Recovering Education as Formation

While concerns about secular drift in Christian colleges and universities are legitimate, the rhetoric of “secularization” masks deeper threats to the health and vitality of evangelical institutions.  This is because “secularism,” either tacitly or explicitly, is primarily understood in cognitive, worldview terms, as constituted by a set of propositions at odds with Christian orthodoxy.  Thus, avoiding the slide into secularism consists in constructing an institutional ethos in which faculty “integrate” Christian orthodoxy (read: propositional truths) into teaching and scholarship. 

Beyond this, concerns about secularization in Christian institutions may also be reflected in expectations for student conduct.  Quite simply, the “secular world” behaves in ways that Christians don’t.  So, Christian colleges and universities discourage “secular” behaviors and encourage “Christian” ones (e.g., chapel attendance). 

All of this is to the good.  But, it’s not good enough.  The downward spiral toward Babylon can’t be avoided by thinking worldviewishly and safe housing alone.  What’s missing is an institutional commitment to forms of life that are rooted in a coherent narrative, one oriented toward the formation of rightly-ordered desires. 

Two great challenges to higher education are these: the omnipresence of digital technology, and the triumph of global consumerism.  Together, these two powerful forces shape human desire and patterns of thought in ways that are significantly at odds with a genuinely Christian vision of higher education and of life.  Specifically, both reinforce the supremacy of the solitary appetitive Self as the moral center of the universe.  What matters (indeed, all that matters) is what I want.  Moreover, the intrinsic aim of digital technology is maximal efficiency in actualizing user desire.  Thus, the catechesis of global consumerism teaches us that the chief end of man is the satisfaction of whatever desires we happen to have, and digital technology is our Deliverer. 

Asceticism (mere desire suppression) is not the answer.  If Augustine is right, we are fundamentally creatures of desire.  Thus, we cannot eradicate our deep longing for the Good.  We can, however, rightly-order that deep longing in and through its expression in desires for those lesser goods that derive from their one, true Source.  But this requires forms of life that are rooted in a coherent narrative that transcends the sovereign consumer Self. 

By themselves, desires have no narrative coherence, either individually or collectively.  They are, to speak in Christian terms, intrinsically disordered.  This is why the ordering of human desire must come from outside.  It is precisely this outside ordering that digital technology promises.  Google and Amazon will find what you want.  Facebook’s timeline will provide the narrative of your life.  Meanwhile, you are free to give your desires free reign.  (How can we neglect so great a salvation?)

The first task of Christian higher education in the 21^st century is to expose these two forces – forces at the heart of secularization – for the frauds that they are.  The lie is ancient: “You will be like gods.”  Sadly, Christian institutions are, at times, guilty of peddling the lie – programmatically and technologically reinforcing the idea that higher education is all about what the student-qua-consumer wants. 

The opportunity here for Christian colleges and universities is great.  This is because despite on-going efforts to the contrary, the omnipresence of digital technology cannot ultimately provide a deeply coherent narrative to rightly-order our unfettered desires in ways that lead to meaning and flourishing.  The vanity of such structures is already being felt, manifesting itself in the cultural exhaustion that attends a world awash in information without meaning. 

Courage will be required.  Christian colleges and universities must renew their commitment to the meaning that is afforded in and through the narrative contours of Scripture.  And this must be reflected not only in the structure of the curriculum (especially, the core), it must also make itself manifest in the forms of life embodied by the academic community – how it uses space, and how it thinks of time.

The trajectory of digital technology and global consumerism is essentially one of proliferation: more choices, more options, more goods, more services, more information, more and more and more.  The appetitive soul is insatiable.  Too often (and often too quickly) Christian colleges and universities have unreflectively followed suit: more bandwidth, more courses, more majors, more programs, more facilities.  And while growth itself is never an intrinsic evil, growth apart from deep coherence – as the human body makes plain – is cancerous. 

The challenge for Christian higher education in the 21^st century is to learn that less is more.  Meaning must take precedence over quantity.  Formation should be favored over mere information.  Communal narrative unity should be sought before radically individualized plurality.  MOOC’s must take a back seat to incarnate discipleship. 

These things by no means provide full inoculation against secular drift.  But, in their absence, drift seems virtually inevitable.  For the twin forces of global consumerism and digital technology together constitute a direct assault on the narrative of Scripture, an assault that operates (to a certain extent) beneath the intellectual radar. 

In the relatively near future, the health and vitality of Christian colleges and universities will depend upon their awareness of and responsiveness to these trends.  In some instances, survival may require surgery.  However, I’m convinced that the opportunity is worth the cost.  The students that I teach are starving for narrative coherence, for forms of life that orient their desires toward the Good.  The most pressing question for evangelical colleges and universities is whether we, as institutions, will have the courage and spiritual maturity to provide it.