Professing in the Postmodern Academy: Faculty and the Future of Church-Related Colleges

Conversation and Authority: A Tension in the Inheritance of the Church-Related College

Conversation and Authority 115 Let us humble ourselves, therefore, since we are nothing more than a voice and that, of ourselves, we are incapable of doing any good to souls, or even of making the least impression on them, for we are only a voice, a sound, of which nothing remains after it has vibrated in the air. —St. John Baptist de la Salle How can the wind move the tree when it’s nothing but air? Well, it does move it; and don’t forget it. —Ludwig Wittgenstein INHERITANCE Hannah Arendt begins the preface to her book Between Past and Future by quoting the poet René Char, commenting on the situation of French postwar society: “Our inheritance was left to us by no testament.”1 It is an aphorism descriptive of many institutions in our day. Think of almost any church-related college in America.2 It likely has a rich heritage—an inspiring story of members of a community coming together to bring about a particular vision of the Christian society through higher education. But the story Conversation and Authority: A Tension in the Inheritance of the Church-Related College RICHARD KYTE 116 RICHARD KYTE is not adequate to guide the college into the future, nor even to describe (much less justify) its present place in society. In describing its place in society, the church-related college must express its mission, and the mission statement never follows simply from the college’s history. Rather, the mission statement finds a way to accommodate the story of the college’s past into the description of its present place. The testament—in Protestant colleges typically a creed or confession and in Roman Catholic colleges the living testimony of members of the founding order—originated as something that spoke authoritatively only to those already within the community. It was not designed to justify the place of the institution to society as a whole. But that is what is required now. Mission statements are being rewritten (almost always with a view to a readership of potential customers), and a way is sought to cast the college’s historical religious commitment in a manner that is both meaningful and nonoffensive to those who do not identify wholly with the religious tradition. Thus, what once served as a testament is cast as part of the heritage, and what to do with that heritage is an open question. A couple of examples should help to illustrate the trend. The opening sentence of the Institutional Mission Statement of Christian Brothers University reads as follows: “Christian Brothers University is a Catholic institution of higher education in the tradition of the Christian Brothers.”3 Right there, in the first sentence of the mission statement, on the first page of the catalog, we find that the Brothers of the Christian Schools, whose presence on campus was once the authoritative and defining voice of the institution, are now instead the presence of a tradition. The Brothers still enrich the institution, but as the number of Brothers who serve on campus diminishes year by year, what is lost is not the identity of the university but rather a daily and visible reminder of the university’s heritage .4 In the Rhodes College catalog, under the heading, “A Statement of Christian Commitment and Church Relationship,” we read the following words: “First, let us look at what [Rhodes’ distinctive and extraordinary function as a church-related college ] isnot. Rhodes’ commitment to the church and to the Lord Conversation and Authority 117 of the church does not mean that it is a doctrinaire institution requiring intellectual adherence to a creedal religion.” Given the creedal nature of Presbyterianism that may seem like a disingenuous claim. As the rest of the Statement makes clear, the Presbyterian Church is looked upon not as an authoritative guide but rather as a source of inspiration and value. In other words the church provides opportunities for worship and demonstrating social concern. The reformed creeds, which at one time carried authoritative weight in the life of the college, now have only the weight of historical relationship. They continue to have a privileged place, but that place is in the church building just across the street, where they may be heard from time to time, but where they may also be ignored. These are not atypical examples. They are characteristic of colleges that are trying hard to retain the significance of...