On September 19th, Dr. Richard Baer provided a stimulating keynote address entitled "The Church and the Academy," in which he and four panelists addressed  questions such as "What's a university for?"  It is a question that Cornell co-founder and inaugural president Andrew Dickson White was asking 150 years ago.

A decade prior to founding Cornell in 1865, White travelled to Berlin.  There he visited the University of Berlin, the archetype of the modern research university, which he called "my ideal of a university not only realized--but extended and glorified."

Following on the heels of the French Revolution, the University of Berlin was founded in 1810, an era of newfound freedoms, democratization, and intoxicating change.  This era of reform also largely transformed higher education according to the tenets of the Enlightenment, including Kant's ideal of autonomous human reason over against revealed religion.  In addition to the view that  theology must subordinate itself to science, this prototype of modern research universities placed an unprecedented value on the discovery of new knowledge.

The seeds of secularization are already apparent.  Indeed, it was in 1917 that Max Weber attributed the "disenchantment of the world" to the irreligiosity of modern science as he knew it.  And yet the medieval university, a profoundly religious institution inhabited by priests and ancient practices, did not toss in the collar overnight.

"Revolutions and social movements," writes Christian Smith, author of The Secular Revolution, "are not simply the result of interested and aggrieved activists capitalizing on new political opportunities.  To mobilize and prevail, activists also need access to material resources necessary to sustain their cause."

Enter industrialism, and the forces of economic centralization.  "As it turns out, the most important American research universities that self-consciously pioneered functionally secular education and scholarship were either created ex nihilo or were significantly endowed by affluent capitalist benefactors," among whom were Duke, Vanderbilt, Clark, Stanford, Carnegie, Mellon, Rockefeller (U. of Chicago), and of course Ezra Cornell.

"Corporate capitalism," Smith writes, pointing out the obvious, "did not need classically educated gentlemen.  It needed technically and professionally trained employees."  These financiers were less interested in endowing chairs of moral philosophy than with promoting "advanced scientific research modeled on the German university system."  Secularism was thus promoted by the subtle mechanism of specialization.  It was also promoted, however, by the not so subtle mechanism of anti-religious mandates.  When Carnegie gave $10 million to a professors' pension fund that excluded denominational colleges, "15 colleges immediately severed their ties with their religious denominations in order to get a share of the Carnegie money--including Wesleyan, Dickinson, Swarthmore, Brown, Rutgers, Rochester, and Occidental."

The significance of this account of secularization is severalfold.  First, secularism is best understood not as the loss of faith but as the privatization of faith.  Many  industrialists were themselves men of faith, but their (public) pursuit of profit appears to have been largely unencumbered by moral or spiritual critique.  Second, secularism was not an inevitable social evolution ushered in by "disinterested" science.  Kant and Carnegie may seem unlikely bedfellows, but 18th century philosophers and 19th century industrialists effectively remade institutions of higher education in their own image.  Third, Christians need not withdraw from higher education or fear that the life of the mind somehow inherently corrupts orthodox Christian faith.  Indeed, the great contribution of Smith's analysis is that it suggests a way forward for the church's relation to the secular academy.

How shall we then engage the academy?

In his October 31st lecture entitled "Culture Makers," attended by several campus fellowships, journalist Andy Crouch spoke of the importance of the gospel being available, attractive, and plausible.  In a secular culture that has rendered the gospel implausible, the Great Commission must consist not only of making the gospel available within that culture, but also of transforming that culture so that  testimonies can be believed.  Simply put, secularism is a cultural problem to which there are no private solutions.

Echoing the insights of both Crouch and Smith, Gordon College's Thomas Howard nicely sums up the rationale for Christians engaging secular universities in a passage worth quoting at length.  "The contribution of universities, especially German-influenced research universities, to modern 'plausibility structures' has been incalculable, and regrettably often inhospitable to traditional Christian assumptions about the world and human nature."  Nevertheless, "rethinking the critical imperatives and theological track record of German universities need not lead a Christian disquieted by modernity to disengagement from the academy, pitting the university against the church, Athens against Jerusalem.  One might, more productively, engage the university sympathetically even while questioning whether [science], as it came to be defined and practiced in the 19th century and as its legacy persists in our putatively postmodern times, evoked the full compass of human reason.  If the fullness of truth demands more than the modern imperative toward critical novelty, then that which is symbolized by the University of Berlin should not have the final word.  Indeed, beyond its long shadows in the modern academy, other, more venerable lessons beckon us still."

It is hard to improve upon that.  In short, Chesterton House seeks precisely this: to make the gospel available, attractive, and plausible, by productively engaging the university and the lessons that lie beyond the long shadows of A.D. White and Ezra Cornell. 

Thanks for your interest in and support of Chesterton House.  Below you will find several updates, as well as a preview of the spring semester. 

-Karl E. Johnson

Weekly when Cornell is in session:

Fridays, 1-5pm -- Resource Room Open Hours

Rev. Doug Webster, 1st Presbyterian Church, San Diego

Webster, who has written for Christianity Today and taught at Wheaton College, is the author of nine books, including The Living Word (Moody, 2003), The Discipline of Surrender (IVP, 2001), A Passion for Christ (Regent, 2001), Soulcraft: How God shapes us through relationships (IVP, 1999), The Easy Yolk (NavPress, 1995), Selling Jesus: What's wrong with marketing the church (IVP, 1992), and Finding Spiritual Direction (IVP, 1991).

Dr. Jennifer Wiseman, Johns Hopkins University

All Chesterton House events are open to the public.  Watch our website for updates and additions to this schedule--many other events will be scheduled in the coming weeks. 

Recalling Christian Smith's comment that "Revolutions and social movements are not simply the result of interested and aggrieved activists capitalizing on new political opportunities, [but] also need access to material resources necessary to sustain their cause," this is a friendly reminder that the "social movement" known as Chesterton House is a worthy cause that depends on those of you who share our vision to promote Christian worldview thinking at Cornell.  We have secured several new donors during this past year's effort to raise $100,000 in annual funds, but we still need many more to reach that goal.  Donations are deductible, and may be sent to Chesterton House, PO Box 6878, Ithaca, NY 14851. 

If you are interested in receiving our annual report and other updates by mail, please let me know by returning a note to me here on email, and I'll be happy to add you to our list. 

It was 1994, while my already crowded apartment was filling up with yet more stacks of books, when I started scribbling out my idea for a Christian Study Center on the margins of my master's thesis.  Although I didn't know it at the time, "my idea" turned out--happily--to be not my idea at all.  I soon learned that there were several such study centers located adjacent to various colleges and universities.  I have since visited centers in Boulder, Austin, Charlottesville, and Minneapolis.  Just recently a new study center opened in Gainesville.  Although we may appear to be an organized front, these are all locally initiated projects.  All of which certainly suggests, well, something.  A continued need to address the compartmentalization of faith?  A maturing of Christian scholarship yielding increasing resources?  A new generation of disciplinary-specific apologetics?  The failure of "religious studies" to satisfy religious students?  These, I would suggest, are some aspects of the ecological niche that study centers are springing up to fill.  But decide for yourself:

Chesterton House

        http://www.chestertonhouse.org
Center for Christian Study (Charlottesville, VA)
  http://www.studycenter.net
Christian Study Center (Gainesville, FL)

        http://www.christianstudycenter.org

Dayspring Center for Christian Studies (Boulder, CO)
    http://www.dayspringcenter.org
The MacLaurin Institute (Minneapolis, MN)
http://www.maclaurin.org
The Probe Center (Austin, TX)
   http://www.probecenter.org
The Rivendell Institute (New Haven, CT)

        http://www.rivendellinstitute.org

On secularism in the academy, see Christian Smith's excellent article "Who Paid for Secularization?" (http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2003/003/20.28.html). 

Equally interesting, but not yet posted, is Thomas Albert Howard's article in the current issue of Books and Culture entitled "Learning to be Modern."

One glaring deficiency of our resource room to date has been the almost complete absence of C.S. Lewis books.  The explanation is simple.  The original collection consisted of donations, and people are not easily separated from their most prized possessions.  I am pleased to report that this situation has been rectified.  Thanks to the recent foundation grant for upgrading our resource room, we now have enough volumes of Lewis to keep visitors full of "the important and the amusing" for quite some time.  New volumes include the following:

A grief observed
All my road before me: The diary of C.S. Lewis

An experiment in criticism

Christian reflections

God in the dock: Essays on theology and ethics

Letters of C.S. Lewis

Letters to an American lady

Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on prayer

Mere Christianity

Miracles: A preliminary study
Narrative poems
Of other worlds: Essays and stories
Present Concerns
Reflections on the psalms
Spirits in bondage: A cycle of lyrics
Studies in medieval and renaissance literature

The business of heaven: Daily readings from C.S. Lewis

The dark tower and other stories
The discarded image: An introduction to medieval and renaissance literature
The four loves
The great divorce: A dream
The problem of pain

The screwtape letters

The weight of glory

The world's last night: And other essays
Till we have faces: A myth retold

The Latin letters of C.S. Lewis

"The rebuilding of this bridge between science and human nature is one of the greatest needs of mankind."

G.K. Chesterton