Once again I was reminded of how important it is to be vigilant in Christian colleges and universities to try to ensure they remain true to their mission as ultimately expressed in the Word of God.  I was privileged to be a part of the American Enterprise’s Values and Capitalism group retreat in San Diego this weekend (I know, it didn’t hurt to be here).  We were able not only to interact with our speakers but also with each other.  Stories were told about colleges or universities that have drifted from their ultimate mission, simply forgotten or deliberately moved.  There were discussions about what caused this and what lessons we might learn.  I was reminded of two in particular that have been near to me in importance.

The first is the hiring process, for both faculty and administrators.  The second is the permeation of a Christian worldview among all faculty and administrators and the crucial efforts made to ensure that worldview is integrated into our curriculum and our very teaching.  There are of course other important issues, such as financial responsibility.  But these I believe will determine the future course of an institution just as much as being careful with our resources, perhaps even more so.  After all, even if an institution is a good steward of its money, it may still drift into a dull, vague form of “religiosity” or even worse.  Before I go further, let me re-use an old but useful metaphor.  We are as believers in a war, a war for the souls not only of people but also for the future of any vestige of a Christian culture.  The war includes a battle for the minds of students and, interestingly, faculty also.  We can readily identify with the student problem.  But even faculty can be pulled by the lure or the pressure of the academy to compromise their commitment to the Scriptures.  They may also be tempted to compromise their orthodox interpretations of that Bible to gain respectability.  This I think is likely our greatest temptation—to give in to be accepted by the intellectual community.

So what does hiring have to do with it?  A great deal, upon a little reflection.  We want scholars but we want scholars who are not only personally committed to orthodox Christian faith but who are committed to integrating that faith, rooted in a careful knowledge of Scripture, into their courses and their scholarly work.  This isn’t a matter of simply reading a few verses and praying, though there is nothing wrong in itself with that.  It is the sometimes difficult task of studying the Scriptures closely where they specifically impinge on our particular disciplines or other disciplines.  It is not superficial glossing of texts.  It is not looking only at those texts that explicitly use terms or concepts we think are related to our discipline.  It is careful selection of any and all texts relevant to the discipline, no matter how obscure, then a careful and responsible interpretation of those texts in their contexts, and finally a correlation of the texts into a coherent “theology” of the discipline.  All disciplines count—politics, economics, law, biology, physics, chemistry, literature, physical education, professional disciplines, etc.  And it also includes a consideration of how natural revelation may or may not be valuable and reliable as part of the knowledge content of the discipline, but always within the prescribed boundaries of the Scriptures in terms of presuppositions, analysis and conclusions.

For such a crucial and noble task Christian colleges need to hire not only those who know their discipline but know much more.  But most academics today come from graduate school without much if any education in theology, much less any knowledge of their discipline from an explicitly Christian perspective.  Yet this is the type of person Christian institutions need, the one who has that extra knowledge.  The danger is that institutions may be so desperate to hire someone from the “right” school or with the “right” degree that they are tempted to skip the Christian worldview aspect altogether.  The candidate is after all a Christian it will be argued.  That is a good beginning.  He will be teaching undergraduates in a field at a Christian institution.  He and the institution owe students more than the standard fare. We owe them that and a comprehensive Christian worldview.  Students are going out into the world as more than future employees, or leaders, or homemakers.  They go as Christian employees, leaders, and homemakers.  They go to glorify God in the world in all things.  This includes the use of their minds in a way that “thinks God’s thoughts after Him.”  How can they do that without adequate preparation?

What is the application of this?  Christian institutions must screen and/or prepare their faculty much better that they have in the past.  They must also more carefully screen administrators who will be carrying the banner of the institution.  If they too are not competent or committed to the task of integration—deeply committed and knowledgeable—the institution may well present an ambiguous face.  And since some of them will be hiring faculty, they may compromise the hiring for credentials alone.  How can we accomplish this goal?  The best way I believe is to first decide what the institution is going to be—its identity.  Everything then must be driven by the correct identity.  In this case, we are talking about a Christian institution with a mission of worldview integration that is thoroughly biblical.  It begins with the Board of Trustees, who then carefully (carefully I repeat) choose a president, who then carefully chooses his administrators.  They and he, together with other faculty then diligently seek the best Christian candidates who are able to do the highest quality of integration.  These steps probably ought to be formalized so that the candidate is asked certain pre-determined questions that probe his or her capacity to integrate.  In fact perhaps the candidate ought to be required to take some sort of comprehensive examination as a screening mechanism.  He should of course also be interviewed by numerous individuals—administrators, department faculty, faculty in theology and perhaps philosophy, and others.  His writings if any should be carefully read and analyzed.  This is not intrusion.  This is a measure designed to preserve the integrity of the institution and the intellectual  well-being of students.

My second issue is of course related to the first.  The foundation of any Christian institution of higher learning is its absolutely unwavering commitment to the Scriptures as the final authority and ground of all knowledge.  In addition there must be a commitment to the accurate and responsible interpretation of the Scriptures.  What I mean (and as I have said earlier and elsewhere) is that all supposed or alleged knowledge about anything at all is, even if not contained explicitly in the Bible, bounded and shaped by the knowledge contained in the Scriptures themselves as the first presupposition.  The best research still has to be interpreted by the light of Scripture and accepted or rejected by that same light.  Even if the alleged knowledge does not come from Scripture, it is still subject to the light of Scripture to assess its reliability and its truth.

We can accomplish this at a Christian university by establishing programs to make sure all faculty are equipped with this ability and are committed to putting it into practice.  This is not an easy task either.  It begins as always form the top of the governing structure.  If there is no will, the effort will likely fail, except for some isolated departmental examples.  Most Christian universities probably have faculty who came in with little knowledge of that Christian worldview.  They will have to be “trained” to think differently, more comprehensively, and more biblically.  And as much as it is painful they will have to be held accountable in some way for actually practicing integration that is really biblical—not just disguised natural revelation that is based on a “baptism” of knowledge in Christian language.

I believe fervently that this approach (and more) is the only hope for Christian universities to remain what they say they are in the long run.  History paints a pretty pessimistic picture of higher education.  But perhaps God in His grace and mercy will grant both the will and the wisdom to many Christian institutions to take the necessary steps to preserve genuinely Christian and biblical intellectual pursuit of higher education.