Prominent voices reflect upon Christian higher education as it may exist beyond the influence of the faith integration model.
Over the last generation the phrase ”integration of faith and learning” has come to describe how many Christian colleges and universities understand the way all forms of learning fall under the lordship of Jesus Christ. With its origins in the philosophical and theological insights of the Reformed tradition, this phrase has expanded its influence to institutions nurtured by numerous Christian traditions.
This volume draws together prominent voices who are beginning to reflect upon Christian higher education as it may exist beyond the influence of the integration model. The book is organized by areas historically considered to make up the core of an undergraduate general education curriculum–the natural sciences, the social sciences, the behavioral sciences, and the liberal arts. Contributors include scholars who have emerged as seminal voices in their fields and have wrestled with some of the larger questions facing the Christian academy.
Taking Every Thought Captive celebrates forty years of the Christian Scholar’s Review by collecting a representation of the best scholarship to appear in its pages from inception in 1970 through 2010.
Over its forty years of publication, CSR has had two main objectives: ”the integration of Christian faith and learning on both the intra- and inter-disciplinary levels” and ”to provide a forum for the discussion of the theoretical issues of Christian higher education.” The twenty-four articles gathered in this anniversary collection reflect both of these objectives. As a whole, this collection witnesses to the rigors of the intellectual enterprise found within the pages of CSR and affirms an ongoing commitment to support, enhance, and promote Christian scholarship.
Contributors include: Carl F. H. Henry, Arthur F. Holmes, George Marsden, Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, Stanley Hauerwas, Richard J. Mouw, Mark A. Noll, Dallas Willard, Elizabeth Newman, Roger Lundin, Nancy Ammerman, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and fifteen others.
In the twenty-first century, religious faith has reemerged from the margins of modernism and moved back to the center of contemporary scholarly conversations. “When Jacques Derrida died,” Stanley Fish recently wrote, “I was called by a reporter who wanted to know what would succeed high theory and the triumvirate of race, gender, and class as the center of intellectual energy in the academy. I answered like a shot: religion.” A group of evaluators of the Lilly Endowment’s Initiative on Religion and Higher Education recently agreed. “There is today more discussion about the role of religion in the academy than at any time in the past 40 years and more commitment to the project of Christian higher education than there was just ten years ago.”
In recognition of these developments, this particular monograph offers an overview of the various ways conversations about religion and religiously informed scholarship are increasing in the academy. Although a growing number of faith traditions are finding their place in this conversation, the Christian tradition in its various forms is still the dominant voice. This monograph addresses the history of secularization in American higher education and scholarship; the historical and resistance by dominant religious traditions to that secularization; the contemporary ways that individual scholars, networks, and institutions approach the question of religious faith and scholarship; the concerns such a question raises for academic freedom; and the relationship between religious faith and scholarship.