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Reviewed by:
  • Christianity and Moral Identity in Higher Education
  • Gary Railsback, Dean of the School of Education and Diane Wood, Doctoral Student
Perry L. Glanzer and Todd C. Ream. Christianity and Moral Identity in Higher Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2009. 288 pp. Cloth: $80.00. ISBN-13: 978-0230612402.

In Christianity and Moral Identity in Higher Education, Perry Glanzer (Baylor University) and Todd Ream (Indiana Wesleyan University) explore moral education in American higher education, its demise, current directions, and future possibilities. Writing for students, scholars, and administrators in both secular and Christian colleges and universities, they argue that the demise of the pervasive moral and character education that was central to America's colleges in the colonial period "stems from the failed quest to find a nonsectarian or universal form of humanism as a basis for moral education" (p. 3).

They divide their book into four parts. In Part 1, "Moral Education in Contemporary Higher Education," Glanzer and Ream pose a fundamental question, "Do we even agree about what 'moral development' means or what fostering it entails?" The authors offer a framework for understanding contemporary discourse on moral education, tracing the origins, conflict, and dissolution of a common meta-identity and approach to moral education.

Glanzer and Ream then review the work of important scholars in cognitive and moral development, acknowledging that contemporary scholars do not agree on either the definition or process of moral development. They conclude Part 1 by exploring how universities might address identity conflicts and the current fractured state of moral education.

Glanzer and Ream note that they have not included a nonsectarian humanism approach to moral development, primarily because they do not believe such an approach exists. For them, the American higher education system represents a vast collection of varying perspectives on moral identities, and they suggest that each institution's task is to explore and understand its respective community's moral order.

In Part 2, "A More Human Education: Moral Identity and Moral Orientation," Glanzer and Ream challenge our thinking about current issues facing higher education in moral education by posing the following pivotal question: "Should universities or professors move beyond the current limited professional forms of ethics education?"

They present several views that urge both avoiding and embracing moral education, before positing that education is not a neutral endeavor. Moral education and forms of ethics education "become transformed when undertaken for specific identities and moral traditions" (p. 98). The authors acknowledge that most universities promote moral ideals beyond what is required for a profession. They do so, however, by attempting to appeal to the broad, diverse human experience. The authors contend that when moral education moves beyond the minimum required of a profession and attempts to address the broader human experience, it results in either a "less than human form of moral education" or in "attempt[s] to promulgate broad agreement about what it means to be a good human" (p. 98).

Universities provide an incomplete form of moral education, they explain, when they focus only on isolated roles or facets of human identity, such as "citizen," rather than on the whole of being human. Providing less-than-whole-human moral education is required in a secular culture with legal precedence in the First Amendment and the reality of the world-views held by pluralistic faculty and students.

The authors suggest three approaches to promulgating agreement about what it means to be a good human being and how to foster a more human education: "common ground humanism," "secular humanism," and "religious humanism." First, common ground humanism comes from the academic community and from a political process in which the community finds consensus on what makes for human flourishing.

Second, secular humanism derives from the humanities and addresses the meaning of life, thus moving beyond the simple focus on human flourishing found in the research and political approaches used in common ground humanism. However, Glanzer and Ream suggest that this approach may be appropriate only for Ivy League institutions and identify five weaknesses, which limit its use to that context. [End Page 347]

Third, religious humanism comes from a set of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish universities that continue to approach their academic and...

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