Teaching the first day of class could be a chore, but it’s become one of my favorites. This year marks my tenth of full-time teaching. Since most of my job is now administrative, I primarily teach introductory courses—often to first-years who (as I discovered once again this past week) have never taken a philosophy or theology course before entering my classroom.
The first day of class starts with the usual introductions and a Whitworth-themed bingo ice-breaker that forces students to get up and walk around and ask questions about their classmates’ hobbies and backgrounds. But I reserve much of the first class to frame the two central questions of the semester: “Is there a difference between a significant life and a meaningful one?” and “What makes for a good life?” Whitworth University
Whitworth does not require its students to sign a statement of faith, as do many other church-related universities. And so in recent years, I’ve come to expect a very pluralistic mix. There’s always a solid contingent of non-denominational students who go to local churches with names like “The Bridge” or “Elevate.” Perhaps there’s a smattering of mainline kids, but that’s a shrinking number for the obvious demographic reasons. And there is always a solid core of rigorously unchurched students as well. I initially wondered whether my class—which dives deep into Plato, Augustine, virtue ethics, and questions about love of friend, neighbor, and enemy—would resonate equally across the whole religious spectrum.
There was no reason to worry.
A new piece by Clark Gilbert in the Chronicle of Higher Education points to the consistent, long-term rise of interest in religious higher education. While there are obvious examples of individual faith-based institutions imploding, there is hard data to be found all around that smaller Christian, Jewish, Mormon, as well as historically-black colleges and universities are bucking the trend of declining enrollment. Or can buck the trend, I’d like to add.
The Chronicle piece takes up an argument that I’ve been making for some time: faith-based institutions have the capacity and the charism to do something that secular and research-focused institutions find more challenging. We have at our fingertips traditions and texts and century-spanning questions that provide soil for moral and spiritual—as well as intellectual—formation. We have incentive to speak from our normative convictions about what makes for an examined, faithful, and good life. I would even say we have a moral obligation to do so.
Drawing on the sociological work of James Davison Hunter, Gilbert writes:
The risk is that without a shared mooring, morality gets reduced to nonbinding platitudes and “virtue on the cheap.” Still, the very fabric of strong democratic culture depends on strong democratic character. An anchoring in substantive values can be achieved, even in settings with diverse stakeholders, if leaders will engage in deliberate pluralistic bridge building.
Let’s go back to my classroom.
I tell my students very directly about the normative commitments that I bring to the classroom. I really believe that the Christian gospel is true. I tell them I believe that there are higher goods than material success, that there are many false loves—of money, power, and self-interest—that will get their tenterhooks in them during their time in college. I confront them with Socrates’ intuition that most of them are not leading truly examined and meaningful lives. I have them enact Plato’s Cave Allegory to the bitter end when the truth-teller is martyred by those who prefer to stare at projected images on a screen. I ask them to identify with the young Augustine’s tortuous journey through various sexual addictions and social attachments and broken hearts and mental health crises and dalliances with astrology and novel religious movements. I introduce them to Christian Wiman asking how the good God of the universe could also be responsible for creating the cancer cell. I have them write their own eulogy at the beginning and end of the semester. I provide the big questions; they have to examine themselves to begin formulating answers. I don’t need them to arrive at the same normative or religious judgments as I do. But they have the chance to cultivate a deeper understanding of what frames a life of meaning, and the virtues that make such a life possible.
I’ve found that if I’m upfront about (a) my own commitments, while (b) offering an open invitation for them to interrogate their own commitments in light of our shared texts and conversations, the “problem” of pluralism evaporates. But why?
My own perception, at least, is that my young adults are spiritually (in the broadest sense of the term) ravenous. They are left hungry by what one former dean of Harvard called “excellence without a soul.” Whether they can name it or not, they instinctively know that resume virtues are thin gruel compared to the hearty excellences of character that they hope will one day be mentioned at their funeral. And yes, I remind them regularly of the evasive, haunting reality that their death is certain and that a good death is not an easy feat.
I worry that many of us Millennial academics think too little of our students. After all, if you take the time to ask, you’ll discover that most of them have encountered deep loss already. (I invite them in week two to submit a note—anonymized if they prefer—explaining what losses and griefs they are bringing to class.) Many of them want to wrestle with life, death, and all the ultimate things. They recognize that they do not know how to disagree well with those who hold opposing views. They want to be given the freedom to put their devices away so they can be fully present in the classroom. Many of them feel called to a vocational identity and not just a career.
I said earlier that religious institutions can buck the trend of declining enrollment. They can be countervailing forces in a higher-ed economy where efficiency, ease, and excellence-without-soul are the main currency. But making good on our capacity and charism to offer something of enduring substance will take work—as well as a clear sense of purpose, and often strategic sacrifice. Whatever the sacrifice, however, there are both principled and pragmatic reasons to venture our institutions into something riskier but decidedly more abiding and meaningful.
Our students crave this. Do we?