Campus Gleanings, September 18, 2008
Dear Colleagues,
Included here are a number of EM Gleanings from colleagues and the net:
- Jamie Smith recommended to me this essay on “Tolerance as an Ideological Category” by the controversial Slavoj Zizek. This is a neo-Marxist take on “tolerance” talk, declaring it the “culturalization of politics” and the eclipsing of notions of justice and exploitation. It may serve as a critique of identity politics and as a primer for Otto Selles’ lectures on your campus. The dialectical materialism he espouses, of course, is another thing altogether…
- The Redeemer College Dean of Academics was sending around this blog entitled “The State of Higher Desperation”. It reviews a special “state of the U” issue of the New Criterion and is offers good commentary.
- Clayton Libolt, who was at our last CRCMA conference, did a summary and critique of Wolterstorff’s book Divine Discourse in the Fall 2007 (43:3) of Crux magazine entitled “God Speech”. I don’t have the article electronically available but I do think some learning on the meaning of the Bible for today is critical. I’ve attached a short book list of books on reading the Bible that I recommend to you.
- Our new colleague, Brian Bork, has been reading The State of the University: Academic Knowledges and the Knowledge of God by Stanley Hauerwas. He recommended to me a chapter on Wendell Berry’s view of the academy. Attached is a review of the book from the latest Christian Century.
- See below: a book recommendation from Andre Basson on missional church.
- Below: Invitation for papers for a C. S. Lewis and Inklings Conference at Calvin—a chance for non-PhD types to test their mettle and present a paper. Get your students to come!
- Below: A book review on the state the university from Jason Postma (Kronman’s book, which we’ve briefly mentioned before). It’s a helpful summary of a very critical book. University as a place without meaning…
Peace
Peter
Dear Peter:
However, I have just come across a book that is blowing my mind. Although not written with campus ministry in mind, I believe it has a lot say that campus ministers should take note of.
Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-century Church, (2003).
I'm reading it from cover to cover and have exclamation marks on almost every page! They're both Australians, but Alan is also Jewish and a former South African. He's written another book which I will be reading after *Shaping of Things to Come ...*, *The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church. *
Regards
Andre
On the shelf: Education’s End
Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life by Anthony T. Kronman
By David Heim
Anthony T. Kronman remembers spending his college days pondering the great questions of life: What is worth doing? What is the good life? What should I care about? He also remembers taking a philosophy class in which these questions were actually discussed. In Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life, Kronman laments the way contemporary university life avoids such questions.
A chief source of the problem is the great prestige given to the scientific ideal of research. According to that ideal, if a question can’t be answered with empirical evidence, it isn’t worth asking. Kronman regrets that humanities departments, the logical place for asking religious and philosophical questions, have themselves adopted the research ideal. They are good at accumulating knowledge, but have no interest in developing wisdom.
Kronman's still more controversial claim is that the ethos of multiculturalism has further undermined teaching in the humanities. If there are countless race- or culture-based approaches to life, all of which must be respected, then there is not much sense discussing which one might be the best. Kronman captures here the way the multiculturalist curriculum, for all its commendable aspects, can foster cynicism and indifference.
Kronman’s diagnosis is a lot stronger than his prescription. He recommends a form of secular humanism that would keep the Great Questions alive in the classroom without succumbing to religious fundamentalism. Based on his own diagnosis, one could make a good case that only a deep religious (nonfundamentalist) vision of learning can keep education from being merely utilitarian or consumerist.
