made the trek up to Longview for her first council meeting–– and her first visit to campus.

add a human element to the experience.

“Even if you’re not in the same room, we have the technology at our disposal to do those things today.”

campus in Marion, Ind., and 17 regional Education Centers in Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky, is often seen as a pioneer in nontraditional education, but despite its history of innovation, some of the school’s best outreach tools may also be its oldest.

That’s the belief of Jim Fuller, dean of graduate studies at IWU. Fuller says

She recognizes her role on the council, as its

elements of IWU’s identity often taken

first-ever nontraditional alum, is unique. “I do

for granted in the traditional experience,

feel like I’m a voice for the students who don’t

such as sports matches, music recitals,

have those college memories,” she says.

plays, and other events, could be a source of pride in the school and a point of

university’s history, mission, and campus.

While she chose to become involved,

Perhaps the most enticing element is

Brighi says she understands others in

the chance for alumni to network, trade

her situation for whom LeTourneau is just

Fuller noted that both the IWU men’s

contacts, and get connected to jobs.

a name on the monitor and who feel no

and women’s basketball teams debuted

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

connection for nontraditional students.

alumni relations

Left: Courtesy of LeTourneau University Right: Courtesy of Northwest University.

this season ranked first in their leagues,

students keep the email address they received

But more than that, Shirley says schools

which is apt to spark the interest of anyone

and used while in school. This gives ACU a

must keep in mind the purpose of building

affiliated with the university. Students living

way to stay connected with alumni, which

these lifetime relationships.

too far away to attend home games can

is important, since retaining current contact

watch sports schedules for IWU games in

information for alumni is such a challenge.

their area or stream video of games online,

to realize that this is not just a building in a city––it’s a university,” Fuller says.

At Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas, administrators have also tapped into newer technology to try to keep alumni connected to the university for a lifetime.

One of the things ACU has done to try to

looking good in statistical measures is how did Northwest University use the gifts that we were

tracking scores and statistics in real time.

“I think those are all things that help people

“In my mind what’s more important than

Being good stewards as universities and as alumni

given, and for us the gifts that we were given include our graduates,” Shirley says. “So how did we engage with them that furthered their

There is a degree of irony in the fact that by

walk with the Lord, as well as the Kingdom?

adding programs for students learning later

[The way] we can further their walk with the

in life, many institutions are now required to learn their own new tricks. While schools

Lord is by helping them to be sensitive to how God wants them to use their time.”

will continue to adapt and hone their alumni outreach efforts, the driving force underlying

maintain the flow of communication with

successful approaches tends to be the same.

alumni is to give each student a lifetime email

The bricks and mortar of a historic campus,

address, note Craig Fisher, ACU’s director of

while appealing, are not nearly as sturdy an

alumni relations, and David Pittman, director

anchor for alumni as the relationships they

of graduate admissions. Upon graduation,

share with instructors, staff, and each other.

Luke Reiter is a graduate of Bethel University and an alumnus of the CCCU’s BestSemester Washington Journalism Center. He now works as a reporter at a community newspaper covering the suburbs of St. Paul, Minn.

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

29

Paul R. Corts

CCCU President, 2006 -2012 In appreciation for you r years of faithful servic e.

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

31

liberal arts careers

Not Your Grandmother’s Future The Tension of Preparing Liberal Arts Graduates for Tomorrow’s Careers

By Jo Kadlecek

I

t’s no secret that the class of 2012 will be awarded more degrees in business, health sciences, and information technology than other recent graduating classes. The Bureau of Labor Statistics

and the Department of Education both confirm that these majors Image courtesy of Gordon College.

reflect the “hottest” job opportunities for U.S. college graduates in our present economy. How can Christ-centered, liberal arts colleges and universities best prepare their students for these trending fields in a time when budget cuts, enrollment challenges, and rising expectations from parents weigh heavily on educational decisions?

The answer: by keeping the main thing the main thing.

At least, that’s what several leaders within the CCCU believe.

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CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

Left: Carson-Newman students grace the stage, where such liberal arts experiences help them grow in confidence and storytelling ability. MiDdle: A Carson-Newman nursing professor oversees clinical exercises in the school’s lab. (Images courtesy of Carson-Newman College) Right: BestSemester student Melissa Steffan gained experience by interning at the Washington Post. (Image courtesy of Gracie Ferrell)

“A Christian liberal arts education blends intellectual skills with

required to write and make public presentations, and learn to

practical experiences,” says Shirley Hoogstra, vice president of

think critically about a range of ideas and subjects, they gain the

student life at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. “The hot

necessary tools to navigate a changing professional landscape.

candidate today is not necessarily the one with two majors but the one who has something to talk about, who has finished projects, and [who has] translated their ideas into something tangible.”

“More and more jobs will be requiring a mind that can be aesthetically astute and can tell stories, who can take pieces apart in new and creative ways,” says Kina Mallard, provost at Carson-

A liberal arts education is more likely to prepare students for

Newman College in Jefferson City, Tenn. “A liberal arts education

tomorrow’s careers because its core mission teaches them to be

teaches students how to dissemble and reassemble in creative

adaptable. When students are challenged across disciplines, are

ways, how to debate civilly, and how to have a sense of imagination

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

33

liberal arts careers

and play. We want them to be able to

Mallard agrees. “One of the biggest issues

end when they walk across the stage

interpret meaning and to be able to apply

our campuses have to confront is how do

at graduation,” she says. “But that also

it to their lives and those around them in a

we maintain our mission and focus while

means we have to teach in ways that

way that’s transformational.”

recognizing that there are some significant

challenge students to live lives of integrity

shifts underway in what parents and

and risk-taking. If our majors don’t prepare

students expect in their college experience.”

them for anything more than entry level

A call for academic rigor plus professional development Ron Mahurin, vice president for professional development and research at the CCCU, says that when many CCCU campuses wrestle with how best to prepare graduates for the job market, they experience difficulties integrating professional development into deeply embedded traditions of scholarship and academic rigor. “Many of us are only now beginning

34

The mission of traditional liberal arts

positions, we’re doing them a disservice.”

colleges and the present emphasis on

The goal, she says, should be much bigger

employability are not mutually exclusive.

than just training students for, say, a career

Though she appreciates the concern

in nursing. “We want them to think of greater

many parents and students convey about

ways to provide care for those in the health

whether they’ll get jobs, Mallard says a

industries.”

Christ-centered, cross-discipline approach to learning takes career preparation a step further and yields longer results than a narrowly-focused education.

Even so, practical training does help, and many CCCU alumni believe paid or unpaid professional internships or co-ops can at least get graduates started. Adrianne Cook,

to explore this,” he says, noting that he is

“The often-smaller faculty/student ratio

director of alumni and parent relations at

among those who, in the past, tended to

[at CCCU schools] allows for more care

Gordon College in Wenham, Mass., says

give more weight to classical liberal arts

for the whole student, professionally and

the topic of internships comes up in almost

than to “gainful employment” concerns.

personally, so our relationship doesn’t

every conversation she has with alumni.

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

Left and below: Gordon biology students enjoy hands-on learning.

(Images courtesy of Gordon College)

Carson-Newman Provost Kina Mallard (front row, far left) with students during a week-long missions awareness trip to Kolkata, India.

liberal arts careers

“They tell me how important the experience is and how students, no matter what major, need to be lining up internships much sooner,” Cook says. “Most believe internships should be mandatory.”

“The job market is improving for new college grads, most notably for business majors with

“More and more jobs will be requiring a mind that can be aesthetically astute and can tell stories, who can take pieces apart in new and creative ways.”

Kina Mallard Provost Carson-Newman College

skills in finance,” says Glenn Triezenberg, director of career development at Calvin College. Students with specific degrees in accounting, engineering, information systems, software engineering, nursing, and other liberal arts majors, he says, are more marketable because their academic skills are often honed in high quality internships like the ones Gordon alumni are recommending.

Cook says Gordon’s alumni office has

been given. “Then as good stewards of

Deborah White, former director of the Center

even teamed up with the school’s career

those gifts with a good education in their

for Calling & Career at Lee University in

services department to provide graduates

field of interest, they should be introduced

Cleveland, Tenn., now serves as a higher

with ongoing networking opportunities and

to all kinds of possibilities about how they

education consultant with the Clifton

professional connections. “Alumni tell me

should best serve this world,” she says.

Strengths School of Gallup University but

that the experience they had outside the

still teaches an online class introducing new

classroom helped their learning take root

students at Lee to their strengths. White

while also building the crucial network they

believes each field of study needs to stay

needed as they looked for employment

connected to current realities and be able to

post-graduation,” she says. “They say our

explore with its students the possibilities in

current students need to be hooked into

the 21st century.

LinkedIn and find ways to connect with

“Each liberal arts department needs to

alumni in the fields they are interested in.”

That kind of self-awareness enhances character development and professional confidence as students learn to think in new and creative ways in their classes. Mallard believes such attributes increase the likelihood that graduates will be promoted more quickly and “engage in positions that don’t just pay back their student loans but

be forward thinking and answer the ‘so

The combination of such connections with

contribute to the corporate good by giving

what?’ question with [its] students as part

academic skills, then, helps graduates

more to society.”

of that field of study,” she says. “I’m still an

make deeper contributions over a longer

advocate for a solid liberal arts education

period of time. Thus, preparing for today’s

that will teach the student to think clearly

hottest jobs requires a holistic approach

and know the culture. But I see part of that

to equip graduates to translate their liberal

cultural awareness directing the student to

arts experience to professional success

the future.”

both right out of college and as the job market shifts in the future.

Holistic approach equips students for both present and future jobs Career services departments at many CCCU member schools offer a variety of resources that help students gain greater self-awareness, interpersonal skills, and leadership abilities. In addition to professional services such as resume writing, interviewing workshops, and

Which takes us back to the main thing. “I often tell students, ‘Get your best liberal arts education in a field you like and feel God has called you to,’” says Hoogstra. “If they think of their lives in bigger terms like vocation, becoming self-aware and academicallyprepared in the process, they’ll become the

“In some ways, our curriculum is not

kind of leaders and employees others will

designed for students when they first come

look up to.”

to college, but for a job they can’t even imagine,” says Mallard. “What we’re trying to prepare students for are the innovative but not-yet-discovered jobs,” says Calvin’s Triezenberg. “Those will require a different skill set that requires more than academic understanding.”

job fairs, many career centers are also

White says it is critical to allow students to

focusing on vocational understanding,

explore who they are, what their passions

calling, and problem solving.

are, and what gifts and talents they have

Jo Kadlecek is an author, speaker, and the senior writer and journalist in residence at Gordon College in Wenham, Mass., where she is the founder of the Gordon College News Service, an internship program that partners with local newspapers.

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

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On the shelf

What Your Peers Are Reading

Christian Leadership Essentials: A Handbook for Managing Christian Organizations

faculty and administration speaks volumes regarding the team he has assembled. The years of growth at Union have developed stellar leaders, and their fresh thinking is seen in the chapter written by Provost Carla Sanderson. “From Peer to Manager”

David S. Dockery, Editor

convinces readers of the wisdom of moving existing faculty or

(B&H Publishing, 2011)

staff of an organization into leadership positions. At the same time, Sanderson describes how to identify and develop these

Review by Barbara K. Bellefeuille, Provost, Toccoa Falls College

future leaders. She explains the four tenets from Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas’ Leading for a Lifetime—maximizing adaptive capacity, engaging others through shared meaning, displaying a distinctive voice, and exhibiting unshakable integrity (there’s that word again!)—as she lists action steps for budding leaders under each of these categories. These nuggets of wisdom are priceless.

David Dockery will go down in leadership history as having taken

Sanderson also impresses readers with a succinct statement about

the helm of a small, Christian college and transforming it into a

leadership: “A call into leadership is a call to role modeling and

flourishing Christ-centered university of a substantial size.

talent management, motivating and inspiring others to achieve a

We have marveled at the 15-year progression Union University

higher level of performance over time.”

has experienced, and now we have the opportunity to peek into the reasons for its success by looking at what Dockery and other leaders deem to be the essentials of leadership.

Space forbids reflection on each author’s worthy contribution, but one remarkable chapter should be highlighted. Kimberly Thornbury, vice president for student services and dean of

Twelve presidents or former presidents of thriving Christian colleges

students, is another David Dockery protégé, with her leadership

author two-thirds of the chapters of Christian Leadership Essentials.

at Union extending through the college’s transformation years.

Their contributions uniquely reflect their passions and focus on what

None of us will forget the unmatched leadership response to the

they fine-tuned at their institutions. A special treat is David Gyertson

February 2008 Union University tornado disaster; Thornbury was

(former president of Regent University, Asbury University, and Taylor

right at the center of an incredible story of quick thinking, team

University) who captures much about organizations in “Christian

trust, and the miraculous. Her chapter on crisis management

Leadership and the Identity and Mission of the Organization.” His

comes from experience that most of us never wish to have.

chapter peaks as he recalls the last conversation he had with Ted

Nevertheless, her first-hand instruction on leading during times

Engstrom, the respected former leader of several major evangelical

of crisis should be considered—then shelved at arm’s length.

institutions—including World Vision and Youth for Christ—to whom the book is memorialized. Gyertson asked about the ultimate key to successful Christian leadership, and without a blink of hesitation, Engstrom replied, “Integrity.” We would all do well to let that utterance never escape our thoughts.

Senior leaders at colleges and other Christian organizations author

David Dockery is the author of many books and could have written this book by himself based on his own dignified experience.

Instead he chose to broaden the experience base from just one person or one institution’s best practice to that of other likeminded, successful leaders of Christian organizations.

We are the ones who benefit from that wisdom.

several chapters. That Dockery selected writers amongst his own

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

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on the shelf

Souls in Transition: The Spiritual and Religious Lives of Emerging Adults

By Christian Smith with Patricia Snell (Oxford University Press, 2009)

important to a majority of young Americans, and that pursuing religious faithfulness within a particular tradition is important to a considerable minority of emerging adults.

For denominational colleges there is bad news and good news.

The good news is that most young people are generally religious, more than we tend to think. The bad news is that for many of them

Review by Nathan Alleman,

the sources of authority and organizational particularities that

Assistant Professor of Education Administration in

make denominational colleges unique have been de-legitimized

the Higher Education and Student Affairs Program, Baylor University

by the effect of a pluralistic culture in which respect for “the other” means the denial of specific truth claims combined, ironically, with the success of the liberal, Protestant values of individualism,

In recent years the spiritual and religious life of college-aged

autonomy, and self-direction. Ironically, I repeat, because the

students has gained new legitimacy and interest within the secular

success of these values has effectively nullified the structures

academy, and in particular within the profession of student affairs.

from which these values emanated.

Research by Alexander Astin published in 2003, 2004, and

Consequently, the default arbiter of all things spiritual and

2010, and by others, such as Alyssa Bryant, Jeung Yun Choi, and Maiko Yasuno’s 2003 report in The Journal of College Student Development, has highlighted the necessary and formative place of faith and life-purpose questions in the student experience.

These works have been legitimated in part due to the reputations of the researchers and in part due to a gradually changing campus climate in which the tenets of modernity that denied the worth or place of spiritual and existential questions and their implications for human growth and development have abated, at least by degree. Within the student affairs profession, one testament to

moral is the self, or every self, and even Christian belief is often characterized as a function of “my faith” and not as participation in a confessional community. Smith and Snell implicitly call into question the very notion of spiritual “questing” as an individualized activity, hinting strongly that without an external referent, emerging adults develop a largely impotent religion that transforms neither person nor society. These findings should provide a new or renewed challenge for those who already struggle with such questions as members of religious or educational communities.

this change is the proliferation of spirituality- and religion-themed sessions at major conferences over the past half-decade.

In Souls in Transition: The Spiritual and Religious Lives of Emerging Adults, Christian Smith and Patricia Snell have joined this growing conversation, though their contribution is, importantly, of a very different sort. Reporting on the third wave of the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR), this longitudinal mixed-methods study (230 interview participants and over 2,400 survey participants) of young people now aged 18-23 is far more about the sort of religion that pertains to denominational colleges than it is about the kind of vague spirituality that has drawn the interest of secular institutions.

In particular, Smith and Snell are curious about individual religious commitment and religious institutional commitments, as well as the broad range of forces—historical, sociological, parental,

Non-Tenure-Track Faculty in Higher Education: ASHE Higher Education Report, Volume 36, Number 5

By Adrianna Kezar and Cecile Sam (Jossey-Bass, 2011) Review by Drew Moser Student Development Faculty/Residence Hall Director, Taylor University Doctoral Student in Higher Education Leadership, Indiana State University

cultural, etc.—that shapes them. Their findings that “emerging adults,” even in their faith and moralism, are self-focused, are

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unabashed materialists, and have almost no belief in their ability

This ASHE Higher Education report is devoted to the rise of non-

to effect real change in civil society are important, but may

tenure-track faculty (NTTF) in higher education. This new majority,

be more confirmation than revelation. Many of these findings

comprising 65 percent of new faculty hires, poses significant

reflect the psycho-social and cognitive developmental stages

challenges to the professoriate. Exploring the issue through

long proposed by William Perry, Arthur Chickering, and others.

four disciplinary lenses (economic, sociological, psychological,

On the other hand, Smith finds that college does not contribute

and organizational), the authors synthesize what is a complex,

significantly to a decline in religiosity, that belief in God is very

heterogeneous, often misunderstood group.

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

on the shelf

Two ideologies dominate NTTF research: scholars either focus on the systemic exploitation of NTTF, or they tout the flexibility

Why Geology Matters: Decoding the Past, Anticipating the Future

afforded to NTTF. Much of the research on NTTF is polarizing and largely undertheorized, and most suggestions for improving

By Doug Macdougall

working conditions for NTTF are not nearly specific enough.

(University of California Press, 2011))

As a corrective step, Kezar and Sam argue for viewing NTTF as a unique hybrid of professionals and laborers. This hybrid approach allows for a clearer understanding of the unique

Review by Heather Whitney, Assistant Professor of Physics, Wheaton College

ideological and practical tensions NTTF face.

The authors are able to navigate such challenges in an organized, objective, and practical manner. Of particular note is that the authors convincingly argue that the dominant deficit-based

When you think back to your own time in college, what core science

posture to the study of NTTF is insufficient and damaging. Such

departments were among your college’s major offerings? What

research often lumps NTTF into a disgruntled, homogenous

science departments does your current institution have? In all

group of faculty members who did not quite meet the standards

likelihood, your list includes chemistry, biology, and—if your school

of their tenure track counterparts. Kezar and Sam’s hybrid

is fortunate—physics. But what about the geosciences? A quick

approach offers much-needed clarity in understanding the

survey of CCCU schools shows that there are fewer than 10 schools

unique challenges of the NTTF group. The authors insist that

that host geology majors. In a recent book, Why Geology Matters:

NTTF working conditions are subpar, though further research

Decoding the Past, Anticipating the Future, geoscientist Doug

is needed to bring this to light in a more productive manner.

Macdougall presents comprehensive and approachable evidence

While NTTF are a diverse group, this is the strongest common

for why the geosciences should be represented as an important

experience of NTTF. Thus, if there is a deficit model to employ in

component of science training for students.

this discussion, it should be employed in the working conditions of NTTF.

The earliest scientific investigations of the modern era were performed on what could be observed with the naked eye,

Yet the reader must wonder: if NTTF continue to be classified

and that was often the earth, meaning that understanding the

differently from tenure-track faculty, is a deficit-based approach

history, techniques, and findings of the geosciences results in

inevitable? Additionally, the authors astutely outline ideological,

understanding the development of modern science. Macdougall

practical, and empirical tensions that, without deep exploration,

starts with the stories of William Smith—whose life has been

run the risk of being employed simplistically and dichotomously.

described previously in another approachable work, Simon

The NTTF issue is too complex for political talking points.

Winchester’s The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and

While Kezar and Sam insist that NTTF research is misguided and

the Birth of Modern Geology—and Nicolas Steno, who were among

insufficient, tenure-track faculty research is just as fraught with

the first to tie sedimentary strata to time significance. Likely, there

errors. This raises a bigger question that is probably best left

begins the reasons for why geology does not have a strong presence

for another monograph: tenure reform. While the rise of NTTF in

in Christian education: from the very first, geology has concerned

higher education no doubt raises the issue, expecting an already

itself with the age of the earth, findings that many Christians have

marginalized group to bear the weight of this reform may cause a

seen as contributing to arguments against their faith.

backlash that further damages NTTF hopes for legitimacy.

But to those who would believe that geologists do their science

This monograph reminds the reader that as higher education

in order to disprove the Bible, Macdougall offers example after

becomes more diverse, so does its faculty. A more sophisticated

example of scientists being true to the scientific method, and the

understanding of the professoriate is needed to embark on

reader is rewarded with a better understanding of how geoscience

more authentic research on the emergence of this new majority.

supports and is supported by the methods and findings of other

What is clear is that this issue is thorny, complex, and unique.

scientific disciplines. After learning about how geoscience has

Kezar and Sam have provided an excellent start to a much-

helped us understand the interior structure of the earth, the history

needed discussion that begins to give NTTF a voice in the higher

and makeup of single-celled organisms, the dynamic tectonic plates

education landscape.

that cause earthquakes, impacts from objects from space, or the mysterious deaths of almost 2000 people and 4000 livestock in Cameroon due to a burst of carbon dioxide gas from a lake, one cannot help but realize how indebted we are to the field.

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

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on the shelf

In “Why Geology Matters, Part 1,” a January 2012 Books & Culture article, Davis Young argues, “[I]t is clear that all Christian high school and Christian college students ought to gain substantial knowledge about the structure, composition, behavior, and history of

Q&A with Elmer Rodriguez Campos

their God-given home, planet Earth. The current situation, in which the geosciences are ignored totally, woefully underemphasized, or grossly distorted in Christian high schools and Christian liberal arts colleges, is inexcusable and must be radically changed.” To learn about the universe is to learn about our Creator and our place in His creation, and geology matters as a critical component in helping students, whether formally in classes or informally reading about the field, know the creation better.

Los Abismos Desiguales (The Scab)

By Elmer Rodriguez Campos (CCCU BestSemester Latin American Studies Program, 2012) Interview By BestSemester Latin American Studies Program staff Trevor Poag, Assistant Director Javier Arguedas Ruano, Internship Director Matt Dearstyne, Intern

Elmer Rodriguez Campos serves as a lecturer for the Latin American Studies Program’s Core Seminar. Past and present LASP students have been moved by his presentations and life story. Rodriguez Campos grew up in the city dump of San Salvador, El Salvador, where he developed insightful reflections on poverty, inequality, and the Christian faith. Since leaving El Salvador as a refugee in his teens, Rodriguez Campos has expressed his unique journey through painting and poetry. LASP is pleased to announce that Rodriguez Campos recently collected many of his experiences in book form.

Los Abismos Desiguales includes the original Spanish and its English translation. We know his experiences have impacted hundreds of LASP students, and we sense that his life will be an inspiration to many others as well. Coinciding with the release of his book, LASP invited Rodriguez Campos to share some reflections on the book and his current projects.

To purchase this book, email LASP at newsletter@lasp.co.cr.

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CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

LASP: Don Elmer, we are so pleased about the publication of your book Los Abismos Desiguales, or The Scab. In the book you share part of your story in El Salvador. Could you share with us the reasons that led you to document this part of your childhood?

Rodriguez Campos: During my childhood, we went without many things as a result of our poverty, which [affected] me directly. In that period, during which I was being formed as a person, not having even the most basic of securities made me ask myself many questions, questions which I also tried to answer. Most of what happened around me seemed unjust, and I spent a lot of time analyzing things and asking myself why these things happened. Now as an adult, I am still as inquisitive as I was as a child, and I wrote this book with that inquisitive child in mind, in an attempt to explain to myself, from a different perspective, those conditions of extreme poverty in which I lived.

LASP: One of the central themes of the book is the inequality that exists in society. How does your life experience reflect these inequalities?

Rodriguez Campos: When, as a child, one discovers that everything, including food, arrives to you thanks to someone who is above you who throws it to you or discards it, and then when one discovers that, effectively, there are people that instead of digging through the scraps in a dump, can go and buy new things in stores and fill supermarket carts with all sorts of packaged goods, one realizes definitively that there is no equality. In this reality one grows up and eventually realizes that inequality is real and is everywhere: it is in the studies which you would like to complete but cannot due to lack of resources. This is all reflected in the way this exclusive society treats you on a daily basis. And at least in my case, this has been latent and has existed at every point of my life, above all when it comes to employment; it’s the relationship of employee-employer where I have most felt this inequality.

LASP: What effect do you hope your book will have on the young North Americans who attend the universities that have a relationship with LASP? Rodriguez Campos: Although I write about an unpleasant period in my life, what I aim for when I write is to cause, if the reader allows me, a positive effect. I no longer look at things in a purely personal way. When I was a child, I thought that the war only threatened me and my friends and family. I can now honestly say that I condemn the warmongering policies directed towards people because we, the poor, are always those who suffer most: the bombs always go off in communities like the one where I was raised. But I can also honestly say that I no longer see these things at such a personal level; I have matured and I see everything more generally. With this more universal vision, I propose that we together identify that which prevents us from dreaming, that which tries to force us to accept war. The message is then that we must first be

on the shelf

humanist-pacifists so that we can later aspire to be Christian brothers.

him who I wanted to follow, because of his infinite sense of justice and

This is what I consider to be, and what I hope will be, the positive effect

his absolute commitment towards his neighbor. Just as I found his

of the book.

figure at my side as I dug through the trash in search of food as a child,

LASP: In your book you mention that the figure of Jesus impacted your life in diverse ways. Could you explain this idea in more detail?

Rodriguez Campos: From an early age, among the old cans that filled

it is not difficult to see him now living among us in my community.

LASP: We know you are a person with many dreams and projects. Tell us what you’re doing now and some of your plans for the future.

our home, my mother spoke to me about Jesus, and because of this,

Rodriguez Campos: I am an artist, and to provide for my family I do oil

although I knew he was someone extremely important in the world

paintings, which I sell as souvenirs to tourists, among other things. This

and in the lives of all people, his figure and his presence always felt

is to simply survive. But to really live, I find myself finishing the novel

very close to me. My mother and my Uncle David told me that Jesus

Radio Soledad, which is the second part of Los Abismos Desiguales.

was the son of a humble carpenter and was born to a poor family in a stable when his mother and father were fleeing from a wealthy king.

I compared all of that to the life I was leading, and I learned to see Jesus in the hard-working neighbor or in the exploited and poorly-paid peasant. I saw him as a victim of a dictator and identified with his level of poverty similar to my own. Later on, as I continued to grow, I read more about Jesus and his actions and became convinced that it was

It is almost finished, and later I want to revise another text that I wrote a few years ago, which is actually a play. Also this March my drawing classes for children started up again, where children can learn the basic rules of drawing and painting. These classes are free, and through them people in the community come to know me as an artist.

I’ve been giving these classes now for about 16 years.

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Going Global

Benefits Abound in Partnerships Between International Affiliates and North American Member Campuses

By Heather M. Surls

J

im Mannoia calls himself a broker. As the CCCU senior fellow for international development, he helps connects the dots between North American member schools and international affiliates. As U.S. higher education presses toward internationalization, the need for these cross-cultural connections increases, making it more important than ever for North American CCCU schools to take advantage of the relationships with international affiliates available to them through the CCCU. 42

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

going global “When a U.S. institution thinks about internationalizing their campus…my hope, my dream, my ideal is that they think first of the CCCU affiliates, because they are natural partners, natural allies,” says Mannoia. With 36 international affiliates in 22 countries, possibilities for partnerships are enormous.

Olivet Nazarene University’s partnerships with Tokyo Christian University and Korea Nazarene University Although Stephen Franklin is officially semi-retired, he keeps a busy schedule. The director of graduate studies at Olivet Nazarene University splits his time between Olivet, in Bourbonnais, Ill., and Tokyo Christian University, the CCCU’s only international affiliate in Japan. One of three non-Japanese TCU faculty members, Franklin has worked at TCU for 20 years and has watched the partnership between his schools grow. “It’s very well-developed but very small,” Franklin says of the partnership, which began in 1996.

The partnership primarily consists of Olivet students studying at TCU, but as Franklin notes, the two schools do work on joint projects. For example, TCU and Olivet are planning an East Asia conference on youth evangelism to be held in 2013. While TCU is hosting, Olivet is providing two workshop speakers and a gospel choir. “This form of music is particularly popular right now in Japan,” says Franklin.

Eastern Mennonite University students studying at Jerusalem University College listen during a lecture overlooking the Jezreel Valley. (Image courtesy of EMU student Timothy S. Heishman)

TCU’s East Asia Institute is a semester-long program for English-speaking students, including Olivet students, that integrates classroom-based study of East Asia and Japan with life experience among the Japanese people and Japanese culture.

The program gives students the opportunity to receive “an experience that cannot be duplicated anywhere else,” according to Franklin. Students study East Asian history, sociology, art and aesthetics, culture, religion, and Japanese language while experiencing Japan from the inside—taking field trips, participating in a home-stay, and living in dorms with Japanese and other international students.

Olivet students, says Franklin, “not only get a deep connection with Japanese students but also with other mostly non-European,

non-American students who are also trying to understand East Asia.” Plus, the Olivet students provide Japanese students with a window to America, all within the context of the Christian faith.

Olivet also has a vibrant partnership with Korea Nazarene University, one of six CCCU international affiliates in Korea. Activities between the two schools have included an Olivet choir visiting KNU and an Olivet faculty member spending her sabbatical in Korea. Last semester 12 Olivet students studied Korean language and culture over Skype, and this summer some KNU students plan to study English at Olivet.

These activities are part of Olivet’s Asia Initiative, explains Gregg Chenoweth, Olivet’s vice president for academic affairs. He notes the growing power and influence of Asia in economic, political, and ecclesiastical spheres. “We’re trying to play a role in shaping the future there for Christ,” Chenoweth says. “It sounds very romantic and grand, but we really are supporting the development of the church in Asia. How? One life at a time.”

Eastern Mennonite University’s partnerships with Jerusalem University College and LCC International University At Eastern Mennonite University, located in Harrisonburg, Va., each undergrad, in order to graduate, must participate in a cross-cultural program. Students can fulfill the requirement through study abroad or in the United States. Past domestic trips have included travel to Harlem and work with the Navajo Nation.

“Our mission is to educate students to serve and lead in a global context,” says Beth Aracena, director of crosscultural programs at EMU. Although the experience is stretching for students who have not been on a plane or out of the state, they recognize its value. “They are glad that it’s a requirement,” she says.

Every spring about 30 students meet the cross-cultural requirement by participating in EMU’s Middle East program under the guidance of culture and mission professor Linford Stutzman. After traveling in Egypt and Jordan, and before exploring Athens

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going global

Top Left: Olivet students at Tokyo Christian University after leading worship at the school chapel. Bottom Left: Olivet students enjoying Japanese food with chopsticks at TCU’s dining hall. (Courtesy of Olivet Nazarene University) Right: Eastern Mennonite University students studying in the Middle East. (Image courtesy of Timothy S. Heishman)

and Rome, the group spends two weeks in Israel at the campus of CCCU international affiliate Jerusalem University College. “Most of the [visiting students’] time is spent on field studies, full days in the field throughout the land, at places relevant to the biblical story,” says Paul Wright, JUC’s president.

JUC, which offers full undergraduate semesters abroad as well as graduate programs, depends on partnerships like the one with EMU. “An overseas program of the strength, quality, caliber, and longevity of JUC cannot continue to exist without an interested and active consortium of associated schools,” Wright says.

“Our study abroad program, being one of full immersion into the cultures of Eastern Europe, gives North American students a profound experience at the intersection of faith and culture,” says Marlene Wall, interim president of LCC. “In addition, our LCC students learn from and with other Christian students.” Wall noted that about 25 North American students study at LCC each fall and spring semester.

Aracena values the reliability of EMU’s partners, such as JUC and LCC, and appreciates how cross-cultural experiences cause students to ask important questions. “The partnerships with CCCU schools allow us to focus on the learning through a Christian perspective and allow students to open themselves to interfaith dialogue.”

EMU also partners with LCC International University, a CCCU affiliate in Klaipeda, Lithuania. LCC’s 650-member student body is 60 percent Lithuanian and 40 percent students from 20 other countries. The EMU partnership involves six-week-long summer trips led by Jerry Holsopple, professor of visual and communication arts at EMU. LCC students participate in the summer program alongside EMU students, studying history, culture, religion, and the arts; traveling to Soviet and Holocaust sites; and learning photography skills from Holsopple.

“For me, what makes this partnership is that it is truly collaborative,” says Holsopple. When he first led a trip to Lithuania in 2004, he was not sure how much the LCC students would benefit. “But the responses and reflections have suggested that the experience is as valuable for them as the EMU students.”

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Covenant College & Universitas Pelita Harapan In late 2010, a group from international affiliate Universitas Pelita Harapan in Indonesia made an inaugural visit to Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Ga. A month later, faculty from Covenant flew to UPH for a week of consulting, fact-finding, and friendship-building.

“This was a brand-new connection and relationship, so we were getting to know each other,” explains Jim Drexler, chair of Covenant’s education department.

Although their partnership is young, Covenant and UPH have laid a good foundation. According to Gary Miller, executive vice chancellor of UPH, the partnership has mainly involved student and faculty exchanges,

going global as well as Covenant advising UPH “on matters related to building a campus that is true to its relationship with Christ and the church.”

Highlighting the value of student exchanges, Miller says, “[Covenant] benefits by having a global student on campus who can speak into the Western system with a different mindset.” The Indonesian students “bring their opinions and worldviews to assist U.S. students in understanding life and learning from an Eastern perspective.”

In addition, representatives from UPH have come to Covenant to interview potential teachers, and several Covenant undergrad students have spent one month of the summer in Indonesia leading camps and workshops for elementary and middle school kids. Drexler hopes to see more of the same as the years pass. “Who knows what it might look like three or five years from now,” he says.

While he was in Indonesia, Drexler says, he was asked to teach at a Bible study for college students. Since it was Friday night, he didn’t expect it to be well-attended, but he arrived to find hundreds of students sitting on the floor with Bibles in their laps, waiting to learn and ready to worship. Drexler found himself wondering whether the same thing would happen at CCCU schools in the States on a Friday

night. In North America, we tend to think “we’ve got a corner on the market of this, that, and the other,” Drexler says. His visit to UPH showed otherwise: the partnership between their schools would work both ways.

Mannoia, the international broker of the CCCU, agrees. While it is tempting to think American schools are ahead, he says, schools abroad are doing things U.S. schools have never considered.

For example, a CCCU affiliate in Holland provides mentors to graduates for 20 years and a Bolivian international affiliate school has an on-campus medical clinic that trains doctors and nurses while also serving the community.

“It’s definitely a two-way deal,” Drexler says. “We in the U.S. can learn and grow as much from them as they from us.”

Heather M. Surls is a freelance editor for Tyndale House Publishers and enjoys writing creative non-fiction. She lives in an international community near Chicago and is an alum of The Master’s College and the CCCU’s BestSemester Washington Journalism Center.

Recruiting International Students in Residence

By Rick Mann President Crown College, St. Bonifacius, Minnesota

As part of a strategic update conducted by Crown College’s board of trustees in 2010, we identified being globally connected as one of our institutional values. Our denomination, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, works in 80 countries and has a global DNA that has been central to the denomination for more than 100 years. Given this, plus the many ways in which Crown was already living out an international vision, such as the remarkably high level of international service among our faculty and staff and the semesters abroad and short-term trips taken by students, formalizing our commitment to being globally connected made sense.

Our formalized commitment to globalization can be seen on several levels: curriculum, such as shifting from American civilization core courses to world civilization and from Western literature to world literature; our American students studying abroad more actively; our alumni more actively working overseas following graduation; adding foreign-passport faculty and staff to our campus team; and growing our international student population on campus and online.

Specifically, we established a goal of, within five years, welcoming a residential undergraduate population of which 20 percent are students from countries outside the United States.

During the college’s first 90 years, its international student population was nominal. Then our rate rose to 3 percent. Last year we reached 5 percent, and this year 7 percent of our

residential students are international students. For fall 2012 we expect to reach 10 percent as we work toward our 20 percent goal.

We view the increase in international students as a win-win, as both a service to international students as well as an important way to enrich our campus. We believe that moving toward 100-200 international students in residence has already been transformational for our campus and for our students, who now represent more than 30 countries, including Kyrgyzstan and Russia.

When I asked the student from Kyrgyzstan how her people feel about Russians, since Kyrgyzstan is a former Soviet satellite state, she said that, for historical reasons, they do not like Russians. But when I asked how she relates to our Russian student, she said they have a great relationship because they are sisters in Christ.

We also have a large number of Hmong students as well as students from Vietnam. In Vietnam, their families would have had great tensions because of the Vietnam War. Yet at Crown they are the best of friends because they share an Asian heritage as well as a common heritage in Christ.

Whether it is in the orchestra, soccer team, or student government, the richness added by international students is striking, or should we say, priceless.

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

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bestsemester: voices

Working with Real-World Clients Ups the Ante on Course Projects

By Melissa Steffan

F

rom its location on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., the American Studies Program encompasses more than studies in public policy. It also offers students experience in global development.

“In the enterprise of global development, we are increasingly seeing collaborative efforts on the parts of for-profit, nongovernmental, and governmental institutions,” Hartis says. “We’re attempting to prepare students to lead effectively in that changing environment.”

Established in 1976 as the CCCU’s first BestSemester program, ASP has long provided CCCU students with opportunities to directly engage leading institutions through internships and project-based course studies. ASP began as a public policy program and has always offered students the opportunity to wrestle with their faith in the context of politics and public responsibility.

Unlike other college-level entrepreneurship classes, the GDE track is not a lecture- or theory-based course. Instead, it is an intensive professional experience that allows students to work on real-world projects under the direction of real-world clients.

Since 2009, though, students have also been turning to ASP to provide them with hands-on, out-of-the-classroom experience in international relations and development work through the Global Development and Entrepreneurship track. According to track director, Gerry Hartis, GDE focuses on getting up close and personal with the major institutions currently shaping the conversation about sustainable development.

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CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

According to Sarah Liuba, a senior at Fresno Pacific University in Fresno, Calif., the most important part of her GDE experience last fall was the opportunity to participate in an actual project with tangible implications. “You become an expert of that field of study, and you help drive the proposals. The work you do in GDE is not hypothetical; your research and deliverables will be utilized for years to come.”

During the fall 2011 semester, Liuba interned at Conservation International and, along with several GDE peers, was contracted to do

bestsemester: voices

work for Leatherstocking LLC, a renewable energy business consulting firm. The GDE team researched and assessed the environmental aspects of developing a biofuels industry in Senegal using the memorandum of understanding between Brazil and the United States as a guide.

“It was real. I can’t stress that enough,” Liuba says. “What we did actually meant something to our client. Our work will help lead the research needed to get this project in motion.” Liuba says she and her classmates talked to potential stakeholders, experts, and other contacts who aided their research and helped them answer a single question: “Is this feasible?”

Similarly, fall 2011 ASP student Alexandra Glass, a senior at CCCU affiliate Ambrose University College in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and several of her classmates were contracted to World Vision, where they helped create a teaching curriculum for subsistence farmers in developing countries.

Glass, a behavioral sciences major, says her work for World Vision did not directly relate to her major, but that is why she loved it. Glass says she finally felt deeply passionate about her learning and felt she was on the trajectory of her future career goals.

Fresno Pacific University senior and fall 2011 ASP student Caitlyn Alford agrees. Although she is not interested in a global development career, she knows her GDE work with World Vision was a once-in-alifetime experience. “[Working with World Vision] was more exciting than my normal classwork, but it was very stressful,” she says. “Not only do your grades rely on your project work, but the company you are working with relies on it as well…and the hundreds of people we are hoping to help in other countries!”

In spite of the stress, Glass describes the opportunities GDE provided as “a perfect way to take my dreaming to doing and understand how to translate my passion for social justice into action.”

Liuba says Hartis allows students to come to their own understandings of good development policies through strategic, thought-provoking pushes in the right direction.

“My approach is to provide guidance points of reference from which students take on the role of professional consultants who do the analysis and add value to the information they gather,” Hartis says.

“The bulk of the work is spent on understanding the stakeholders, what their perspectives are on a given issue.”

Looking back on the semester, Liuba says she would not have had a similar experience in any other off-campus program. “Not only do I have a Rolodex filled with contacts from amazing governmental organizations and NGOs, but I have gained knowledge that I wouldn’t have received in a classroom,” she says.

Melissa Steffan will graduate in June from Seattle Pacific University with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Communications – Journalism.

She hails from Seattle.

BestSemester: Reflection

Journalism Comes to Life Through Internships, D.C. BestSemester Programs

By Melissa Steffan

Every morning, I ran through a mental checklist as I dashed out the door of my apartment: Voice recorder? Check.

Notepad? Check.

Washington Post identification card?

The last item was critical. Without it, I could not enter the newsroom of the Washington Post, where I interned at the On Leadership and Innovations blogs.

I was not the stereotypical coffee-grabbing, copy-making intern. I reported, interviewed, and wrote (and re-wrote) real stories. I lived for the hope of a mainstream byline, my name at the top of a published story. When you are an aspiring journalist, nothing beats a byline. But I never really expected to see my name in the Washington Post, the most-read newspaper in Washington, D.C., and one of the foremost news sources in the country.

I arrived in D.C. last August to participate in BestSemester’s Washington Journalism Center. On arrival I had no idea that somehow—with help from WJC Program Director Terry Mattingly and God, no doubt—I would end up with a desk in the middle of the fifth-floor Washington Post newsroom.

I did not have time to be shocked or scared. In this city, news moves faster than you can say, “Tweet that.” We were always on deadline, and my editors published content as soon as it was ready.

Though my work was almost entirely online, the elements of good journalism remained the same because words have power. Journalism, if it is done well, can make a positive difference in people’s lives; if it is done poorly, journalism can harm and hurt. For a young journalist, these realities are a huge and humbling responsibility.

Yet I still had moments of pride. The first time one of my stories “went live” online, I ran through my apartment screaming with excitement. A few weeks later, my first little byline appeared in the print edition unexpectedly, and I was speechless. When I began studying journalism as a college freshman, I never dared to imagine bylines in the Post.

What else did I never dare to imagine? That I would finish WJC and return to Washington the next semester to participate in the American Studies Program, the other D.C.-based BestSemester program. I am spending my entire senior year in the district.

Even though ASP class work focuses almost entirely on leadership and policymaking, I still use the skills I learned in WJC and at the Post. At my current internship for the Center for Public Justice, a think tank focusing on issues of faith and politics, I am using my writing and editing skills to build a news blog from concept to completion. As it turns out, there is a wide market for my set of skills.

This reality is something new for me. After all, people used to tell me journalism was dying. They used to say, “Why would you want to write for a newspaper?” Now when I tell them I interned at the Washington Post, they just say, “Wow.” That is still what I say, too.

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

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research centers

The Benefits of Research Centers Extend Beyond the Edge of Campus

By Chris Turner

L

ecturing to university students was not new for Sandra Morgan, so it was not fear of public speaking that caused a check in her voice when she stood to address the room of young scholars. It was that they were blonde-haired, blue-eyed women—like the ones she had just seen in Greece in a shelter for sexually abused and trafficked women from Eastern Europe.

“The only difference between these young women [in the classroom]

institutions. They allow for specialized study in wide-ranging

and the ones I’d been with in Greece [is] where they were born,”

disciplines, from bioethics (Cedarville University in Cedarville,

says Morgan, director of the Global Center for Women and Justice

Ohio), to special education (Trinity Christian College in Palos

at Vanguard University in Costa Mesa, Calif. “At the Center we are

Heights, Ill.), to humanitarian issues (Wheaton College in

looking at ways to go upstream before someone becomes a victim to

Wheaton, Ill.), to Wesleyan thought (Point Loma Nazarene

ensure they have the same chance as the rest of us.”

University in San Diego), and more.

The Global Center for Women and Justice is one of four centers

These opportunities are proving to be valuable in recruiting students

and institutes supported by Vanguard, which is among a slowly

and faculty. Additionally, centers can attract a significant amount of

growing number of affiliated CCCU institutions with such academic

outside funding from private donors, corporations, and foundations,

centers, also sometimes called institutes, that usually include a

generating much-needed funds for campuses. Centers conduct

research focus.

research and create unique learning opportunities for students.

Benefits often outweigh costs

Done well, they help Christian colleges gain credibility and extend

Successful centers and institutes require significant financial

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influence in their communities and beyond.

and personnel commitments by the colleges that launch them

Vanguard’s Global Center for Women and Justice is an example of

and may not be feasible for some campuses. However, these

just that. After a slow beginning due to funding issues, the center

academic research centers offer significant benefits for their

has firmly established itself in the past two years. Morgan, a nurse

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

Clockwise From Top right: A flip chart at a Teaching for Educational Equity workshop organized by Goshen’s Center for Intercultural Teaching and Learning. (Photo courtesy of Goshen College Center for Intercultural Teaching and Learning) | Goshen College Center for Intercultural Teaching and Learning Director Rebecca Hernandez meets with a group of Latino students. (Photo by Andrew Niesen/The Orange Block) | Elizabeth Leonard, co-founding director of Vanguard’s Global Center for Women and Justice, and Anaheim Police Department Chief John Welter at the Vanguard-Duhok Teleconference on Violence against Women. Leonard’s research on battered women in prison led to the production of the award-winning documentary Sin by Silence by Olivia Klaus, Vanguard alum and adjunct professor. | Daisy Gaspar, Goshen senior elementary education major (photo by Jodi H. Beyeler/Goshen College Public Relations) | Goshen Associate Professor of English Skip Barnett works with students during Summer Academic Leadership Training, a program of the Center for Intercultural Teaching and Learning. (photo by Jodi H. Beyeler/Goshen College Public Relations).

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

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research centers

“It’s brought a great deal of satisfaction to see more high school girls go from dropping out to believing in the possibility of going on to college.”

Daisy Gaspar Senior Elementary Education major Goshen College

Centers extend university mission and reputation James Brenneman, president of Goshen College in Goshen, Ind., believes the enhancement of a college’s credibility and influence through a research institute is not a given, but it is more likely if the purpose for starting the research entity extends the institution’s vision.

“The decision to initiate a center or institute isn’t an arbitrary one,” Brenneman says.

“We have an extensive set of criteria that must be met and that begins with the historic vision of the institution. We then

by training, with extensive international

Hatchimonji distributed a summary

look at the expertise within our faculty and if

experience with human trafficking issues,

document from the summit, compiled by

there is a need beyond our campus that can

used a study from the University of Seattle

Vanguard students, to other juvenile judges

be met that benefits others. Our vision calls

on the commercial sexual exploitation of

across the state. That summary was the

us to be interdisciplinary, so we consider

children to initiate a center-led conversation

foundation for Vanguard’s March 2012

how a center or institute looks vis-à-vis that

with Orange County juvenile probation

Ensure Justice Conference, out of which

component as well.”

officers. These initial meetings led to a

action steps are being formulated. “Judges

summit moderated by Presiding Orange

said they didn’t need any more community

County Juvenile Judge Douglas Hatchimonji

awareness,” Morgan says. “They needed

and attended by students, faculty, and juvenile justice professionals. The summit’s objective was to identify gaps in services extended to Orange County juveniles. One of the gaps identified was the need to move the community beyond raised awareness to active involvement in preventing trafficking.

more people actively engaged. Through the university and the center, we were able to bring together research, the community, and the juvenile justice system to take a look at tangible next steps.”

Waynesburg University in Southwest Pennsylvania’s traditional coal country has long sought an active role in its regional community. For 20-plus years its Center for Research and Economic Development has been a significant link between the community, industry, and the university, drawing from a diversity of faculty expertise and offering practical research

From left: Jeremy Kohomban, CEO of New York City Children’s Village, speaking at Vanguard. (Courtesy of Vanguard University) | Sandra Morgan (far left), director of Vanguard’s Global Center for Women and Justice, and other guests of the conductor at the June 2011 Segerstrom Hall Concert during the Vanguard-Duhok Visiting Scholar Seminar. (photo by Stan Sholik)

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CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

research centers

opportunities to both undergraduate and

between the 1970s and 1990s. That number

Gaspar could attend Goshen. Association

graduate students.

continues to grow.

with ILEA requires that students become

“We certainly believe the center extends

Armed with research, a Lilly Endowment

the mission of the university,” says

grant, and a historical commitment to

director Barbara Kirby. “Our region has

diversity, Goshen initiated CITL. “The

seen an economic shift over the past two

mandate from the original grant,” Hernandez

decades, and the Center for Research

says, “was to conduct research that would

and Economic Development has been

help us recruit and retain Latino students

a partner throughout. We believe that

into Goshen College, to change the institution

the quality of research our faculty

from the inside to actually become more

and students contribute supports the

“It’s brought a great deal of satisfaction

culturally diverse and aware, and to better

economic sustainability of the area, and

to see more high school girls go from

understand the community around Goshen

I believe our involvement enhances the

dropping out to believing in the possibility

College, assessing the impact on both the

reputation of the university.”

of going on to college,” Gaspar says.

surrounding areas and the institution.”

“That’s one of the things being involved

Solidifying an institution’s reputation certainly

The result after five years: Latino enrollment

with the center has really shown me:

ranks high on the list of reasons in favor of

is increasing, 40-plus faculty and staff

I’m a part of a community, and I want to

launching an academic center, but Randy

members are enrolled in Spanish classes,

continue to do something after I graduate

Lowry, president of Lipscomb University in

and the general education curriculum has

that gives back to my community. I

Nashville, Tenn., offers a more pragmatic

changed to include cultural studies. CITL

wouldn’t have come to school here if not

reason why colleges should seriously

continues the research that guides the

for the center.”

consider adding institutes: survival.

entire process.

“As we look broadly at changes in higher

Daisy Gaspar, a senior elementary

to be successful with academic centers it

education,” he says, “the most vulnerable

education major with emphases in special

is important to keep an academic focus at

schools in America are the relatively small,

education and English as a second

their core and important that institutions

church-related, private colleges that don’t

language, is a testimony to the success

maintain close ties to such centers,

have big endowments or state funding.

of the college’s effort. Gaspar’s parents

saying the intent is not “trying to spin off

They generally have to be creative enough

immigrated to the United States from

NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] or

in the marketplace to create the capital for

Mexico. Both work in a factory. Because

organizations that compete with the vision

their survival. They’ve got to have a plan

of the center’s scholarship program,

and direction of the college.”

in what essentially is a changed world. I believe the institutions that will succeed will be those that are responsive to the marketplace. Institutes and centers aren’t necessarily all universities should do, but the institutes do afford that opportunity to take the academy into the real world for hands-on experience and broader engagement.”

Research with a tangible impact For an institute to connect with the “real world” it needs to be shaped with information from the real world, says Rebecca Hernandez, director of Goshen’s Center for Intercultural Teaching and

involved cross-culturally either locally or globally. During Gaspar’s time at Goshen, she and the other members of her cohort have been deeply involved in counseling and advising Latino girls at the local high school and their parents about the entrance process for college.

Brenneman emphasizes that for colleges

“...There is a whole host of people who are not part of our academic communities but are part of our external audiences who have an interest in the things we are discussing on campus and in our classrooms, and the centers allow them to engage in our mission.”

Jeff Hittenberger Provost Vanguard University

Learning, which houses the Institute for Latino Educational Achievement. Goshen saw the Latino population in the counties surrounding the college more than double

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

51

research centers

Vanguard’s provost, Jeff Hittenberger,

academic institutes should be considered in

believes the decision to incorporate centers

larger conversations about mission.

is a complex one that is unique to each college and has many nuanced variables.

Vanguard and Lipscomb have actually reduced their number of institutes from

“We’re all currently working through what the configuration of college will be in the digital age,” he says. “However, there is a whole host of people who are not part of

10 years ago because some centers were

our academic communities but are part of

no longer relevant or in some cases were

our external audiences who have an interest

dormant altogether. Not having a research

in the things we are discussing on campus

institute does not mean an institution

and in our classrooms, and the centers

lacks relevancy with its internal or external

allow them to engage in our mission.

audiences, Hittenberger adds, but launching

That’s beneficial to everyone.”

Chris Turner is founder of D. Chris Turner Communications, a public relations firm specializing in social media strategies, writing, and crisis communications. A former overseas correspondent with the International Mission Board, Chris has lived in England and Panama and covered stories in 28 countries.

For a list of research centers at CCCU institutions, visit www.cccu.org/advance.

Azusa’s Center for Research on Christian Higher Education Welcomes Prestigious Journal

By Kami L. Rice

Under an agreement with Taylor

to which CCCU authors can contribute, given that our focus is

& Francis, a leading academic

squarely on issues that matter to Christian higher education

publisher, the Center for Research

and our readers are those who are interested in and care

on Christian Higher Education at

about Christian higher education,” says Schreiner.

Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, Calif., has assumed editorial oversight of Christian Higher Education: An International Journal of Research, Theory, and Practice.

Two APU professors, Karen A. Longman and Laurie A. Schreiner, from the Department of Doctoral Higher Education, have been named the journal’s new editors.

This international, interdenominational, and interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal publishes original research, metaanalyses, analytical essays, book reviews, and descriptions of best practices informed by empirical research. Housing the journal supports the Center for Research on Christian Higher Education’s mission to provide the most current research in this field.

52

“It’s also an ideal journal for CCCU faculty, professional staff, and administrators to read, in order to learn the best practices in Christian colleges and to apply the latest research findings to their own work,” Schreiner adds. “The CCCU benefits from having this journal housed at a sister institution and co-edited

by CCCU faculty because of our networks with other researchers throughout the CCCU; these connections make it more likely that articles will be published that directly apply to the work of the Council’s member and affiliate institutions.”

Prior to her appointment as co-editor, Longman served on the journal’s editorial board and as guest editor of a 2011 special edition of the journal. The editorial board of Christian Higher Education includes representatives from several other CCCU institutions, including Biola University, Indiana Wesleyan University, and The King’s University College, and from affiliates Baylor University, McMaster Divinity College,

“Basing the journal at APU will provide exciting opportunities for

Pepperdine University, Samford University, and Southeastern

disseminating research that can inform the work of educational

Baptist Theological Seminary. Jesse Rine, the CCCU’s

leaders around the world who have a passion for serving and

director of research and grants initiatives, also recently joined

strengthening Christian higher education,” says Longman.

the editorial board.

The new editors view the journal as representing a valuable

More information about Christian Higher Education is

resource for CCCU members. “This journal is an ideal source

available online: www.tandfonline.com/UCHE.

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

Christ and culture

<< Continued from Page 19

generation, with governments pushing unwelcome agendas onto us, may not be a new manifestation of something with which we have actually colluded for many years. Have we fostered a culture in which the lordship and teachings of Jesus, for instance about poverty or human dignity or war, have been honored, studied, taught, and practiced? Or have we been content—as so many Christians on both sides of the Atlantic have been content—to drift with this or that prevailing political wind, to trim our sails so that only one

“One of the fascinating things about Christian faith is that you can’t put it in a bottle and keep it on the shelf so that the next generation can simply pour some out when they need it...[W]e will never get to the point where we understand everything so that the next generation can simply look up the answers we’ve already discovered.”

or two real distinctives are left, related perhaps to sexual and family life, only then to complain when the principalities and powers, having quietly gained our cooperation in other spheres—such as rampant individualism and the neo-liberal vision of the good life that goes with it— now come to attack those last remaining strongholds? That may well not be the case for you. I suspect you are more aware of this danger than most in my own country.

But it is the sort of question a Christian institution, of whatever sort, needs to ask itself as we sail round the corner into the teeth of the cultural gale.

and angry speech, on the other. Oh, the

These are the positive virtues of the

irony of it. I know many churches where

Christian community. They don’t happen

they wouldn’t tolerate the slightest sexual

by accident. You have to think about them,

immorality (at least not outwardly), but

individually and corporately. You have to

which are hotbeds of gossip, backbiting,

work at them together, to repent of failures

and malice. And I know other churches

in these areas, and to forgive one another.

where everyone is very nice to everyone

And when we do that, bad behavior of

else, but where sexual license reigns

body or tongue will be shown up as what it

unchecked and everyone is “supportive”

is: socially destructive and dishonoring to

about it, because otherwise one would

God the creator.

be “saying nasty things.” By contrast

Colossians, then, insists upon the

with both, I have often thought that

total and supreme lordship of Jesus

the alternative model Paul proposes

the Messiah, not by saying that other

commends itself as the kind of society

authorities do not exist but by saying that

everyone would really like to belong to:

those that do are subject to his lordship.

Communities like this are the way God changes the world—not by retreating from the world but by going boldly, as Paul did, into the places of power and authority in the world, praying for a door to be opened

But what does that subjection look like?

You must be tender-hearted, kind,

for him to speak about the mystery of the

How does it come about? It comes about

humble, meek, and ready to put up

world’s true king (Colossians 4:3). That,

through those who belong to the Messiah, who have died and been raised with him,

with anything. You must bear with one

as he says, is why he was wearing chains when he wrote this letter. But the gospel

lifting up their heads and their hearts and

another and, if anyone has a complaint

learning how to live that hugely attractive

against someone else, you must forgive

transforming lives and communities under

life, clothed with the garments of Jesus

each other. . . On top of all this you

the rule of the one true sovereign. Here

himself, which has always made even the most hardened pagan observers gasp and wonder how it’s done.

The pagan world is well described in

must put on love, which ties everything together and makes it complete . . . and whatever you do, in word or action, do

was not chained up. It was out there,

is the heart of our confidence, whatever the world around may throw at us: the crucified and risen Jesus is already Lord of the world. This is a call to renewed

everything in the name of the master,

prayer, to renewed holiness personally and

pagan behaviors: sexual immorality in all

Jesus, giving thanks through him to

institutionally, and renewed and cheerful

its forms, on the one hand, and malicious

God the father. (Colossians 3:12-17)

Colossians 3, in two different lists of

confidence in the power of Jesus to make a fresh way forward.

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

53

christ and culture

The Spirit and the World

I

f one cannot do justice to Colossians in 10 minutes, how much less can one deal briefly with John’s gospel. I want simply to draw out

one strand, not always highlighted but nevertheless a word for our time. We often read John through the

of which has done the job so well.

On the one hand, we have opposition parties, which easily generates a two-party culture-war polarization which your country and mine suffer from. Every issue is seen in black-and-white terms, of Us and Them—something else Sen. Mark Hatfield resisted with his whole being. If that doesn’t happen, you get a riot of small parties generating unstable coalitions and shady deals irrelevant to the real issues. That’s

darkened spectacles of 19th-century pietism, and

the problem with oppositional democracy.

we thereby miss the bright, sharp Johannine light

On the other hand, we have the electronic and print media, the

on the church’s social and political witness. One of

increasingly complex world of journalism, which takes to itself the

the major problems of our world is that the church

responsibility of holding governments, and indeed oppositions, to

has colluded with two major shifts that occurred in

account. If you doubt this, have a look at the quotations carved in stone in the lobby of the Tribune Building in Chicago. Take this, from

the 18th and 19th centuries. We haven’t tried to put

Robert R. McCormick, owner and publisher of the Chicago Tribune

it right because we haven’t even noticed. A word

80 years ago: “The Newspaper is an institution developed by modern

about that double shift, and then a look at John.

First, from the 18th century onwards, the state has been taking over things the church used to do. Hospitals, schools, and the like were Christian innovations. Outside Christianity, you got medicine and education if you could pay, and you suffered in ignorance if you couldn’t. The transformative genius of the early Christian movement was to embody the outgoing, practical love of God in Jesus the Messiah for all people. Nobody had ever thought of doing it that way before, but it caught on and was a primary reason for the church’s rapid spread. To this day, a Jewish friend

civilization to present the news of the day, to foster commerce and industry, to inform and lead public opinion, and to furnish that check upon government which no constitution has ever been able to provide.” That is breathtaking, all the more because that is our job. (I can’t resist adding that McCormick famously carried on campaigns against—and I quote shamelessly from Wikipedia—“gangsters and racketeers, prohibition and prohibitionists, local, state and national politicians, Wall Street, the East and Easterners, Democrats, the New Deal and the Fair Deal, liberal Republicans, the League of Nations, the World Court, the United Nations, British imperialism, socialism and communism.” So it wasn’t only governments he had in his sights.)

of mine reports that when her children are babysitting for Christian

These two methods of speaking truth to power—official opposition

couples who are out volunteering in the youth club or the prison or

parties and the media—regularly fail. As we all know, opposition

the hospice, the children simply say that the couple are out “being

parties often collude with governmental folly and wickedness, and

Christian.” Thank God that is how the church is still sometimes

newspapers can easily egg them on, in precisely those areas where

seen. And thank God for the basically-Christian impulse that has

critique is most badly needed. The church’s vocation of speaking

led the modern state to see that medicine and education are for

the truth to power has thus been taken over by two systems which

all, not only for the rich elite. But when the state then claims the

aren’t up to the job. We urgently need the voice of Christian wisdom

right to dictate how that is to be done and tells the church to back

to approve that which is excellent and to call to account that which

off and stick to private spirituality and not interfere with debates

isn’t. Of course, when we try to do that, the media regularly tries to

about genetic engineering or assisted suicide, or about how we

rule the church out of order, not just because it doesn’t like what we

teach history or economics or art, we must hold our nerve and our

might say, but because we are treading on turf which they took from

ground. That stuff is part of our core vocation; we are delighted that whole societies now want to share it, but we are not going to give it up or be told how to do it. How we say that is obviously a matter of wisdom, of gracious speech seasoned with salt. That we

us, and they don’t want us to have it back. So once again, we have colluded with this diminishing of our historic role and God-given vocation; or worse, we have been herded like sheep into the lobbies of this or that party, swept along into agendas we assume too readily

say it should be non-negotiable.

to be God’s agendas, and unable to glimpse—as Mark Hatfield was

This leads to the second point. From pre-Christian Judaism

party and the conscience of the Christian.

through to today, God’s people have claimed the right and the responsibility to speak the truth to power. Sometimes with words; often with bodies. Martyrdom has frequently been the most powerful statement of all. But the post-Enlightenment world has

54

developed two other ways of trying to speak truth to power, neither

CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

always ready to glimpse—the difference between the whim of the

So what has John’s gospel got to say to this? It gives us Jesus’ own description of what will happen when the Holy Spirit is given to his followers:

Christ and culture

When [the Spirit] comes, he will prove

generation of Christian leaders to be able to

In the early church the bishops got the

the world to be in the wrong on three

do this clearly, wisely, and shrewdly?

reputation for tirelessly championing the

counts: sin, justice, and judgment. In

Take the three elements one by one. The

relation to sin—because they don’t

church, praying for the Spirit, must embrace

believe in me. In relation to justice— because I’m going to the father, and

the vocation, first, to show the world up in relation to sin: because in failing to believe in Jesus, the world is missing the way as

you won’t see me anymore. In relation

regards what a genuine human life is like.

to judgment—because the ruler of this

This outward-looking vocation is another

world is judged. (John 16:8-11)

reason why it is vital that the church maintains its own personal and corporate

These verses feel dense and obscure. But

discipline, because tragically the world has

in their larger context they are all too clear.

had little difficulty finding accusations to

Jesus has already spoken of his overthrow of

throw back at the church. Of course, the way

“the ruler of this world,” as a result of which

the church is supposed to show the world

he will now “draw all people to himself”

up is not by a sneering, holier-than-thou

(John 12:31-32). He has warned that the

attitude, but by providing such a wonderful

world will hate his followers, as it hated him,

model of God’s way of genuine humanity that

and he is about to assure them that they

the world is seen as sordid and shabby in

should cheer up because he has overcome

contrast, a place of lies and death instead of

the world (John 15:18-25; 16:33). And at

truth and life.

the climax of the whole book in chapters 18 and 19, Jesus confronts Pontius Pilate, God’s kingdom confronting Caesar’s kingdom, and explains to him that God’s kingdom is based on truth, a truth which redefines power.

That redefinition is then put into practice, as Pilate, weak and vacillating, sends him to the death by which he, sovereignly and powerfully, completes the work of the world’s redemption (John 19:30). The hidden truth, the hidden power, the energy that drives God’s kingdom, is that of divine self-giving love: having loved his own in the world, he loved them to the end (John 13:1).

Second, the church is to prove the world in the wrong about justice: because Jesus is to be vindicated by the father in his ascension, and this is the ultimate moment of justice, of putting the world right. The world thinks it knows what justice is, but again and again the world gets it wrong, favoring the rich and powerful, turning a blind eye to wickedness in high places, forgetting the cry of the poor and needy who the Bible insists are the special objects of God’s own just and right care. So the church, in the power of the Spirit, has to speak up for God’s justice, in the light of Jesus’ ascension to the throne of the world,

needs and rights of the poor. They were a nuisance to the rich and powerful, but they would not shut up. They were doing precisely what Jesus says would happen when the Spirit came and held the world’s injustice up to the light of his justice. And of course, as well as the obvious injustices, the church has the responsibility to test out those causes that claim the word “justice” or “rights” but which are in fact merely special-interest groups. As the Pope said in his address to the United Nations in April 2008, the language of “rights” is borrowed from the great Christian tradition, but if you cut off those Christian roots, you will get all kinds of abuses, each claiming the postmodern high ground of victimhood but only succeeding in debasing the coinage of “rights” itself. Part of the task of holding the world to account is thinking and speaking clearly, humbly, and wisely in these areas.

Third, the church in the power of the Spirit is to prove the world wrong in relation to judgment. On the cross and in the resurrection, Jesus passed judgment on the dark power he calls “the ruler of this world.”

The dark lord operates through violence and death and the threat of both. Jesus takes their full force onto himself and shows in the resurrection that he has overcome them. He has launched God’s new creation, and the powers of death know that they are beaten.

As Sen. Mark Hatfield saw so clearly, this raises a sharp question mark against all

So what does Jesus mean in this saying

and to draw the world’s attention to where

about the Spirit proving the world in the

it’s getting this wrong. This has immediate

wrong? And how is this to happen? Christians

and urgent application, as far as I’m

of recent generations have spoken of the

concerned, in our holding our governments

Spirit in terms either of miraculous inspiration

to account concerning justice for the world’s

or of delightful personal experiences. But

poorest, who have been kept poor by the

when the Spirit comes to do what Jesus is

unpayable compound interest “owed” to

talking of here, the church will not be sitting

Western banks on loans made decades ago

back watching it happen. No, the way in

to corrupt dictators. The injustice has itself

which the Spirit will prove the world to be

been compounded by our governments’

in the wrong is through us and our witness.

breathtaking bailing out of super-rich

This is part of our core vocation. Not to do it

companies, including banks, when they

is to quench the Spirit. And my question to

defaulted; the very rich did for the very rich

I don’t think we in the Western churches

you is: are we training and shaping the next

what they still refuse to do for the very poor.

have sufficiently reflected on these three

use of violence, all attempts to use death to control the world. I don’t think Sen. Hatfield was a pacifist, and nor am I. There are many occasions when countries and governments need police; granted the wickedness of the world, police sometimes need to use force.

But this exceptional dispensation all too quickly becomes a lust for the power that bases itself on violence, and it is precisely that which the Spirit, through the church, is to call to account.

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christ and culture

sharp-edged vocations which Jesus bequeaths to his people by his

as a new thing to some. But it isn’t new. It’s what Jesus not only

Spirit. We have colluded so far with the Enlightenment’s shrinking

promised but also mandated and modeled.

of the church’s role that we are likely to react with surprise or alarm to such suggestions. Yet there they are in scripture. And my point to you today is this: If I were in charge of a Christian educational institution, I would want prayerfully to consider how to educate the next generation so that they could wisely and humbly exercise this triple Spirit-given ministry. How do we shape and form a generation in and through whom the Spirit will convict the world of sin (in the face of our Western arrogance and assumed moral superiority), of justice

O

ne of the fascinating things about Christian faith is that you can’t put it in a bottle and keep it on the shelf so that the next generation can simply pour some out when they need

it. That would produce an infantile, naive, and careless Christianity.

(in a world where the biblical meaning, justice for the poor, has been

With scripture itself, while each generation is called to find new depths

obliterated by “justice” in the shape of state-sanctioned violence), and

and heights in the ancient text, we will never get to the point where we

of judgment (in a culture that acts as if it is the arbiter of truth)? That

understand everything so that the next generation can simply look up

is the challenge.

the answers we’ve already discovered. God wants each generation to

There will be enormous resistance to this, within the church as well as outside. We would be claiming back ground that we’ve not only lost but in most cases have forgotten we ever possessed. What’s

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Conclusion

grow up to be the wise and thoughtful body of the Messiah for the world of its own day, and that means each generation doing its own hard work, building on the best of the past but going out into the unknown.

more, we would be courting martyrdom of one sort or another. Jesus,

I think the same is true with our great institutions. Precisely if they are

going to his death, told us that servants are not above their master.

truly Christian institutions, we should expect them to be renewed in

But that simply puts us back in the center of the map of Christ and

each generation, and we should expect that renewal to come through

culture which I sketched earlier. Martyrdom won’t always happen.

facing new challenges with new insights. We should regularly have the

Sometimes, perhaps often, in the mercy of God and the power of the

sense that we have not been this way before, that we are therefore

Spirit, the church’s witness will lead to a major change of heart. That’s

driven to fresh prayer and study, drawing down on God’s great

happened before; because of the resurrection, I believe it can and will

promise of wisdom, training one another and those in our charge to

happen again. And the young people you are training and educating

meet tomorrow’s challenges. The question of Christ and culture is, at

today are the people through whom the Spirit wants to provide this

one level, unchanging. At another level, it is changing all the time, and

witness in the next generation. There is the challenge. It may come

yesterday’s solutions need rethinking in tomorrow’s world. I have said

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Christ and culture

frequently that I am tired of hearing 19th-

and the fresh commission—this is what we as

should remain here until I come, what’s that

century answers to 16th-century questions.

Christian leaders live on day by day and week

got to do with you? You must follow me!”

I am much more interested in asking first-

by week. But my theme today takes us to the

We never know, as Christian leaders, what

century questions and finding 21st-century

next and final scene of that same chapter.

situations we will meet around the corner.

answers, and indeed vice versa.

When we face new challenges, we are

I return to John as I conclude. In his closing

inclined, as Peter was, to look round and

chapter, haunting and suggestive as it is, we

see who else is out there and what they’re

eavesdrop on one of the most embarrassing

doing. “Lord,” we say, “what about this

encounters in the whole Bible, as Jesus three

man?” I believe we should, individually

times asks Peter if he loves him. All Christian

and collectively, take Jesus’ answer as the

leaders at some time or other cling on to

signal for our fresh obedience to the new

that conversation for dear life, as we know in

challenges we face. Other organizations may

shame that we have let our Lord down. All of

do it differently. Other individuals may do

us have heard the astonishing word of Jesus,

it differently. Our task is not to think about

“feed my lambs,” “tend my sheep,” “feed

them, but to think about him, and what it

my sheep”: the word of commission which is

will mean to follow him into the future, which

also the word of forgiveness, and vice versa.

is unknown to us but held firmly under his

The fresh personal meeting with the Lord

victorious sovereignty. Jesus turns to Peter.

himself, the frank and humble confession,

“If it’s my intention,” he replies, “that he

But that isn’t the source of Christian hope or Christian confidence. Our hope and confidence come from knowing who it is we are following. “What’s that got to do with you?” he asks. Other people’s problems and challenges are other people’s problems and challenges. “You must follow me.”

To hear the audio of N.T. Wright’s presentation at the President’s Conference: www.cccu.org/advance.

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The last word

Faithful Presence Within

By Kami L. Rice

J

ames Davison Hunter is the LaBrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture, and Social Theory in the Departments of Sociology and Religious Studies at the University of Virginia and founder and executive director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. He began his higher education career at Gordon College where he earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology before earning master’s and doctoral degrees from Rutgers University.

At the CCCU Presidents Conference in February, Hunter delivered a keynote address in which he began with these questions: What is Christian higher education? What are its aims and purposes? How does it relate to the larger culture and to the larger movement it is part of? In our interview, Hunter expounds on these thoughts.

Does the integration of faith and learning mandate take us far enough to address our changing cultural context?

I don’t think it does. The goal of the integration of faith and learning, of course, is the cultivation of a Christian worldview.

That’s fine, as far as it goes, but the focus on worldview is driven by an implicit idealism: the belief in the primacy of ideas over everything; that ideas are the engine of history; the things that matter most. The problem with idealism is that it misconstrues agency. Idealism underplays the importance of history and historical forces and its interaction with culture as it is lived and experienced. Further, idealism ignores the powerful role of institutions in the generation, coordination, and organization of culture. In short, idealism communicates the message that if people just have the right values, believe the right things, embrace the right worldview, it will make the decisive difference. It is important, but we know that it is not decisive. I want to suggest that it may be time to go beyond the “integration mandate” to a model of Christian higher learning focused preeminently on an “education for flourishing.”

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CCCU Advance | Spring 2012

Why is it time for a model of Christian higher learning focused preeminently on education for human flourishing?

In To Change the World I’ve argued that there are three dominant paradigms by which Christians have tried to engage the world. I call these paradigms “defensive against,” “relevance to,” and “purity from.”

All three of these paradigms speak to authentic biblical concerns and genuine worries about the integrity of faith in our historical moment. But I also believe all of them are deeply flawed and thus inadequate to the challenges of our time.

It is against these three paradigms that I suggest a fourth: “faithful presence within.” In this paradigm I would suggest education for human flourishing as a better way for Christian institutions of higher education to pursue their ideals.

Please describe the paradigm of “faithful presence within.”

“Faithful presence within” is a paradigm of incarnation. This incarnational paradigm suggests that the calling of the church is to go into the fullness of the culture, bearing the fullness of the gospel, for the purposes of redemption. Unlike the “defensive against” paradigm, the incarnational church seeks to follow Jesus into every sphere of creation. Unlike the “relevance to” paradigm, the incarnational church not only moves fully into the world but also retains the integrity of its God-given character and proclamation as it does so.

And unlike the “purity from” paradigm, the incarnational church sees its movement into the world not as an angry movement

of conquest but as a hopeful movement of redemptive love, seeking not to triumph over its neighbors, but to work for their flourishing. “Faithful presence” puts the question this way: what if Christians, rather than triumphantly determining to transform culture, or apocalyptically seeking to protect themselves from it, sought instead to be fully and redemptively present within it? What if we created institutions of higher learning that self-consciously and perpetually taught men, women, and children to go into every part of our cultural life—every geographic, institutional, and social sphere—and labor there together for the glory of God and the flourishing of our neighbors? What if we were known not for seeking to win the culture wars but for seeking to bring cultural shalom?

What would you say to encourage and affirm CCCU faculty and administrators in their labors in higher education?

In the history of Western Christianity, every time—at least that I am aware—that the church has engaged the world in ways that were constructively transformative, excellence in education, scholarship, teaching, and erudition was always central, always catalytic. This is true in the ancient church, in the conversion of barbarian Europe, in the Carolingian Renaissance, in the Reformation, and so on. And here we are today—we live in a time of great hurt and great confusion. To step into this hurt and confusion in the framework of your personal and institutional vocations with true excellence, in ways that provide clarity and healing, is a huge burden you bear.

But it is also an extraordinary opportunity as well. Much is at stake and so I pray: God-speed in your labors.

For the complete interview with James Davison Hunter, visit www.cccu.org/advance.

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Connectivity Creating global connections 2012 Commission on Technology Conference North Charleston, SC | May 29-31, 2012 2012 Chief Financial Officers Conference Hobbs, NM | June 6-8, 2012 Genesis Colloquium Biola University | La Mirada, CA | June 7-8, 2012 2012 New Presidents Institute Breckenridge, CO | July 7-10, 2012 2012 Governance Institute Breckenridge, CO | July 11-13, 2012

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