Higher Education in a “Post-Secular” Age

By: George Marsden

Our first essay is by a noted historian in the field of American education. Dr. George Marsden, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Notre Dame, has written extensively on the interaction between Christianity and American culture, particularly Christianity and American higher education. He is best known for his award-winning biography of Jonathan Edwards and for his books The Soul of the American University and The Soul of the American University Revisited. In the following essay, Marsden summarizes and extends his description of the relationship of Christianity to higher education in America.

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Higher Education in a “Post-Secular” Age

By almost all accounts, twenty-first century American universities are in a prolonged period of profound crisis. Typical critiques of recent years highlight words like “fragmenting,” “splintering,” “disrupting,” “politicization,” “commercialization,” “commodification,” and “extreme individualism.”[1] No doubt there are pockets to be found where students still have wonderfully enriching educational experiences. And a few commentators may celebrate the contributions of the universities to preparing a skilled work force and advancing the economy. Yet on the whole and from almost every point of view, choruses of voices sound the laments.

The fragmentation is so pervasive that no one is likely to be able to do much to change the direction of the whole. Too many competing powerful interests, ideological and economic, are involved. Yet we as Christians may still ask what opportunities there are for us to contribute positively within sometimes challenging university settings.

Specifically, the question of this essay is: how might traditional Christians (by which I mean something like C. S. Lewis’s “Mere Christians”), as parts of minority communities in diverse secular settings, offer opportunities to advance university education toward being closer to what it ought to be.

For Christians and others dedicated to something beyond themselves, university education should at least include the goals of gaining perspectives that can help students become better persons, better neighbors, and better citizens. They would not simply be acquiring marketable skills but would also be seeking to understand better what “the good life” should be, while preparing for a vocation or calling through which to serve God and others. Their university experiences should also help serve to build wider perspectives for understanding their faith in the context of the best that can be learned from studying a wide range of human experience.

The much-lamented fragmentation, politicization, and commodification of twenty-first century university education, while hardly creating an ideal environment, may also open opportunities for considering Christian supplements and alternatives. One characterization of the twenty-first century is that we have entered a “post-secular” era. That does not mean that the numbers of people with secular outlooks are necessarily declining or that religion is gaining (although it has been in much of the world). Rather “post-secular” means that we are in an era when the old secularization assumptions and theories have collapsed.

During most of the twentieth century, many common outlooks involved the assumption that in the modern era, traditional religions would inevitably decline as science and technologies advanced. More advanced beliefs, practices, and moral systems would displace old supernaturalist superstitions in much the same way that modern physics and chemistry have replaced alchemy. Marxism offered a particularly strong version of this thesis, but many other viewpoints in twentieth century intellectual life were based on such assumptions.

Through the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, the most influential versions reflected faith in modern science to improve human understanding and relationships, as in psychology, social behavior, and related moral principles. Later in the twentieth century such outlooks were challenged by “post-modern” schools of thought that typically rejected rationalistic scientific approaches and advanced various radical, yet equally secular, moral agendas. By the twenty-first century these proliferating and competing secular agendas had led to such fragmentation and politicization that claims that any one secular outlook would be the wave of the future looked increasingly fanciful. Meanwhile, as became particularly clear after the collapse of the Soviet Union, traditional religion was not going away, but was in fact thriving in many parts of the world.

One impact of these developments is that it has become, at least in some respects, easier to make the case that traditional religions, including traditional versions of Christianity, should be taken seriously as legitimate points of view in mainstream academia. It seems likely that today, compared to a generation ago, there are fewer academics who would dismiss traditional religious views as simply outdated or irrational.  Impressive Christian philosophers, such as Alvin Plantinga and others, have made the case that traditional Christian beliefs can hold their own so far as intellectual respectability is concerned.

In my own experience, as recently as the 1990s when I argued that intellectually rigorous religious viewpoints should be included along with outlooks centered on race, gender, naturalistic science, etc. to ensure academic diversity, the strongest pushback came from academics who asserted a version of the secularization thesis.  Speaking as though they represented all right-thinking academics, they took for granted that acceptable academic thought had to be empirically based. So one prominent critic said that the idea of distinct Christian perspectives in scholarship was a “loony” idea.  Race and gender, he said, were empirical constructs, while faith was not.[2]  Although today one can still find those in the professoriate who hold such views, I think it is safe to say that after a couple of generations of post-modernism and intellectual fragmentation, they can no longer realistically speak as though empirically based scientific naturalism should simply be assumed to be the gold standard for all academia.

More importantly, today there is overwhelmingly positive evidence that traditionalist “mere Christians,” both Protestant and Catholic, are in fact producing intellectually rigorous work in just about every academic field. Much of this work is being published by mainstream university presses. And much other serious output comes from the excellent academic wings of Christian presses that likewise maintain high standards and require peer review. While theology and biblical studies are thriving as academic disciplines, what is new is the flood of works offering Christian perspectives on other areas of human experience and inquiry. In fact, at no time in history has there been so much fine scholarship from traditionalist Christians concerning so many subjects.[3] And with today’s instant communications, Christian scholars at both Christian and secular institutions throughout the world are working within vigorous intellectual and spiritual communities of likeminded inquirers.

This renaissance of Christian scholarship, especially among traditionalist Protestants, is also largely a development of the past quarter century or so. Back in the 1990s a number of us were promoting programs to support Christian scholarship and encourage Christian young people to take on academic vocations. We saw these initiatives as priming the pump. Although Catholics had sustained respectable intellectual traditions, among American evangelical Protestants progress had been mixed. So Mark Noll could publish in 1994 The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, which he begins with the memorable sentence “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”[4] Today, anti-intellectualism such as Noll then lamented is still rampant in many evangelical communities, perhaps in our churches more than ever, but at the same time there is no denying there has been an unprecedented burgeoning of traditionalist Christian scholarship that provides rich resources for those promoting Christian perspectives in university communities.

Despite these positive developments, prejudices against traditionalist Christians are sometimes stronger than ever. Such prejudices arise out of the conflicts between the widely noted and often dogmatic politicization within university communities and the equally strong opposing politicization in many Christian communities. Particularly since the rise of Donald Trump, “evangelical” Christianity in the United States has come to be widely characterized as primarily a political identification. In fact one might say that among a good many white American evangelicals, partisan political concerns have become an operative religion alongside their traditional doctrinal teachings. This has created an unhealthy syncretism. Such populist amalgamations of Christianity and partisan political loyalties also tend to be associated with the sorts of anti-intellectuals Noll laments. In the highly politicized atmosphere, militant leaders promote narratives that fit their prejudices and mythologies rather than encouraging Christians to engage in balanced and discriminating thinking. Understandably, outsiders, especially academics who tend to be on the opposite end of the political spectrum, sometimes assume that all evangelicals share these much-publicized populist loyalties.

For Christians in mainstream academia it is important to emphasize that traditional (or “mere Christian”) Christianity comes in countless varieties. That is likewise true of evangelical Christians. American white evangelical communities that are associated with militantly populist partisan politics, represent only a tiny portion of evangelical Christians around the world. Each nation, tribe, or sub-group that embraces evangelical teachings relates those teachings to its own heritage in unique ways. Sadly, the political attitudes of many American white evangelicals are shaped as much by their ethnic heritage and the dominant outlooks of their local communities as they are by specifically evangelical faith. However, even in the United States, many evangelicals, especially among those who are college educated, are often critical of partisan political identification.

Evangelical Christians in academia need to be careful to avoid subordinating their own faith to political loyalties. One danger among those who are distressed by their fellow Christians’ political partisanship is to become equally partisan for the opposite political positions. In The Screwtape Letters Screwtape recommends that Wormwood suggest to his “patient” (who is in danger of becoming a Christian) that his political views are part of his religion. “Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part.” The final step is to have “the patient see his Christianity as valuable chiefly for the excellent arguments it provides for his party’s positions.”[5]  Christians do have social and political responsibilities and Christianity should help shape their political attitudes, but the whole point of developing thoughtful Christian perspectives is that they should offer guidelines to be discriminating in one’s judgments. One rule should be that if Christians find their political views too closely match the platform of one or the other political parties, then they are not applying their Christian principles as critically as they should. 

If Christians can demonstrate by the way they treat those with whom they differ that they are good community members in a pluralistic setting, then they should be in positions to emphasize that varieties of religious viewpoint ought to be honored within university communities. Administrators and others who can influence academic policies should then be trying to promote something like “principled pluralism,” or what John Inazu has called “confident pluralism,” ensuring a range of responsible religious perspectives is recognized as part of the diversity that universities should honor.[6]

On the positive side, then, Christian sub-communities such as study centers, campus ministries, and churches in university settings can, in addition to witnessing to the faith, offer constructive supplements to mainstream university education. Many of the strongest laments, for instance, regarding university education have concerned the demise of the humanities. In literature and the arts, for instance, politicization and deconstruction have sometimes undermined the edifying dimensions of these studies. Even beauty is sometimes seen as an elitist concept. More broadly, as universities have become increasingly oriented toward offering valuable job skills, students have been less inclined to study the humanities and are not required to do so as they once were. Christian study centers and similar communities, then, have the opportunity to point students to the larger questions that they face and can benefit from thinking more deeply about during their university years. What is the meaning of life? What does it mean to be a loving person? What should I be doing with my life? How can I better understand the human condition? What principles and practices should guide my personal relationships? How should I critically understand my culture, its history, and its dominant values—its hyper-individualism for instance? How can I learn to better understand and appreciate other cultures? How can I serve the needs of those who are suffering in my community and the world?  How should I think of the environment or God’s creation and creation care? What is truly beautiful and how can I find and appreciate it? How can I find joy? Regarding each of these, and many more such topics, Christians in university communities can offer not only personal guidance but also point to rich thoughtful literature.

Perhaps the most important witness to the faith in university settings is found in the nature of Christian communities themselves. They ought to be models of those who are not only thoughtfully promoting their own agendas, but also selflessly serving the larger communities of which they are a part. They should also be cultivating respect for those with whom they differ and be seeking mutual understanding with them.

David Brooks recently offered a reflection on his own gradual conversion from atheism to Christianity. It was, he says, largely the result of spending a lot of time visiting Christian college campuses, going to Christian conferences, and meeting with thoughtful Christian organizations. The more he did so, the more he realized that these people and communities had something that he was looking for and needed. “So,” Brooks concludes, “my message for all Christian organizations, but especially a unique Christian organization that has scientific literacy, is always ‘Be not afraid, you have what the world is hungering for,’ which is a spiritual vocabulary, a spiritual focus, an actual way to orient your life to a higher good.”[7]

Education in America needs just such alternatives in its conversations, if it is ever going to get out of the crisis mode in which it finds itself.

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[1] Sources for these terms are cited in The Soul of The American University Revisited: From Protestant to Post-Secular (New York: Oxford University Press), 2021), 351 & 353, The historical accounts in the current piece are based on the narratives found there.

[2] The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship (New York Oxford University Press, 1997), 5. See passim for similar remarks from other scholars.

[3] It would take considerable work to document the numbers, but the conclusion is easy to illustrate. There are over fifty Christian academic and professional societies. https://www.facultycommons.com/for-faculty/christian-academic-and-professional-societies/ Almost all of these have been founded since 1970. And just to mention two of the largest, The Society for Christian Philosophers and The Conference on Faith and History each have over 600 members.  In each those members must account over the years for at least a couple of hundred books among them, written from Christian perspectives And much other impressive scholarship integrating faith and learning has appeared in literature, the social sciences, the arts, and in many scientific and practical fields. Many of the societies publish academic journals. No other era of history has seen anything like this amount of explicitly Christian scholarship going beyond theological and bilblical studies.

[4] Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1994), 3.  Cf. updated edition, Eerdmans, 2022. The Preface and Afterword of the new edition offer a more systematic and thorough rendering of the issues I am raising here.

[5] C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: Harper Collins, 2001), 34.

[6] John Inazu, Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving Though Deep Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016).

[7] https://biologos.org/resources/david-brooks-on-faith-in-polarized-times

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