Christ-Centered Higher Education

Memory, Meaning, and Momentum for the Twenty-First Century

McKenna

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781621894506
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

If the Christ-centered college or university did not exist, would it have to be invented? Back in the 1950s, the answer was in doubt. With few exceptions, Christian colleges wallowed in defensive self-doubt and divisive competition while under attack from the rising public sector. Students of American higher education predicted that they would soon become as extinct as the whooping crane.Rather then succumbing to doomsayers, leaders in Christian higher education bonded together around the commanding truth that all things come together in Jesus Christ. They drove their stake for the future in the integration of faith and learning as the reason for the existence of Christ-centered higher education. Out of this commitment came a renaissance movement of common cause and unprecedented cooperation through the Consortium of Christian Colleges and the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities.Will integration continue to be the energizing and all-pervasive influence that gives the Christ-centered institution its reason for existence? Trustees, presidents, deans and faculties in each generation must think and rethink the concept in the light of theological, academic, technological, and cultural change. David McKenna opens the conversation by remembering where we were, confirming who we are, and envisioning what we can be.

Part 1

Creating Space

“A movement begins when leaders with imagination

see space for transformational change.”

1

Endangered Species

If the Christian college did not exist, would it have to be invented? Sentiment gives an impassioned “Yes!” to this question, but scholarship requires us to ask, “If so, why?” This book is a mix of sentiment and scholarship. In 1947 I answered “Yes!” as a freshman at a Christian college and in that love affair I found my calling and my career. Later, as a PhD candidate in the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Michigan, leading scholars in American higher education challenged me to answer the question, “Why?”

Sixty years later sentiment and scholarship come together. After completing my PhD in the administration of higher education, I immersed myself in the movement of Christian higher education as a professor, dean, president, board chair, and consultant for executive search and board governance. Based upon these credentials and the perspective of time, I make my claim as a witness to rebirth in Christ-centered higher education during the second half of the twentieth century, with the momentum of a transformative movement that will make it indispensable to the Kingdom in the twenty-first century. But first, the story of an endangered species.

An Ominous Beginning

The nineteenth century might well be called “the Century of Defection” for Christian higher education. In the opening years of the 1800s Christian colleges and universities joined in the leadership of spiritual awakening and social reform as American democracy made it way West under the aegis, “One nation under God.” Two-thirds of the way through the century, however, forces within the culture and the academy undercut these spiritual moorings. German Enlightenment, in particular, captured the minds of faculty in many colleges and universities that had moorings in Christian faith. With empirical reason expelling biblical revelation, the defection began. By the end of the nineteenth century, most of the colleges that had led the way in the Christian liberal arts and spiritual renewal had either modified or abandoned their faith position so that the name “Christian” had meaning only as an historical artifact.

The twentieth century opened on a note of irony. At the same time that the lofty promises of the social gospel were pointing to “The Christian Century,” colleges and universities who held a faith position were predicted to die a merciful death on a short time span. William Rainey Harper, President of the University of Chicago, wrote The Trend in Higher Education, in 1905, with the most dire view of the future for these colleges.1 Surveying the educational landscape of the Midwest, a mecca for small denominational colleges, he bluntly wrote that only 25 percent of them had a chance to survive. The other 75 percent were destined to mediocrity or slow death.

Harper backed up with his prediction with six observations. First, the rapid development of public high schools would result in “people’s colleges” that duplicated the offerings of the Christian college. Second, the demand for vocational specialization would cancel the perceived value of the liberal arts curriculum. Third, the societal trend away from the narrow sectarian spirit toward a broader, ecumenical outlook undercut the raison d’etre of denominational colleges. Fourth, the rapid expansion and rising prestige of the public university would weaken the appeal of the small religious college. Fifth, competition with the public university for faculty would leave the small college recruiting either the very new and inexperienced or the very old and second-rate scholars. Sixth, and most serious, Harper saw limited financial resources against rising costs as the nail in the coffin of the small Christian college. Hidden behind these charges were the unspoken issues from the academic community denying the intellectual validity of the Christian college because of the alleged lack of academic freedom in scholarship, the indoctrination of students in teaching, the repressive domination of in loco parentis, and the ecclesiastical control of leadership through presidents who were ordained clergy. Without the slightest show of mercy, Harper sounded the death knell on Christian colleges by pronouncing, “Death in these cases is of course a blessing—not only to the institutions that have died, but to the world around them.”2 With that indictment ringing in its ears, the small Christian college stepped into the twentieth century.

Survival Instincts

William Rainey Harper didn’t live to eat his words. But, if he had lived, he would have been pressed to admit that he was wrong, not just about the survival rate of these colleges, but about the start-up rate of new institutions with Christian identity. Even though some of his six predictions came true, such as limited resources and rising costs, he forgot four sharp tools in the survival kit for Christian colleges.

First, President Harper missed the love that holds the Christian college together. As a historian, he should have remembered Daniel Webster’s defense of Dartmouth College before the Supreme Court in 1816. Against the State’s contention that all American higher education should be public, Webster successfully carried the case for Dartmouth as a self-governing and independent institution with a mission distinctive from the public sector. Webster closed his case with these words to Chief Justice John Marshall, “As I had said earlier, Mr. Chief Justice, the college may be small, but there are those who love her.”3 Yes, there is a love that will not let the Christian college go.

Second, Harper failed to see the discipline of sacrifice in Christian colleges. Through thick and thin, trustees, administrators, faculty, and alumni will make sacrifices of love for the institutions that have nurtured them, intellectually and spiritually. In contrast to institutions that go to the public trough in financial crisis, Christian colleges are disciplined in making the most out of limited resources. In crisis, they tighten their belt another notch. Moreover, the depth of love among alumni, denominational members, ethnic families, and local communities is tapped in times of need.

This fact is very personal with me. When my wife Janet and I arrived to take the presidency of Seattle Pacific College in 1968, severe financial crisis threatened our credibility in the academy as well as the community. In August, while waiting for the influx of tuition dollars, we did not have the funds to meet payroll and our line of credit with the bank had been exhausted. Radical budgets adjustments would have to be made, debts consolidated, and creditors convinced to give us time to pay our bills. But when the word reached the churches of our small denomination, sacrificial giving stemmed the tide. One letter in our permanent collection comes from a member of a small Free Methodist Church in Oregon, “I am sending you the savings from my Christmas Club to help out.” This is not an isolated incident. Every Christian college that has faced financial crisis can tell the same story.

Third, Harper overlooked the sense of divine calling behind the existence of the Christian college. When consulting with the board of a Christian college, I often open with this challenge, “The board of trustees of a Christian college should begin every meeting with the motion to discontinue the school, dissolve the corporation, and disperse the assets.” This is another way of asking our leading question, “If the Christian college did not exist, would it have to be invented?” Only when the ensuing debate brings the trustees back to the reason for their existence should the meeting continue.

Read the history of Christian colleges. Invariably, the founders claim that the institution is ordained of God and indispensable to his mission on earth. Admittedly, this conviction has a dark side. Some Christian colleges are founded for the wrong purposes and kept on life support long after they have should have expired. Colleges die hard and Christian colleges die harder.

Early-twentieth-century history shows few Christian colleges dying and many more being started, such as Azusa, Westmont, and Biola. In each case, the call of God to an indispensable mission stood behind these life and death decisions.

Fourth, President Harper’s most meaningful misjudgment came when he failed to see the integration of faith and learning as the distinctive contribution of Christian higher education to American culture. Stranger than fiction, William Rainey Harper excelled in teaching Hebrew, Greek, and Old Testament. Yet, somehow, he missed the connection between his scholarship and the question out of which the university system was originally formed, “What has Jerusalem to do with Athens?” If he had asked that question he would have had to consider the fact that the Christian college was the only institution of higher education that existed exclusively to answer it. However imperfect or impoverished the Christian college might have been, its contribution to the dialogue could not be denied. At the very least it stood a as reminder of the original question that great institutions such as Harper’s University of Chicago had either dismissed or forgotten. Moreover, when push came to shove, the integration of faith and learning gave the Christian college its holding power against the rising tide of a secular culture and a humanistic educational system.

Living the Story

My introduction to Christian higher education included all four of these survival tools. College was not in my plans until I sensed the call to ministry as a high school junior. Out of a non-college family and an anti-college church, everyone expected me to go to a Bible school. My search through college catalogs, however, introduced me to Taylor University and Marion College.

One Saturday, my parents drove me to Indiana to look at these schools. Nothing clicked so we headed home. On the way through Coldwater, Michigan, my mother asked to see if we could find a grocery store where she could be a buy a roast for Sunday. In the center of town, she spotted Reppert’s Market and went in. My father and I followed. While scouting out the store, I noticed no alcohol or tobacco. Then, I saw a card on the meat counter announcing a revival with Reverend Harry Hosmer, in the local Free Methodist Church. Turning to my father, I said, “Dad, this must be a Christian store.” No sooner were the words out of my mouth when the front door opened and the evangelist whose picture was on the card walked in, followed by a young man in a high school varsity jacket. Dad walked over to the evangelist, introduced himself, and said that he remembered going to Ypsilanti High School with the reverend’s sister.

They started reminiscing when my mother interrupted, “We are looking for a Christian college for our son.” The young man in the varsity jacket, the evangelist’s son with the same name, lighted up and asked, “Have you considered Spring Arbor Junior College?” We confessed that we had never heard of the school. Harry, Jr., a gifted salesman and student at the College, urged us to drive up M-60 from Coldwater rather than continuing on US-12 to Ypsilanti. By the time we arrived at the campus, a brilliant moon shone upon a cluster of buildings with its brightest beam outlining the first floor of a new dormitory under construction. Sixty-three years later, my memory of that moment sparkles with clarity. Spring Arbor Junior College was the place where God had led us and to which He was calling me.

Final confirmation came at freshman orientation when I heard the President declare Spring Arbor Junior College “a vine of God’s own planting,” and the Director of Alumni tell the story of Bishop E. P. Hart and his wife, pioneer founders of the school. As they got off the train in 1873 at the Spring Arbor whistle stop, Mrs. Hart peered through driving snow at the distant tracks and declared, “As long as there is a track, we will never turn back.” Then, together we rose to sing the school song,

There is a place ‘twill ne’er be forgot,

far dearer than lake or pine.

So speed the glad and the chorus prolong,

‘Til the echoes reach heaven above,

Spring Arbor the school we love.

Later that same afternoon, I began my work as a student laborer to pay my college costs. Shoveling mud in a drainage ditch, ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Momentum for a Movement
• Part 1: Creating Space
• Part 2: Generating Mass
• Part 3: Gathering Speed
• Part 4: Sustaining Momentum
• Appendix
• Bibliography