The Future of Baptist Higher Education

Chapter Twelve: The University, the Church, and the Culture

187 Chapter Twelve The University, the Church, and the Culture Thomas E. Corts I The New Testament concept of being “in this world, but not of this world”1 summarizes the dilemma of each Christian and of each Baptist institution. The church (i.e., all Christian believers), and especially evangelicals in America , have alternately “struggled with an inherent tension between . . . keeping that which they defined as sacred uncontaminated by the profane world,” and “infusing the world with sanctifying influences.” 2 Should Christians protect themselves from the world, or become involved in the world in order to have an impact upon it? Since the first century A.D., even under the Emperor Constantine and in the early Middle Ages, there has been an uneasy coexistence between culture and Christianity, Caesar and Christ, paideia and Logos.3 My thesis is as follows: First, culture is by quiet stealth compromising our Christianity, wearing down Christians’ disdain for evil, urging acceptance of what we should resist, all without our awareness and with a resultant impact upon Baptist colleges and universities. Second, in our time and in the future it will take deliberate, careful, and conscientious resistance to culture’s siren songs, or we shall lose our distinctiveness and be out of business, at great loss to the church and to society. Third, Christian college leadership must be single-minded and confident in purpose and commitment, because it will not likely receive strong endorsement from the society at large. “Culture” in this essay refers to the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, art, science, beliefs, and all products of human work and thought, the collected wisdom and sentiment of past and present.4 Culture is here, surrounding us and among us, like it or not. “[A] capacity for culture is in fact one of humanity’s most firmly established biological traits,”5 and SchmelVita Future.indd 187 SchmelVita Future.indd 187 4/11/2006 1:20:43 PM 4/11/2006 1:20:43 PM 188 The University, the Church, and the Culture in America, our culture and our Christianity have been at times friends, but more often foes. Yet it is not an overstatement to say today that modern American culture has overwhelmed modern American Christianity.6 The ceaseless waves of messages from movies, newspapers, TV, and the like have wrought a sea of secularism and spawned a riptide, pulling American Christians under. In the post-World War II era, prosperity came like a tidal wave, drenching the rising middle-class Christian masses in consumerist pop culture until, thoroughly soaked and sated, they resignedly washed out into the sea of cultural abyss where today we find ourselves far from shore, and totally lost. Back in 1948, the editor of Christian Century wrote that three separate forces were bidding for ascendancy in the spiritual life of America: Protestantism , Roman Catholicism, and secularism.7 Secularism has won thus far, as we look back on the fifty years from 1950 to 2000, a time of radically shifting realities. Consider what happened in that approximate time frame. Americans, even with minimal preparation, went from high school to college in record numbers. Divorce rates rose as marriage and the family came under harsh attack. Birth control made women freer. Sex was lifted from its undercover status in public conversation. Rebellion and civil disobedience became more acceptable. We confronted racial prejudice and outlawed segregation. Laws made work less offensive and less demanding. Easy credit taught us not to defer our desires, but to have it all without waiting. Clothing styles and dress codes came to lack modesty. Relentlessly catchy slogans and rhythms stuck in our brains so that we programmed ourselves to repeat advertising jingles without conscious intent. So-called urban music marked by rap lyrics filled with violent and ribald language led to the phenomenon of street vernacular’s dirtiest words tumbling even from the lips of small children. Abundant, private pornography-on-demand came within personal reach via the Internet. Holding to claimed freedoms which the founding fathers likely never would have allowed, we endured the outrageous—the truly uncouth—on TV halftime shows, on commercials, on billboards, and in other public venues , stretching the bounds of public taste.8 We not only tolerated the cult of personality among “stars” of athletics, movies, TV, and public prominence, we made those stars, sometimes even allowing them to invent themselves, and rewarding them with obscene profits as compensation for their illicit theft of the unmerited...