A sign of the times?

USC will be eliminating its German department, claiming an “enlarged vision.” “There was a time when because of world events, the study of German and Russian and a few other languages and cultures struck us as really central. We now have a much broader perspective in the world.”

Philosophy and a Liberal Arts Education

There’s a great article in the New York Times about a renewed interest in philosophy at major universities. Though focused on philosophy, most of what is said is applicable to a broad liberal arts education in general. Tim Lacy makes some observations on the article at the History and Education blog (where I found the article).

Meet the New Media “Evangelical” Stereotype

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, a journalist with an unusually high level of theological and historical awareness, is on her way to becoming one of the most insightful religion reporters working today. In a recent Get Religion post, she clearly identifies a trend I’ve noticed here and there in media treatment of evangelicals. On the plus side, evangelicals are no longer viewed as “poor, uneducated and easily led,” but the greater negative is that the typical evangelical in these more positive media treatments really isn’t an evangelical at all, at least by any commonly-accepted definition. She points to a Newsweek article written by Lisa Miller on an “evangelical megachurch pastor” who doesn’t think abortion is an important political issue. But not so fast, says Ziegler:

Lisa Miller would have you believe that conservative Christians are even giving up on their opposition to abortion. Except that what Lisa Miller worked very hard to keep out of her story is that Adam Hamilton is a mainline Protestant. United Methodist Church, in fact. He received his M.Div. from Southern Methodist University. I mean the United Methodist Church supports legalized abortion. And has for a long time. To portray this as some kind of change in evangelical thought is ridiculous. Methodists have, by their own admission, fine-tuned a statement in support of legalized abortion for almost 40 years.

So Newsweek’s big story, more accurately stated, is minister in pro-choice denomination holds to pro-choice views.

It seems to me that one of those most responsible for shaping this new non-evangelical evangelical is Amy Sullivan, herself an example of the trend she claims to have discovered. Poised to eclipse the ever-dull Jim Wallis with the publication of her new bookThe Party Faithful, Sullivan is a member of a mainline Protestant denomination, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, pro-choice, and supports gay marriage even though she recognizes in doing so she goes against the teaching of the Bible (she doesn’t take it all literally, she assures Salon). So what makes her an evangelical? Well, she has “a personal interpretation of biblical teachings.” And, of course, because she says so. After all, there are lots of evangelicals in the Democratic party, she argues - just look at Bill Clinton.

Really Old-Time Religion

In a survey of 1,684 “unchurched” adults, the style of architecture they would prefer to see in church, by well over a 2-to-1 margin, is Gothic and traditional. Fewer than 1-in-5 preferred anything contemporary.

Thabiti on Barach and Jeremiah

Thabiti Anyabwile, author of The Decline of African-American Theology, provides some cultural context and theological perspective on the controversy surrounding Barack Obama and his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, in an interview at Christianity Today.

American Religious Landscape

There are some interesting findings in the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Alan Wolfe provides a summary here (though it’s worth nothing that he finds this survey confirming all his assumptions about the direction of religion in America, making his interpretation of the data worthy of scrutiny). A few significant findings:

• Those who identify themselves as Protestants are still a majority, but just barely (51.5 percent)
• The majority of those identifying as Protestant are Baptists: 1/3 of all Protestants (and 2/3 of African-American Protestants), and nearly 1/5 of the total U.S. adult population
• 1 in 3 native-born Roman Catholics has left the church; 1 in 10 Americans is a former Catholic. Catholics are the largest Christian group, but also one of the most rapidly declining.
• 44% of Americans have switched faith at some point in their lives
• Advocacy groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations have been claiming that there are more Muslims than Jews in the United States (I’ve also heard the claim there are more Muslims than Episcopalians, etc.). CAIR’s website claims there are 7 million Muslims in America, over 2% of the population. In reality, the percentage of Americans who are Muslims is 0.6%, meaning there are more Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Buddhists in the United States than Muslims, and roughly three times as many Jews.
• Mormons and Muslims have the largest families
• Mainline Protestants tend to be elderly, but so do evangelicals.
• Evangelicals are mostly in the South, and overwhelminly white (more so than Mainline Protestants)
• Hindus, Jews, and Buddhists have the highest percentage of members with post-graduate education, and significantly higher than average income levels
• 3 in 4 Buddhists are converts; only a minority of Buddhists in America are of Asian descent
• Jehovah’s Witnesses have the lowest retention rate, with only 37% of those raised as Jehovah’s Witnesses still identifying as Jehovah’s Witnesses as adults

It’s worth noting that the sample size of this survey was about 35,000 (Alan Wolfe notes the typical survey of religious identification is around 1,000).

McClay on Education

In other words, education should aspire to two things: First, it should point us toward self-control, a condition in which we come into full possession of ourselves, overcoming the tyranny of our appetites, and the even greater tyranny of the immediate, with all its nagging and imperious demands, and instead giving us the capacity to fix our eyes and desires upon the goals that matter, the things that endure. Second, it should make us eager to realize the fullest possibilities of our human nature, which means, paradoxically, striving always to transcend the “merely” human, those foibles and follies to which we all are prone, and instead to inspire us to hear and heed the call of higher things, and to realize what Aristotle called “the best thing in us.”

It is, of course, human to err and stumble, and to be pushed along by forces beyond our control. But it is even more fully human to strive in the teeth of such challenges, to push back against immediacy and necessity, to refuse a life lived entirely moment to moment, as a tumbleweed of unregulated desires, and instead to live a life of unity, integrity, principle, and purpose, a life informed by the directive force of large, generous, and enduring ideals, with a proper sense of life’s proper ends.

This is, I repeat, not the dominant philosophy of education on offer in contemporary America. Instead, training in self-esteem, group dynamics, adjustment, social usefulness, civic engagement, vocational skills, money-making, test-taking, or citizenship, are all cited as the most desirable and reasonable goals for education. And many of them are worthy things. But none compares with the goal of bringing us into possession of ourselves, and helping us catch a glimpse of the full range of our humanity. By that standard, all the other goals seem timid and useless—notwithstanding their panting eagerness to be serviceable and profitable.

There are deep paradoxes at the heart of education. It is most useful when it does not consciously strive to be useful; that is the core of what makes a liberal education liberal. It serves the goal of responsible citizenship best by teaching that there are things higher and more important than being a citizen. It prepares us for the future by immersing us in the past. And it is an unending task, because it engages us in seeking to become more fully what we already are—or rather, to become what we are meant to be, fulfilling some potentiality that is already inherent in what we are. Not that we are necessarily “meant to be” some one particular thing—an architect, a doctor, a welder, whatever. That is not what I mean. Instead, I mean that the fullest measure of our humanity is never something merely given to us. It is an achievement, as well as an endowment. We are always already human, and yet to be human, we also must be constantly striving to be ever more fully so. Education cannot guide and spur us to such achievement so long as it refuses to take a position about the things that are true, honest, just, pure, and lovely.

Neuhaus’ Law, yet again

Some time ago, Fr Richard John Neuhaus came  up with what he called Neuhaus’ Law for religious institutions: “Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed. Sadly there is a new example to illustrate the truth of this claim, as theologian J. I. Packer, probably one of the 10 most influential figures in English-speaking evangelicalism, now faces the possibility of suspension in the Anglican Church of Canada.

Evangelicalism in Manhattan

At the Religion in American History blog, my friend John Fea notes in a post titled “Manhattan Evangelicalism” (no, that’s not an oxymoron, at least not entirely) some developments in the rebirth of sorts of The King’s College, an evangelical institution of higher education housed in the Empire State building. Unlike the old King’s College, the new is shaped in the mold of Patrick Henry College with a strong focus on political conservatism.This is important, but in the comments I mention another kind of Manhattan Evangelicalism: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, which has recently received some attention in Newsweek magazine in an interview with the church’s pastor, Tim Keller. Keller has also made some comments on the interview (which is sympathetic and mostly accurate) on another blog here. As John notes, the reborn King’s College is different from the older, more pietistic and apolitical evangelicalism/fundamentalism it used to be part of. Redeemer is fairly far removed from this kind of evangelicalism as well, but in a way that is more broadly culturally-oriented than political. More can be gleaned from a page that serves as something of a clearing house for Keller online, available here.

(I was going to name this entry “Evangelicals Take Manhattan” as a play on “Muppets Take Manhattan,” but there’s enough paranoia about evangelicals trying to take over the country that I didn’t want to do anything to feed into it).

Addendum: In the comments below, John calls attention to an interview with Tim Keller recently published in First Things.

Wild and Crazy Guy

Steve Martin in the Smithsonian magazine, reflecting on what it means to be funny.

Cross-cultural encounters of a smoky kind

(seen at More Than 95 Theses)

Oh Happy Day…

Providence Christian College has a new website.