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Inside Higher Ed ran a story today entitled “Meditative Spaces,” about efforts at various colleges and universities to create space for meditation and contemplative prayer. The schools in the article represent a broad range of heritages - private secular, Buddhist, Baptist, Catholic, even a college based on Transcendental Meditation. On one level, I think this can be a promising development, as students, faculty, and administrators recognize the spiritual component to life and attempt to honor our human need for transcendence. The article quotes a recent study from UCLA, which found that most college students were looking for spiritual meaning in their lives:

Indeed, it seems the majority of college students consider themselves to be spiritual in some way. A 2005 study by University of California at Los Angeles researchers found that 80 percent of freshmen have an interest in spirituality – but while they expect guidance from their colleges on spiritual matters, those expectations often aren’t met. In an earlier pilot study of college juniors, the researchers found that nearly two-thirds said their professors don’t encourage discussion of spiritual or religious matters.

The meditation spaces described are as diverse as the schools: prayer rooms, small chapels, outdoor labyrinths. However, the article fails to mention the most important element of meditation. Who or what is the object of meditation?

Psalm 119 is perhaps the central Biblical text regarding meditation. The psalm is organized into 22 sections, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and each line of each section begins with the same letter. Acrostic poems, like Psalm 119, were a Hebrew device for capturing the entirety of God, as if to say that the theme at hand is being covered “from A to Z.” In this case, the theme is God’s word itself.

The second section, Bet, vv. 8 - 16, has always spoken strongly to me:

How can a young man keep his way pure?
By living according to your word.
I seek you with all my heart;
do not let me stray from your commands.
I have hidden your word in my heart,
that I might not sin against you.
Praise be to you, O LORD;
teach me your decrees.
With my lips I recount
all the laws that come from your mouth.
I rejoice in following your statutes
as one rejoices in great riches.
I meditate on your precepts
and consider your ways.
I delight in your decrees;
I will not neglect your word.

The impulse of the colleges above is correct. Human beings are designed to seek transcendence, and meditation is a natural part of how we are wired (some more than others). I pray, however, that students and faculty across our country will discover the proper object for meditation. May the Christians among them be salt and light, so that they will see true spirituality, focused on Christ and God’s revelation.

The Faculty Ministry Leadeship Team (on which I serve, as part of my role with the Emerging Scholars Network) is reading Douglas Sloan’s book Faith and Knowledge: Mainline Protestantism and Higher Education. I’m keeping a reading journal on my other blog (parts one, two, and three, so far are up). 

One passage, in particular, strikes me as something I’ve been thinking over for some time.  Sloan describes how, after World War II, universities redefined “knowledge” into, basically, the “higher utilianarianism” of scientific, technical, and social research, and the “lower utilitarianism” of “community service and vocational training.”  As a result, there was “very little concern…for an education devoted to the deepening and enrichment of personal and cultural existence.”

Elizabeth and I are just beginning our childrens’ formal education.  Over the last few years, I have wished that my early education included more of the “great books” in the Western tradition.  I have been jealous of the ways that my poetic heroes - Eliot, Auden, Wilbur - were/are able to draw (seemingly) effortlessly from a depth of cultural knowledge that I had to google just to understand.  I’ve been attracted to the classical Christian education movement as a corrective to what I see as gaps in my personal education. 

Just this morning, I was talking with a friend at my other job about the nature of reason.  His work deals quite a bit with debunking scams and seeing through false claims, so he has been attracted to skeptical societies and logical arguments.  Even though he himself is a musician and writer, he seems to lean more to the naturalism favored by so many professional skeptics.  In my experience, hardened skeptics have become so accustomed to fighting false beliefs in UFOs, magic potions, and con artists, that they fail to recognize the truth in philosophy, theology, and religion.  In fact, they often lump the two groups together as mutually “unprovable.”

A while back, Seth Godin wrote about a “job of the future” - Online Community Organizer. It struck as very similar to what my role with the Emerging Scholars Network could be: helping to facilitate community and common goals among a large, dispersed, and diverse group of ESN members.

Here’s Seth’s original post:

Seth’s Blog: Jobs of the future, #1: Online Community Organizer

Yesterday, a person asked me how InterVarsity staff (like myself) are funded. In his words, he contrasted two models: what he called a “mission field” model of “not muzzling the ox” and being supported by donations, vs. a “tentmaker” model where I “earn my keep” by being paid for the work I produce. It was an honest question, and I think he was primarily trying to understand how InterVarsity works. But it’s a good question, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot this morning.

My position (ESN Associate Director) is funded by those individuals and churches who share my concern and vision for the university, and who want to partner with me financially and prayerfully in this ministry. I believe that this is a Biblical model (not “the” Biblical model, though), and I also think it makes sense in a general, nonprofit sort of way. When I’m wearing my other hat, I work with several hundred Greater Cincinnati nonprofits, so I think I have a good perspective on the nonprofit world. Read the rest of this entry »

A friend of mine recently told me that, when she was in college, she never wanted to know her professors politics or religion. She didn’t want to have “an agenda pushed down her throat” (her words) while she was learning their subject. She just wanted to focus on the subject at hand.

Now, I work for a ministry whose mission is to develop Christian professors who will be a redeeming influence in the university. We expect their faith in Christ to influence their teaching, research, and everything else they do as professors. So my friend’s statement troubled me.  Would it be better for professors to “focus on the subject at hand” and check their politics and religion at the door?  Is it even possible?

I can appreciate my friend’s position. It always annoyed me in college when profs aggressively pushed a point-of-view that I disagreed with. But, in a college classroom, we’re all adults, and my feelings shouldn’t determine the content of the curriculum.

I am currently wrapping up a series on world religions at Lakeside, so I have various conflicting theologies bumping around in my head right now. On my way home, I began thinking about how professor’ religious beliefs might shape their teaching and research.

For example, Christianity teaches that, at the core of everything, there is a person. More specifically, there are three Persons, Three-in-One, co-existing in co-eternal community. According to Christian theology, personhood is at the center of the cosmos.  Every concept in Christianity is related to the personhood of God (e.g. sin is a personal offense against God; salvation is personal reconciliation with God).

Contrast this with Buddhism and Hinduism. Certain forms of these two religions teach that personhood is an illusion, that all distinct “persons” are really just expressions of the world-soul, which is a nonpersonal, spiritual force. Our objective in life is to perceive the world as it truly is (i.e. an illusion), to realize that there is no “self,” and to gain enlightenment that all is One.

To recap, in Christianity, personhood is fundamentally important. In certain Eastern religions, personhood is an illusion.

Wouldn’t those two perspectives lead to different conclusions in any academic subject that deals with human beings? Wouldn’t your interpretations of Shakespeare and Faulkner differ depending on whether you believed them to be two eternally distinct persons, or you believed them to be two representations of the same nonpersonal force?  Without even considering whether one of these world views is correct, wouldn’t they - shouldn’t they - affect your perspective on ethics, psychology, sociology, or healthcare?

And, if you can’t apply your deepest-held beliefs to an academic subject, if you can’t communicate those beliefs and the ensuring applications in a clear, respectful, and convincing manner, then what’s the point of being a professor?