REVIEWS: Can the University Give Us Any Help?

November-December 1997

By James W. Skillen

The long-range plans of the Center for Public justice call for hard work at three levels: 1) foundational work on a Christian approach to politics; 2) public policy research and advocacy; and 3) civic education. All three levels of activity require well-trained Christian leaders. Where and how will these leaders get their advanced education from a Christian point of view?

There will never be a substitute for integrated, lifelong Christian education in home, church, and school. Where these institutions fail to provide nurture from a thoroughly Christian point of view, it will be difficult for the Center to find and train the leaders it needs. And beyond these three institutions lies the college and university. Can the institutions of higher education give us any help?

Three books shed some light on this question, and each comes from an institutional context that also holds promise.

The book that is most immediately useful to students is Steven Garber's The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior During the University Years (InterVarsity Press, 1996). Garber works from start to finish to show how a Christian way of life must contend with the relativism and emptiness of much university education today. He tries, through stories, illustration, and argument, to answer the questions, "What do you care about? How does someone decide which cares and commitments will give shape and substance to life ... for life?"

Garber writes from inside the student's decision-making process, from inside the personal struggle to decide how to live one's life and how to think Christianly while pursuing advanced education. Center for Public Justice Associate Stan Gaede, the provost at Westmont College, says that The Fabric of Faithfulness is a "profoundly important work." Longtime InterVarsity Press editor James Sire, who himself has written on the university and a Christian worldview, says that Garber's is "the best book on moral education I have ever encountered."

One of the promises represented by Garber's book is the ongoing work of the American Studies Program of the Coalition of Christian Colleges and Universities in Washington D.C., where Garber now teaches. His book is not just one man's cry for vision. It is a book that emerges from and points back to a communal effort in which Christian teachers and public policy thinkers are engaged in helping college students think about public life from a Christian point of view. The director of the American Studies Program, Jerry Herbert, is another long-time Center Associate and former chair of the Center's board.

The second book is a small monograph published by the Crossroads Program on Faith and Public Policy, founded by Evangelicals for Social Action in cooperation with the Center for Public Justice. One of the Crossroads doctoral scholars, Nicholas K. Meriwether has written The Public University and Christian Belief (Crossroads, ESA, 10 East Lancaster Ave., Wynnewood, PA 19096; phn. 610-645-9390).

Meriwether focuses on current issues of multiculturalism and how evangelical students can engage in the academic process more directly and self-consciously as Christians. He is aware of both the dangers and the great opportunities for Christian intellectual development in today's university.

The Crossroads program represents another hope for the Center's future. Funded in part by The Pew Charitable Trusts, Crossroads brings Christian graduate students together with academic and political/ governmental mentors to help them think through policy questions from a Christian standpoint. The director of Crossroads, Keith Pavlischek, is also a Center for Public Justice Associate who is helping to discover and prepare future Christian civic leaders.

Finally, I want to call your attention to an older book just republished by our friends at the Association for Christian Higher Education in Australia (ACHEA). Public Justice Report correspondent Bruce Wearne and another Center Associate, Keith Sewell, have, through ACHEA, published Hendrik van Riessen's The University and Its Basis, which is available for $10 (U.S.) from ACHEA (358 Mountain Highway Wantirna, Vic. Australia 3152; phn. 61-39720-4871; e-mail centre@achea.edu.au).

Van Riessen's book originated from lectures he gave in North American in 1962. It is as valuable today as it was 35 years ago. The context in which Van Riessen wrote was the Free University of Amsterdam, where he taught philosophy and helped lead an international Association of Christian Philosophy The Center for Public justice has benefited over the years from the fruits of the academic and political work of Abraham Kuyper, who founded the Free University. Van Riessen's book testifies to the importance of organized efforts to educate, pursue research, and think through the meaning of public as well as private life from a Christian perspective. The Center for Public justice intends to carry forward that tradition.