Quality with Soul by Robert Benne-- a book review (Secularization of Christian Higher Education.)

Can the drift into secularism be stopped

at an educational Institution?

Book review: Quality with Soul by Robert Benne

It is no secret most religious institutions secularize over time, including educational institutions. The sequence is often the same:

· The church founds an institution of higher learning with great sacrifice and zeal.

· The new college grows and becomes a significant contributor to strengthening its founding body by passing on the denomination’s values and ethos.

· As the college becomes more successful it reaches out to an even broader constituency from which to attract students, faculty and administrators as it achieves success in the academic community.

· Over time the college gradually "grows past" it's founding church and orients more to the academic and professional guilds than it's founding body.

· The ethos and values of the founding tradition go into a period of decline as religious pluralism gains ground.

· Finally even religious pluralism dies up as full secularization settles in and religion is marginalized and finally even suppressed.

So can a religious educational institution keep this seemingly "natural process" from happening? That is the subject of a book funded by the Lilly Fellows program. Quality with Soul is written by Robert Benne and it has become a sort of positive sequel to a series of alerts to secularization issued by other writers (especially James Burtchaell's Dying of the light: the disengagement of Colleges and Universities from Their Chrisian Churches). While Burtchaell and others (George Marsden, Bradley Longfellow, Mark Schwehn) have painted a dark picture of this secularizing pattern, Robert Benne wants to show that turning out the Christian lights is not inevitable for all Christian colleges. His book is designed to bring hope to those who want their school to stay committed to "the Christian account of life." He believes you can keep a school from slipping into secularization and sets out to give is the recipe for doing that.

How he does this is by studying six schools he claims have successfully resisted the “natural” slip into secularization:

· Calvin College (Christian Reformed)

· Wheaton (Evangelical movement)

· Baylor (Southern Baptist)

· Notre Dame (Roman Catholic)

· St. Olaf (Evangelical Lutheran)

· Valparaiso (Missouri Synod Lutheran)

Benn concludes there are three primary ingredients that make religion publicly relevant: the vision is a “Christian account of reality”; the ethos is Christian (especially in worshiping), and the persons the institution employs are explicitly Christian in life and committed to integration of their faith with their discipline. What results from his study is a kind of “recipe” an institution might use to resist secularization. However the recipe does not seem to be totally rigid. This recipe may be like grandma’s old chocolate cake recipe—she sometimes added something new or left out one or another ingredient yet the cake still came out OK. Some ingredients are major ingredients while others are less important, but Benne would argue the cake recipe will look something like the following:

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"The Recipe"

34 typical Characteristics of Christian higher education institutions

who are not "dimming the light" and losing their religious soul.

Derived from, "Quality with Soul" Robert Benne Eerdmans ISBN 0-8028-4704-8

1. Campus worship and chapel is central to the community.

2. The Chapel services pass on the ethos of the sponsoring tradition.

3. Sunday is recognized as a special day on campus.

4. Baccalaureate is important as part of the graduation exercises.

5. Public prayer occurs at faculty meetings.

6. Public prayer occurs at most other campus meetings

7. Commitment in recruiting is to sponsoring tradition and not to expanding the educational market very far beyond the sponsoring tradition.

8. High presence of students from the sponsoring denomination or tradition.

9. Students from the sponsoring denomination do not go elsewhere to "find a more denominational approach."

10. Commitment to pass on the ethos of the sponsoring tradition.

11. Numerous religious organizations on campus.

12. Number of administrators from the sponsoring denomination/tradition is high.

13. Number of board members from the sponsoring denomination/tradition is high.

14. Number of faculty from the sponsoring denomination/tradition is high.

15. Number of students from the sponsoring denomination/tradition is high.

16. A special effort is made to cultivate theological students.

17. High presence and involvement of non-denominational Christian organizations on campus.

18. in loco parentis is the philosophy of student development.

19. Strong sense of vocation among students.

20. Student development uses Christian rhetoric in student counseling.

21. "Service" and "service learning" have not displaced the equivalent Christian emphases.

22. Specialized courses in denomination's history and theology are maintained.

23. Define selves with the particularity of our sponsoring denomination or tradition and have not broadened the theological stance.

24. Resisting the tendency of "consumer sovereignty" and do not adjust our program to meet broader needs of a wider market.

25. Maintain a "religious test" for all faculty.

26. Significant amount of financial support comes from wealthy people in the sponsoring denomination/tradition.

27. Significant efforts are made at integration of faith and the classroom--that is, the classrooms are not "just the same as a secular university's but beginning with prayer and taught by Christians"--the actual content of the classes is fully integrated with faith.

28. Rejection of the pietist-holiness model of a "value added" campus spiritual life (spiritual atmosphere is added on to classroom study while classes are much the equivalent as any university.) Rather the school has chosen the "integration model, as above.

29. Values are derived more from the theological and denominational constituency than from the professional organizations, academic guilds, the larger academic community or the secular media.

30. Faculty, staff and administrators are committed to the "Christian account of life" in teaching and administration.

31. There is at least a "critical mass" of activist faculty and administrators committed to keeping the institution firm in its traditional commitment to the sponsoring tradition. (1/3 to 1/2 of faculty-staff and 2/3 of the board)

32. The chaplain is at the Vice President level.

33. Religious furnishings are apparent in the residence halls.

34. Chapel is given significant space on campus and time in the schedule.

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So what do you think? The book is provocative. Most faculty members won’t "like" the book, but that does not mean Benne's work does not deserve serious consideration. I'm pondering the following questions after reading the book. What would you add?

1. Is this eventual slide to secularism really stoppable? Or can it only be slowed down for a time?

2. In what ways do most denominations and "traditions" also secularize? Do universities and colleges merely secularize faster? Is denominational secularization the chicken or the egg?

3. Why pick these six schools?

4. Wheaton is his only school with no sponsoring denomination—they have a "sponsoring tradition" (Evangelical). Can a denominational school deselect its past "denomination" as its sponsor and then select a "tradition" as its new sponsor? For instance can a "Free Methodist college" decide to become "an evangelical college?" Is this OK? Or, can an evangelical college later then select a broader tradition (e.g. "Christian). Or, still later… "religious?" How does a "tradition-rooted" college like Wheaton keep from selecting broader traditions?

5. If a college's sponsoring denomination or tradition is pietist-holiness does one need to reject their own tradition and adopt the reformed tradition's integration model to resist secularization? Is the antidote for pietist-holiness universities to actually reject their own tradition in order to stay religious?

6. To what extent are the values of the academic guilds incompatible with Christian values? What are the examples?

7. Is Calvin College really as good a model of resisting secularization as Benne seems to think?

8. Can a college or university “go back" without creating a riot on campus? That is, could a university decide to start having a new narrower "religious test" for faculty and administrators? What would they do with current faculty and administrators that did not meet the test? Where has this happened and what was the result?

9. If you’ve read the book, what questions would you add?

So what do you think?

To contribute to the thinking on this issue e-mail your response to Tuesday@indwes.edu

January 2002. Revision suggestions invited. May be duplicated for free distribution provided these lines are included.

Other "Thinking Drafts" and writing by Keith Drury -- http://www.indwes.edu/tuesday