A Higher Education: Baylor and the Vocation of a Christian University

5. The Challenges and Opportunities for Liberal Education in a Faith-Based University

75 — Lee S. Shulman — Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus and Professor of Psychology Emeritus, Stanford University, President Emeritus, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching THE CHALLENGES AND oPPorTUNITIES For LIBErAL EDUCATIoN IN A FAITH-BASED UNIVErSITY In what manner can a faculty and student body pursue liberal education in a faith-based university? To many who think about such matters, the juxtaposition of “liberal” education and a “faith-based” or “Christian” university appears to be a contradiction in terms. Liberal education rests on a commitment to doubt, skepticism, openness to a broad spectrum of views without prejudgment, a rejection of dogma and an insistence on evidence and continuous inquiry. In contrast, a life “based on faith” is built upon a commitment to eternal, divinely inspired and revealed truth that takes precedence over doubt and skepticism, setting limits to inquiry and boundaries around investigation. My argument in this essay is that no contradiction need exist between these two commitments. This is not to say that the intersection of faith and liberal learning lacks contentiousness. on the contrary, it can be a dauntingly difficult marriage, but out of the challenge may develop a deeper and more profoundly liberally educated citizen in a democracy than may emerge from institutions that lack this testing ground, that are not home to that educational crucible where both the liberal and the faithful intersect, collide, and, under the best conditions, become mutually enriching. Thus my attitude toward the confluence of liberal education and faith-based education is akin to the philosophy articulated by 5 76 Lee S. Shulman my predecessor as Carnegie Foundation president, the late John Gardner, when he first addressed his staff on becoming Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1964: “We are confronted with a set of unlimited opportunities masquerading as insoluble problems.” I believe that in a context like Baylor, where liberalizing faith-based education and sanctifying liberal education define the essence of its pedagogical mission, this confluence of challenge and opportunity is striking. I too come from a background in which the intersection of religious and secular studies was a feature of everyday life. In my middle school and high school years growing up in Chicago, I was educated at an orthodox Jewish day school and yeshiva where I was immersed for nearly four hours every day in the study of sacred texts, primarily Talmud and Bible in their original Hebrew and Aramaic. The prime morning hours were devoted to those studies, and the afternoons, when we students might have been a tad less alert, were dedicated to English, math, history, the sciences, and foreign languages. At the age of sixteen I was admitted to the college of the University of Chicago and at that point I became a yeshiva dropout. Somewhat ironically, in beginning my undergraduate studies at Chicago where the Great Books curriculum replaced the Torah and the Talmud as sacred texts, many of the habits of mind and strategies of textual interpretation transferred over with remarkable ease. This experience of moving between the university and yeshiva worlds and the modes of thought and commitment that characterize each of those cultures has been a significant influence on the thinking that animates the present essay. And while the professional focus of my life has since been that of secular academia, I continue to study the Jewish sources regularly and find in them a source of inspiration and enlightenment. Three Stories There is a sound homiletic axiom that stories are the best pathway to understanding. In that spirit, I shall offer you three accounts that will serve to introduce the central arguments I shall make in this essay. The Challenges and Opportunities for Liberal Education 77 The Trip to Messiah Nearly fifteen years ago I was returning from one of my frequent visits to Jerusalem and flying to Philadelphia in order to give a talk at a superb undergraduate Christian institution, Messiah College. Messiah had been the alma mater of my predecessor as president of the Carnegie Foundation, the late Ernest Boyer, and I was scheduled to give a lecture in his memory. My plane was late, a connection was missed, and I didn’t land in Philadelphia until 3 a.m. Waiting for me was a young man who introduced himself as a Messiah graduate, now working in the admissions office while waiting for his future wife to finish her degree. As we made the...