Union's Commitment to Christ Centered Higher Education

Gregory Alan Thornbury, Ph.D. - Dean of the School of Christian Studies

Our Father and Our God:

We come before you this morning praising you for your grace, benevolence, and love. In this room is gathered a diverse array of families, Lord, families whom you have called out for your purpose. For many years parents have been faithful to their responsibilities. For many years, these young adults have taken their place and honored their parents which is the first commandment with a promise. And now, O Lord, give your peace and clear direction to each one here. In this room sits the next generation of doctors, lawyers, mayors, musicians, and many, many other professions. We pray that this day your servants at Union University might serve those who have traveled so far to come here today. Answer questions, clarify issues, and keep us safe from all sin and evil. Amen.

On February 19, 2003, the war on terrorism found its most recent domestic suspect hiding in a seemingly unlikely place: a publicly funded state university. The FBI arrested Professor Sami Al-Arian of the University of South Florida on the charges of being the ringleader and treasurer of one of the most violent terrorist organizations in the world. Also known by the name Islamic Holy War, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) is responsible for homicide bombing attacks which have resulted in the deaths of over 100 persons in Israel and its surrounding territories. The victims include women, children, and infants.

For those that paid attention to his career, Al-Arian had long been associated with networks of global terror. In 1994, a PBS television documentary entitled "Jihad in America" linked Al-Arian with PIJ, and identified him as the chief fund-raiser for the group's American front. Hired by USF in 1986, Al-Arian remained as an instructor and continued on the payroll of the school despite a 1996 bomb scare from PIJ in which the organization threatened to blow up a building and kill a white female professor at the school. Despite dubious alliances and inflammatory rhetoric, Al-Arian was only placed on paid leave and was eventually allowed to return to classroom duties. Years passed. Last year, Al-Arian wrote a publicized letter to a prominent Kuwaiti businessman asking him to support PIJ in its violent struggle against the nation of Israel.

Two weeks ago, the federal indictments came, complete with 50 counts of murder, wire, and mail fraud. Emboldened by Al-Arian's handcuffs, USF President Judy Genshaft fired the rogue professor, citing his arrest and his harm to the university's reputation as grounds. "Dr. Al-Arian," President Genshaft announced, "has failed to live up to our high professional standards."[1] Standards, indeed.

Throughout his tempestuous academic career, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has defended Al-Arian's behavior and claimed he deserved to keep his job.[2] The blogger on the Chronicle of Higher Education's website was filled with outrage at Al-Arian's dismissal. Evidently, a professor's active involvement with a terrorist organization does not transgress the boundaries of conduct permissible in good education.

How have we gotten to this point? While a full answer to that question would consume us for far longer than we have here, the short form response is this: in many quarters today higher education is no longer a passionate pursuit of truth, the pedagogical platform from which a citizenry fit for a great republic is launched. Instead, too often and to the nation's shame, educational institutions have lost their way from a higher calling, offering technique without truth, and methods without morals. As the great Southern novelist Flannery O'Connor once lamented, "It is easy to see that the moral sense has been bred out of certain sections of the population, like the wings have been bred off certain chickens to produce more white meat on them. This is a generation of wingless chickens.[3]

If the best and brightest among our nation's youth have difficulty getting off the ground toward ethical flight, it is precisely because many ideologues would have them grounded. In a recent edition of The Hedgehog Review, several academicians and educators debated the question, "What is the University for?" For his part, University of Virginia philosopher Richard Rorty argued that the university must be freed from its responsibility to be a place of character development and moral improvement for students. Rorty contended, "If the students aren't reasonably honest and decent people by the time they hit the university, I don't see that there is much that higher education can do about it."[4] Contending that the value systems of students are already settled by the time they reach their undergraduate years, Rorty sees no point in trying to make a difference. Rorty, the pragmatist postmodern, of course rejects the notion of absolute truth, universal norms, and reason. There is no "mirror of nature," Rorty once famously asserted, against which human beings can judge themselves.[5] Rorty's comments nonetheless are representative of an epidemic trend in secular higher education. As a result, ethics and other questions of value are consigned to the margins with the "truth" always making its appearance in scare quotes.[6]

But from whence does this antagonism regarding values in higher education spring? It arises from a deep and fundamental cultural presupposition against the possibility of moral certitude, against the notion of deeply held beliefs which are held to be correct and good despite the vicissitudes of human society. The perfect example of this perspective came only weeks after September 11, when Stanley Fish, the infamous Dean of the School of Humanities at the University of Illinois, Chicago, stated in an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times that we cannot make an absolute moral judgment against the 19 hijackers who murdered thousands of innocent civilians, nor should we call our assailants "terrorists." "We have not seen the face of evil," Fish intoned, but rather merely "the face of an enemy who comes at us with a full roster of grievances, goals, and strategies."[7] From Professor Fish's comments, we can only assume that, in his view, all grievances are created equal, and yet none are endowed with any certain, inalienable claim to being right.

Professor Fish's sortie into revisionist history in fact turned out to be nothing more than a flight from reality. After September 11, the American public knew that the fundamental questions of our time are irrepressibly moral, undeniably related to making distinctions between good and evil. Moreover, we have realized that the time has come for clarity. Everything we care about is on the line. As columnist George Will has put it eloquently, "People cannot defend what they cannot define."[8]

Do not misunderstand me. Many good and faithful men and women remain within the secular university. But the critical need of this day and hour is for colleges and universities common in purpose and united in the mission to provide a context for both academic excellence and commitment to values and decency. But the issues are deeper and require more than a general dedication to ethical discussion. The church of the Lord Jesus Christ—as well as the watching world at large—deserve a university committed to the Christian worldview, one which orients its entire program to building up the kind of young men and women who will be culture transformers, leaders of conviction in an age of shifting sand and encroaching shadow. Union University is such a unique place—a proving ground preparing citizens of the kingdom of heaven for outstanding service on planet earth.

Union is an institution on a mission: to train those in its charge to think in Christian categories, and then apply them to every area sphere of activity in the modern world. That mission is the integration of faith and learning, a principle which says that every field of inquiry of path of action may be followed in such a way as to be faithful to God's good intentions for that subject. Union University pursues education in this way because it believes that God is the God of creation. No discipline exists over which he does not hold sovereign control. As the apostle Paul instructed his readers in 2 Corinthians 10:5, "we cast down every high and lofty thing and bring all things under submission to the authority of Christ." As such, the mission statement of this institution reads: "Union University provides Christ-centered education that promotes excellence and character development in service to Church and society"—Christ-centered education which is excellence driven, people focused, and future directed.

By helping the world to see that medicine, education, or business is best done from the framework of a Christian world and life view, we prepare students to see that Christ is indeed the Lord of all creation and not the fantasy of well-intentioned but misguided dreamers. In essence what I am saying was summed up well by that literary giant C. S. Lewis who once mused: "Christ wants the heart of a child, but the mind of a grown up."[9] Faithful thinking thus results necessarily in faithful service. In the language of the Great Commandment, we want students at Union University to serve God with their minds as well as their hearts. (Matt. 22:37-38)

Union University is about the business of teaching those in her charge to approach their careers and callings from God as if God actually exists. This means we explore what it means to think Christianly about business, journalism, the arts, education, the sciences, and the church. And because this discussion takes place in a Christian environment, we expect our future businessmen and women, journalists, artists, teachers, scientists, and pastors to do work worthy of the highest standards of quality an excellence. Why? Because our most important audience is God alone. Good work is a form of worship, because God is, in the words of St. Augustine, the one "by whom all things are true that are true, and all things are good that are good."[10]

As we sit in this very room, the globe readies itself for conflict. New challenges and new threats characterize the era into which this generation of graduates will go. In these uncertain times, at a key turning point in history, the world calls out for those whose lives are characterized by excellence, those who are prepared to advance the cause of peace, justice, and stability in the world, in Jesus' name. In a period beset with the specter of biological weapons, we must have chemists and those skilled in medicine committed to the art of healing. In an environment where informed news makes a world of difference, we need journalists who know how to get the facts right. In a media saturated by dehumanizing entertainment, we need poets and writers writing soul-enriching literature. To a culture "without hope and without God in the world," we need lawyers, congressmen, and pastors who believe that statecraft is soulcraft, that a nation rises or falls according to the moral outlook of its people. Either God is sovereign or men. We will either be held to account by a personal God who has revealed himself in the Scriptures, or we are alone in the universe. But only one is definitively true—God alone governs the universe. As Abraham Kuyper, that great 19th century theologian who variously served as newspaper editor, prime minister of Holland, and founder of the Free University of Amsterdam now famously once said, "no piece of our mental world [should be] hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, 'Mine!'"[11]

If people cannot defend what they cannot define, then the people need an institution which cares about the definitions. Union is that place. We concern ourselves with all of those cultural products which grip the hearts of human beings whether they be philosophical, technological, or biological; for it is possible for a society to be, as scientist Michael Polyani once described Nazi Germany, both brilliant and bad. Union wants a great host of its graduates committed to a culture which is simultaneously humane and morally clear.

As I draw my thoughts to a close this morning, allow me to give you three reasons why I personally believe in Union University.

1. Union is an academic institution with unrivaled leadership and vision. Good schools boast well-prepared faculty prepared to teach and demonstrate scholarship, and showcase impressive programs. Great Schools have an administration that possess the ability to think in strategic terms about the university's distinctive place in the world of higher education. Under the leadership of President David Dockery, Union has exponentially increased its national profile, and set itself apart among a handful of elite institutions. Dockery has become a mentor to other Presidents, a trustworthy voice and a reliable guide. He is a key leader in an ever-growing coalition of warm-hearted convictional evangelicals committed to cultural renewal. Under his leadership, more maps have a marker over Jackson, Tennessee.

2. Union is an academic institution where scholarship cares about and for the people it serves. When I was in college, I had good professors who were competent in their respective fields and engaged in the classroom. But the class distinction between faculty, staff, and student was understood. Few professors had an "open door" policy. But I can say after four years of serving at Union that it is a community where faculty, staff, and students work together. Our doors are open. We invite our students to talk with us one-on-one. We know that we are not just preparing competent people in their respective fields. We are growing people. As Alisdair MacIntyre argued in his path-breaking volume After Virtue, we do not believe that intellectual intelligence is separable from moral intelligence.[12]

3. Union is an academic community where the intellectual atmosphere is electric. The hallways of this university are not merely routes connecting points A and B. They are passageways to great ideas and inspiring conversation. As I was walking through the corridors after my class this week I overheard and/or participated in conversations about the following topics and with the following persons: Dr. Jim Patterson on the persecution of the early church under Nero, seventeenth century Catholic devotional literature with Dr. Gavin Richardson, and exponentials with Drs. Hathcox, Ward, and Baldwin. (Admittedly, I didn't contribute much to the latter of the three!)

During the month of January, the university sponsored a "town and gown" colloquium, open to the public in the city of Jackson, on the subject of Islam. Led by Dr. Ann Livingstone, one of our resident experts in political science, numerous faculty considered various aspects of the mysterious world religion. I reviewed the history and critiqued the theology of Islam, Dr. Fant analyzed its literature, Dr. Jayne considered Islamic cultures, Dr. Padelford the economics of the Arab world, Dr. Van reflected on its architecture. Others participated. After the course was over, a resident of the city of Jackson called Dr. Livingstone to thank her. "I'm a proud graduate of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill," he reported "but UNC could not have hosted an event like this, with such an open, well-rounded discussion." Such responses were not isolated. It made us all proud to be a part of Union. We would very much like for you to be part of this enterprise, too.

A momentous question lies before you in the coming days and weeks ahead. Students, what kind of education do you want for yourself? Parents, what kind of education do you want for your child? Do you want generic or Christ-centered education? Do you want to be able to defend the truth because you can define it? Your choice may well spell the difference between the routine and the remarkable. As you deliberate, we pray God's every grace upon you as you continue your journey in the kingdom of God.

[1] Rachel La Corte, "Florida University Fires Accused Professor," Associated Press, 6 March 2003.

[2] Scott Smallwood, "University of South Florida Fires Professor Accused of Terrorism," The Chronicle of Higher Education, 7 March 2003 [database on-line] available from: http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i26/26a01201.htm.

[3] Flannery O'Connor, as cited in Page Smith, Killing the Spirit (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 1.

[4] The Hedgehog Review 2, no. 3 (Fall 2000), 111.

[5] Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).

[6] George Will calls this "the postmodern plague of quotation marks—the punctuation of disparagement that labels as superstitions 'virtue' and 'heroism' and other things that make life worth living." See "So We Fight," Washington Post, 11 September 2002.

[7] Stanley Fish, "Condemnation Without Absolutes," The New York Times, 15 October, 2001.

[8] George F. Will, "History's Cultural Comeback," Washington Post, 26 December 2002, pg. A39.

[9] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1943; rev. ed., 1952), 75.

[10] Augustine, as cited in Arthur F. Holmes, Building the Christian Academy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 26.

[11] Abraham Kuyper, Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 488.

[12] Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984).

An Address Given at The Scholars of Excellence Weekend
March 8, 2003
Union University, Jackson, TN