CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY Volume 53, Number 4 OCTOBER 1989 Religion and the American University Eric Daeuber and Paul Shore. .................... 241 Puritan Homiletics: A Caveat .......................... William G. Houser. 255 Homiletical Studies. ............................ 271 Religion and the American University Eric Daeuber and Paul Shore When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful, a miracle; oh it was beautiful, magical. And all the birds in the trees, well, they'd be singing so happily, joyfully, playfully watching me. But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible, logical, responsible, practical. And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable, clinical, intellectual, cynical. So the old song goes, more or less. And it is not a bad expression of the thinking of a good many students in higher education. While it may be hard to document, there remains a general agreement among students and educators alike that higher education fails to address many of the concerns students regularly express, at least as education occurs in the public university and, to one extent or another, in private colleges. Even when efforts are made in that direction, many students simply do not believe what they are taught. Luther argued that higher education ought to be "a foundation and ground of pure religion; therefore she ought to be preserved and maintained with lectures and with stipends against the raging and swelling of Satan."' The modern university has as its predecessor the university of the high middle ages. However, while the modern American university can claim some paternal connection with the university of those times, it can claim virtually no philosophi- cal kinship. Without a doubt, the most obvious departure has happened in the role that religion plays in the structure, philosophy, and curriculum of universities. Today it has virtually no role. Then it was everything. It is that simple. The prime difference between the orientation of the medieval university and its American counterpart lies in the question of why knowledge is pursued. The medieval university had as its focus a cluster of spiritual concerns which offered direction to all the disciplines taught within its precincts. This focus on the spiritual was strengthened by the use of a common language of scholarship (Latin) and the fact that the univer- sity faculty were products of other universities sharing this 242 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY focus. By contrast, the modern American university is, with very few exceptions, without such an agreed upon focus. Although specific departments within universities frequently direct their efforts along a specific line, the larger entity of the university has become, if it is large, the diverse "multiversity" described by Clark Kerr over a quarter of a century ago. Smaller universities and colleges have become blandly noncommittal institutions that avoid a central focus. In particular, the modern American university or college does not typically foster a respect and appreciation for the life of reflection, thought, and growth, as opposed to the life of production and promotion. For both students and faculty, success and acceptance hinge frequently upon production: papers, articles, books, grants, and the like. This tendency to avoid the vita contemplativa was noted as long ago as 1908, when Harvard professor Irving Babbitt noted ruefully that the time was gone when a scholar was respected more for what he was than for what he produced." The shift has been explained in various ways. Most argue that religion is no longer needed. Almost everything can be explained, explored, and otherwise dealt with without appealing to the supernatural. It is generally accepted that people in the middle ages were forced to view the world through God-coloured glasses for lack of a clear scientific vision and for that reason they established an educational system designed exclusively to perpetuate whatever creed was accepted at the time.That understanding of the origin of the marriage of religion and education resurfaces again and again and is often referred to when justifying the establishment of parochial systems of education. Of course, it is natural that society would want to instill its own perception of the world in its children, and education as a system seems a likely vehicle for the task. But education as a propaganda tool was not what caused the medieval university to develop in the way it did. The collapse of the Carolingian Empire left an enormous hole in the cultural landscape of Europe.4 During the period between the late ninth century and the early eleventh century, civilization suffered a considerable setback in almost every area of its development, due largely to the political chaos that the fall of the empire caused. Organized education almost Religion and the American University 243 disappeared and with it went any coherent and consistent method of addressing the questions that the human condition raised. The middle ages were spent largely in rebuilding a society out of the rubble of an earlier civilization.5 Were it not for the palace schools established by Charles the Great and the strides made during that time in the struggle to structure learning in a manner that made some consistent use of a recognized and practical world view, intellectual development would have again been plunged into the sad state it expe- rienced in the seventh and early eighth centuries. However, Christianity offered a framework around which the debate surrounding the meaning of existence could rage. Far from being a simple tool of indoctrination, education in the high middle ages provided an arena for vital and lively discourse based on an agreed upon understanding of human nature and natural processes. Insofar as modern American culture demonstrates condi- tions not altogether alien to the cultural climate of post- Carolingian Europe, perhaps an application of the same remedy deserves some serious consideration. When Charles the Great established palace schools he also planted seeds that would lie dormant for some centuries before they finally bloomed in the eleventh century. However, it was not the structure of his schools or the curriculum that survived the fall of the Carolingian Empire and the dark ages that followed, but his fondness for learning. He was, after all, a barbarian and was rather too busy on weekends to lend much time to the creation of schools that could properly be called universitas. However, as Rashdall notes, "thanks to Charles the Great and the little group of learned ecclesiastics promoted by him, Europe was never again plunged into intellectual darkness quite as profound as that of the Merovingian epoch."What did come out of the Carolingian Renaissance was the establishment of Christianity as a legitimate premise for scholarship within the context of formal curricula. Western thought has seldom been kind to the intrusion of revealed religion into a system designed to explore reality using largely empirical methods. This is especially a problem for academics after the reintroduction of Aristotle. When a marriage was forced through the efforts of St. Augustine, the distinction between education for the active life and education for the contemplative life was born. 244 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY Thus when the pursuit of wisdom is considered (versetur) in terms of action and contemplation, one part may be called active (activa) and the other contemplative (contemplativa), of which the active refers to the prose- cution of life (ad agendam vitam), that is, the establish- ment of behaviours, but the contemplative refers to the careful consideration (ad conspiciendas) of the causes of the nature of things and that truth which is most genuine (sin cerissim am veri ta tem). Charles the Great formalized the legitimacy of the distinction between the active and the contemplative, and the impact that it was to have on the development of the university is hard to exaggerate. The marriage has always been stormy and the question of the relative place of reason and faith in it has never been wholly resolved. But there can be no doubt that the debate itself served as a teething ring in the infancy of the universitas. Anselm converted a smoldering confusion into a full-fledged academic discipline when theology as the exploration of a revealed religion came under the scrutiny of philosophy as an empirical method. Of course, for Anselm there was no legitimate exploration of natural phenomena without God as a presupposition. There is, therefore, a certain nature, or substance, or essence, which is through itself good and great, and through itself is what it is, and through which exists whatever is truly good, or great, or has any existence at all; and which is the supreme good being, the supreme great being, being or subsisting as supreme, that is, the highest of all existing beings.8 One could argue with his reasoning but what cannot be disputed is the centrality of a supreme essence in all his thinking. To follow Anselm further in his work is to discover the struggle to introduce faith as a legitimate element in scholarly pursuit. . . .I long to understand in some degree Thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe, that unless I believe, I should not understand.9 Religion and the American University 245 This understanding of faith as a necessary component in thought comes so early in Anselm's writings that its impor- tance can hardly be denied. The same presupposition is carried into Peter Abelard's work and so becomes ingrained in the very nature and mission of higher education, at least insofar as it pretends to compare to its medieval childhood. The shipwreck of intellectual activity that came on the heels of the fall of the Carolingian Empire left only logic and grammar to wash up on the beach.1° Exactly how Abelard managed to build the method of study that gave rise to the system of universities that sprang up throughout Europe with so little to work with is difficult to say. What can be said is that he pioneered an approach that made possible a spirit of free inquiry. He encouraged frequent and constant questioning to arrive at truth1] and accepted the conclusions that legitimate scholarship arrived at even if they contradicted the authority of the church.I2 Abelard's rather checkered career makes it clear that the university system as it existed in the eleventh century, contrary to most popular perceptions, did not hinder but perpetuated an atmosphere of dissent and debate, making the university of that time a much more vital and stimulating opportunity for scholarship than might have been expected. Abelard also ushered in a "golden age of heresy," meaning that the inquiry that Abelard encouraged could not help but produce new expressions of Christian doctrine, many of which were branded by the church as false. What might seem peculiar is that Abelard continued to lecture and his students continued to listen even though he produced nothing of value as far as the established church was concerned. Free inquiry was made possible because scholars in the middle ages confined themselves to an agreed upon set of questions all of which helped them to understand their place in a divinely created universe. Diverse as these questions were, there remained a presupposed understanding of their importance. While a great many thinkers were accused of error, very few were accused of silliness. The academic community concerned itself almost entirely with how scholarship came about, not with what it produced. What mattered to the academic community of the eleventh and twelfth centuries was that efforts to address questions be accomplished within the context of faith and that 246 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY appropriate contemplation be a part of the process. This is not to say that empirical methods of determining truth were ignored but that academics were careful to apply the approp- riate method of determining truth to the subject matter at hand. Nor is it suggested that any given set of questions could be explored using only a single method of inquiry. On the contrary, a great many models of investigation were applied to a great many questions, virtually all of which deserved the attention of the academic community. The diversity of method in evidence in the high middle ages seems at times altogether missing from the intellectual landscape of the twentieth century. A shift toward a more narrowly defined spectrum of what are considered intellectu- ally respectable methods has occurred. Consequently the modern American university turns a blind eye to the spiritual, or at least contemplative, perception of reality so much a part of the university of the middle ages. This shift away from the contemplative efforts of the university toward the current empirical focus can be explained by the following factors. First, there is the general secularization of American society as a whole. Although the level of religious involvement in the United States is arguably quite high in comparison to that of most other Western industrialized nations, the degree to which religious issues have formed a central part of the political, social, or economic life of the country has appeared to decline over the last two hundred years. This increase in the relative importance of secular concerns has been accompanied by a proliferation in the number of denominations, sects, and cults throughout the country, pulling the American university farther away from the idea of an institution which has a commonly agreed upon spiritual focus. Even many of the denominational colleges have, in the spirit of ecumenism and tolerance, relaxed both the formal framework and the less formal "atmosphere" that fostered this spiritual unity. The American college of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries was an instrument of moral guidance and instruction. The president of Dickinson College, writing in 1792, spoke in this way: . . .every good teacher ought to be satisfied when he is taking the best means for preserving the morals of [a parent's] child, as well as for improving his understanding.l3 Religion and the American University 24 7 As long as American colleges (and later, to a lesser degree, universities) saw their role to foster the moral development of their charges in loco paren tis, the vita con templa tiva and the focus on the spiritual could be kept alive. The professors and, in particular, the president of the small American college of the 1700's or early 1800's were role models not merely of academically successful men but of searchers after a truth that could not be discovered through logical syllogisms or the chemistry laboratory. All of these things changed with the rise of scientism in the later half of the nineteenth century. This belief in the superiority and invincibility of empiricism and the scientific method as a means of discovering truth entered American university life from several directions. The development of John Hopkins in the 1870's as a graduate-oriented institution on the German model encouraged the acceptance of rational inquiry as the appropriate means of arriving at truth. The theoretical work of Darwin, Mendel, and others also gave support to the scientist position. By the end of the nineteenth century, a scientifically oriented college curriculum was being hailed by many as the new order. John Brubacher and Willis Rudy, writing on the development of the modern collegiate cumculum, note that, to the "progressive" education of the late 1800's, "science training would give the mind real disci- pline. . .not the 'safe and elegant imbecility of classical learning.' It would replace the arid verbalisms and deductive analysis of an aristocratic, stratified society with the free, inductive inquiry and tangible observations of an advanced, progressive social order."14 The practical, activistic culture of America had long been sceptical of "non-practical" learning of all kinds, and the emergence of a scientist ideology that promised practical results as well as a world view untinged by sectarian disputes was welcome to educational leaders from John Dewey to Charles Homer Haskins. Many educators hoped that the combination of an empirical, scientific epistemology and a modified liberal arts cumculum would produce a common frame of reference and an intellectual focus for undergraduate education. In reality, the proliferation of and competition among departments and programs and the gradual decrease in emphasis on moral development as a goal of undergraduate training have prevented such a common 248 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY focus from developing and have kept the notion of a vita contemplativa from taking root in more than a few American colleges. Finally, the rise of the state-run university has worked against the development of a focus on spirituality or of any single unifying principle in the undergraduate experience. The separation of church and state and the new emphasis on practical concerns partially explain the avoidance of a spiritual orientation on state-run university campuses. These focuses, along with the myriad of political pressures placed on publicly funded institutions, brought about the avoidance of any "ultimate concern other than a scientific or pseudo- scientific spirit of inquiry." The American state university, writes Frederick Rudolph, was defined "in the great Midwest and West, where frontier democracy and frontier materialism would help to support a practical-oriented popular institution."15 This pseudo-scientific approach often leads to a violent, but scarcely rigorous, reaction toward the empirical or, worse, a trivializing by social scientists of the entire realm of spiritu- ality. Alan Bloom, criticizing this trivialization, writes thus: Atheists [of past centuries] took religion seriously and recognized that it is a real force, costs something and requires difficult choices. These sociologists who talk so facilely about the sacred are like a man who keeps a toothless old circus lion around the house in order to experience the thrills of the jungle.l6 Subject to fads, influenced by pressure groups, and largely cut off from its contemplative and spiritual heritage, the American university remains open to the charge that it is largely without a focus that goes beyond the often ill-defined and diluted commitment to scientific inquiry and "liberal" thought. The consequences of this diffusion of focus in American universities are numerous and, in some cases, far from salutary. On a most basic level, there is a lack of common language among professors in different disciplines and, to a lesser degree, among their students. Also, the absence of a common set of concerns can foster a sense of anomia among students who come to the university seeking a direction for their academic and personal development. Some students Religion and the American University 249 gravitate to fraternities or sororities or become involved in other campus organizations, but these affiliations do not always provide guidance in the development of a clear focus or set of values. A survey conducted by the Carnegie Founda- tion in 1984 revealed that sixty-three percent of undergradu- ates consider formulating values and goals for their lives an "essential" outcome of what college education should be.17 A diffuse, non-reflective college environment may make this formulation impossible, however. Another consequence of this diffusion of focus is that pre-professional education, which continues to be an important segment of undergraduate education, may not include adequate attention to the formu- lation of values and ethics. Future members of the legal, medical, and business professions need to be given the opportunity to develop coherent positions on ethics and values; without this opportunity their undergraduate pre-professional training is probably unsound. Finally, social or political change emanating from univer- sities is more effective when an educational experience containing common points of reference is possible. Obviously, a spiritual and contemplative orientation is not the only possible focus that could develop in a university. However, a focus on reflection and the non-material offers significant advantages. For students who have grown cynical regarding the political process, a social reform program containing a perspective with broader and more timeless elements could hold much appeal. Also such a focus could enable students to see more clearly the relationship between their own personal spiritual concerns and the larger world or social change and conflict. The politics of the far right and left offer ideologies that claim to possess answers to social questions, but ignore the inner life and the understanding that can come from self- examination. University-initiated social action grounded in the experience of the vita contemplativa offers an alternative approach of great promise. The modern American university should therefore adopt a threefold program of reform to help bring about the refocusing of attention on the importance of the vita con templativa. First, the university as a whole must be prepared to accept a wider variety of methods to be applied to the questions investigated by faculty and students. At the present time social science and 250 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY and education departments are dominated by empiricism. This situation is not surprising, since behavioristic interpretations of humans have been among the most potent forces in the social sciences. Yet there are other approaches besides empirical to the problems posed in, for example, an undergrad- uate course in educational psychology that legitimately can be included in the syllabus of that course. The theorizing of cognitive psychologies, although derived in part from empirical data, are also the product of introspection, creative rearranging of known components, and assumptions made about human abilities and potential. Humanistic psychology, another school of psychology widely used by therapists, has an empirical component but has as its foundation certain beliefs held regarding human beings. Together all these branches of psychology have made important contributions to the field. It is time to acknowledge the role non-rationally derived belief does play in the social sciences, the humanities, and, perhaps to a lesser degree, the natural sciences. To speak in this way is not to denigrate the significance of empirical study as a means of uncovering important knowledge about the universe, but only to call attention to the non-empirical elements of some of the sciences and the value of including non- empirical methods of study in the investigation of many questions concerning human life. Central to the reform of the university is the acceptance of contemplation as a recognized academic pursuit. Serious acceptance of the vita contemplativa as a legitimate part of American university life demands a radical reexamination of the basic function of the institution.18 The pressure and emphasis on finished products that dominate today's univer- sities would need to be replaced or at least complemented by the ancient notion of schol6, which is only imperfectly translated by the English word "leisure." ScholZ, which gives us the words "school" and "scholar," is used by Plato to describe not idleness or an escape from work, but the employment of free time to develop the mind and soul through discussion or reading.19 The concept of scholi?, placed in the context of the modern university, could help foster the vita contemplativa on two levels. First, university faculty members are currently staggering under committee and programmatic responsibilities, relentless Religion and the American University 251 pressure to "publish or perish," and, most recently, demands to participate in applying for grants to support their institu- tions or programs. They have little, if any, time to reflect upon their responsibilities as teachers and mentors, their own professional development as scholars, researchers, and administrators, or personal growth as seekers of the truth. A university policy recognizing the legitimacy of scholeas a part of professors' lives would make such reflection possible, and the evaluation of scholarship would once again include the way one conducts one's life, not merely what one produces. For students, the situation is similar in many ways. Like faculty members, students face considerable pressure to produce materials that can be given quantitative evaluation. Students perhaps have somewhat more free time to ponder the direction and development of their own lives or discuss these questions with others, but they too are not encouraged by the university to do so. Indeed, the pressures on students to produce a volume of written material may be greater than the pressure placed on faculty members. The former dean of a distinguished American school of education has remarked that, whereas professors are expected to produce three or four papers each year that represent their greatest efforts, students may be asked to produce ten or fifteen papers of the highest possible quality. American university students, drawn from greatly varying walks of life, often without guidance or focus, could make use of schole to produce fewer but more complete finished products while having time and energy to discuss and reflect on their own personal development. The third, and perhaps most profound, change that univer- sities must bring about is the establishment of a new rationale for the pursuit of knowledge either within or beyond the university. This new understanding of education would supplement or even replace the currert understanding of education as a tool in acquiring skills for an active life. The "new" rationale for the pursuit of knowledge would be, in fact, an ancient one. Education, it can be argued, has value as a means to the end of developing not merely the active life, but the contemplative as well. This distinction between prepara- tion for active life and preparation for contemplative life is not the same as the often emphasized difference between specific task-related skills and the more basic skills of critical thinking 252 CONCORIIIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY and communication. While the latter skills are of undoubted importance, they are not enough. In addition, mature, self- reliant students need a deeper understanding of themselves and the universe, Discussing the founding of a new university, John Henry Newman wrote that "a cultivated intellect, because it is a good in itself, brings with it a power and a grace to every work and occupation which it undertakes, and enables us to be graceful ..."20 By a "cultivated intellect" Newman meant not simply a mind well trained in analysis, but a mind enriched and deepened by leisurely contemplation of wisdom and perhaps by growth of character as well. At early nineteenth-century Oxford, which Newman attended, a fourth year of study was an invitation to just such a maturing process. By contrast, writes Rudolph, taking a fourth year of study at the University of Chicago a century later "was evidence of some incapacity to serve, of an unwillingness to grasp power."" The three-year bachelor's program has largely disappeared from American colleges and universities, but the notion that the university is not an appropriate setting for contemplation remains. Yet if individuals are not given an opportunity while at the university to reflect upon their goals, aspirations, and values, to grasp intuitive connections between concepts, and to develop wisdom and maturity, where else in our hectic society will they find opportunity to do so?22 ENDNOTES 1. Thomas S. Kepler, ed., The Table Talk ofMartin Luther(Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1952), pp. 336-337. 2. Irving Babbitt, "Academic Leisure," in Literature and the American College: Essays in Defense of the Humanities (Boston, 1908). 3. For a general work that demonstrates this perspective see Edward J. Power, Main Currents in the History of Education (New York: McGraw Hill, 1962). 4. Elizabeth Lawrence, The Origins and Growth of Modern Education (London, 1970), pp. 52-55. 5. Christopher J. Lucas, Our Western Educational Heritage (New York: Macmillan, 1972), p. 200. Religion and the American University 253 Hastings Rashdall, Powicke, and Emden, eds., The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, I (London: Oxford, 1936), p. 30. Saint Augustine, City of God, VIII, VI (see also Lucas, Our Western Educational Heritage), p. 182. Saint Anselm, Monologium, chapter IV. Saint Anselm, Proslogium, chapter I. Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, p. 39. Lucas, Our Western Educational Heritage, p. 224. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, V (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1907), p. 622. Quoted in Frederick Rudolph, The American College and University: A History (New York: Knopf, 1962), p. 103. John Brubacher and Willis Rudy, Higher Education in Transi- tion (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), p. 117. Rudolph, The American College and University: A History, p. 276. Alan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), p. 216. Quoted in Ernest Boyer, College: The Undergraduate Expe- rience in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), p. 67. The term vita contemplativa has its origins in the late classical period. Seneca, the first Latin author to use the word, applies it to self-examination, especially of a theoretical or speculative nature (Epistolae Morales 95.10). During the fourth through tenth centuries, vita contemplativa came to mean a life characterized by solitude, prayer, and frequently mortification. In this article the emphasis is on reflection and spiritual growth, rather than isolation and denial, as a means of sustaining the vita contemplativa. For a definitive discussion of what kinds of understanding can derive from a contemplative life, see St. Augustine: On Education, ed. and trans. by George Howie (Chicago: Henry Regenery, 1969), pp. 199 ff. Plato, Laws, 820c. John Henry Newman, The Idea of the University (Garden City: Image Books, 1959), p. 183. Rudolph, The American College and University: A History, p. 453 (see also Babbitt, Literature and the American College, p. 79). 254 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY 22. For a discussion of how a contemplative approach in education can foster intuitive understanding of concepts, see Nel Noddings and Paul J. Shore, Awakening the Inner Eye: Intuition in Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1984). Paul Shore, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of education at Moorhead State University, Moorhead, Minnesota, having received his doctorate from Stanford University. Rev. Eric Daeuber is campus pastor at Moorhead State University, Moorhead, Minnesota, having graduated from Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.