Fides Quaerens Intellectum

Spring 2002 saw the conclusion of my doctoral coursework at Baylor University, and one of my seminar papers that semester focused on faith, learning and the concept of Baylor as a training grouds for proper citizen formation.  As part of my research, I had the opportunity to interview (then) President Robert Sloan, who is now president at Houston Baptist University.  The following is the transcript of that interview.  The book that I’m recommending for your perusal this time is one fresh off the press and authored by two of my colleagues and mentors at Baylor University’s Institute for Faith and Learning, where for two years I had the privilege of serving as a doctoral research assistant.  I am grateful to them for their ongoing work there. JDB

Interview w/Dr. Robert Sloan, President of Baylor University

3-18-02

John D. Basie, interviewer

Faith, Learning, and Citizen Formation within the Baylor University Context

Q:  Why do you think it’s the case that, over the last ten years, we’ve seen so much  of a proliferation of this faith and learning integration discussion in the form of conferences, books, etc.  What do you think are the factors that account for this?

Sloan:  I think the primary factor is the loss of church-relatedness and faith-relatedness and the loss of explicit confessional foundations for a number of institutions in the 20th century that were in fact church-related or faith-oriented or confession-grounded institutions. The books have told the story either on the Protestant or Catholic side of the loss.  What was, in a sense, a cultural phenomenon, that is that, more of an intact culture that was much more Protestant-driven and, has in fact, broken down. It’s a phenomenon you see everywhere in our culture. It’s the increasing diversity and pluralism in society; the breakdown of so-called “intact communities;” greater heterogeneity in every sphere of life, has produced the decline of the Christian college.  I think that has produced the flurry of materials–identifying this trend, and trying to speak to it.

Q:  You have said recently…”Baylor is indeed committed to a thoroughgoing integration of faith and learning and the implications for an academic institution of the confession ‘Jesus is Lord.’”  What do you mean by the “integration of faith and learning?”

Sloan:  In some ways, it’s probably better put, the “re-integration of faith and learning.”  I think that in effect, the industrial revolution, in many ways people push things farther back to the Enlightenment, the creation of disciplines.  The creation of intellectual disciplines was pushed forward by, I think, the Industrial Revolution which put financial incentive to research projects and the ability to, as it were, divide and conquer intellectually, so that problems became problems of engineering or problems of manufacturing.  And so these specifically, in a sense, business-related problems or transportation problems or culture-building issues, the economic growth and expansion of the United States and so on in our culture accentuated and, I’d like to say, funded the intellectual projects of the Enlightenment which already create a kind of breakdown of the view that truth is whole.  And when that happens, as that happened, faith or religious issues became in some ways extraneous to the scientific project, the project of learning, the project of history and discovery in science.  We in effect learned how to bracket certain issues. There is a certain appropriateness to that.  When you live in a world of, on one end of the spectrum is a world of animism where everything is quickened by demons and spirits. And then on the other end of the spectrum there is a world which is devoid of life and vitality and spirit.  But the project of science, the project of the Enlightenment, ulitmately the project of the Industrial Revolution, I think, both funds and motivates extended this creation of disciplines which methodologically brackets out the supernatural.  So I really don’t think the loss of the Christian college was part of any grand conspiracy.  It just happened, day by day, bit by bit.  In some ways, it was a result of a methodological premise.  So philosophical assumptions, carried out in certain methodological premises, to bracket out the miraculous, the supernatural, faith. And then, of course, as I say, funded by economic necessity. 

Q:  So would you agree, then, that when we talk about faith/learning integration at Baylor, that at least the majority of what we’re trying to do when we say that is to get back to the notion that truth is indeed a whole?

Sloan:  Mhmm. I think that’s a critical assumption. Now I’m willing for my philosopher friends to help me nuance that a little better and to correct my thinking on that. I don’t think it means we know all the truth. But I do think there’s something called reality, that it is in some sense knowable, and that we cannot escape the assumptions of coherence.  Things cohere.  And of course this is the way scientists, in effect, test their methods and test their results.  Does it cohere with what else we know?  So I think you can go at this either, you start from the bottom up, and talk about the way we verify our own experience, the way we verify even, highly controlled experiences such as with the scientific method or historical methods.  We validate things by… coherence, or will they cross-reference.  Or you can start from the other end and say “there is but one God, He is the Creator of all things and all that there is has come from God.”  And thus, whether we can know it or not, there is coherence, because it grows out of monotheism.

Q:  What in your view, are some virtues that are essential to a proper notion of citizenship?

Sloan:  Of course, when we think of citizenship, we’re thinking of, shall we say, our comportment or behavior, our living in the world.  Of course the traditional or cardinal virtues of temperance, and prudence, courage, and justice, these classical cardinal virtues are necessary, and I think we work to develop those. Now of course, from a Christian point of view, the classical virtues would be faith, hope and love.  So, in effect, I would call those the “higher virtues.”  I’m forgetting, in a sense, what your original question was.  I think those integrate, but we need courage, temperance and prudence to seek to enact justice.  And ultimately, it seems to me a proper worldview and the living out of life within that worldview begins with such things as faith, hope, and love.

Q:  The following affirmations, found in the Baylor 2012 document, express the core convictions which shape the University’s aspirations now and as it moves toward 2012

·       Encourage the uniting of Christian faith and the intellectual life

·       Equip individuals to understand life as a calling and thus serve society and the world

How do you understand the relationship between these affirmations?  Put another way, how should the faith/learning integration project affect the project of forming virtuous citizens within the Baylor context?

Sloan:    Well, again, I think the integration of faith and learning is in many ways a re-integration, or it is an attempt to become whole.  We believe there is but one God and this and all that is is the result of the creative impetus of God and His superintending care.  And in effect, whether it’s discovery or whether it is the living of life, we’re trying to restore wholeness.  Discovery involves this verification by means of coherence and so forth.  Or when it comes to the living of life, it’s a question of integrity, that is, “how can I be a whole person?”  Not being a person who one has an intellectual life, but then, I have a physical life and I play games over here, or sports, but then I have this family life, and then I have this life at church, and then I have this life as a member of the Rotary Club.  But [rather] I’m trying to cultivate wholeness. That is to say, I live my life under God, under the lordship of Jesus Christ and now I live in this world made by God, sustained by God through Jesus Christ.  So what are the core convictions that one, make me whole, and enable me to live in a way that is consistent or reflects integrity?  I should not be a person fragmented into just roles.  We hear all about the roles of life.  That’s a good heuristic device, but personhood grows out of our, our roles grow out of our essential personhood, character.  That character is defined viz. relationship, a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and my relationship with others who bear the image of God and others in whose community I live. 

Q:  What role should the curriculum play in the formation of virtuous citizens here at Baylor?

Sloan:  There are numerous things a curriculum can do.  One is, of course, the curriculum is a kind of mechanism, or means, whereby you seek to deliver what you promise; a means where you deliver what you promise to students when they enter into a contract or when they enter into the family relationship or enter the community that is the educational community.  We have to have a curriculum that is consistent with our assumptions.  We have to have a curriculum that, for example, discusses the question of a supernatural worldview versus a natural worldview.  We have to have a curriculum that discusses the theological implications of life.  We have to have a curriculum that traces the history of differing worldviews.  What are the options, and what is the character of the different ways of looking at life?  A curriculum has to deliver that.  And, a curriculum has to encourage, again, integrative thinking.  A curriculum has to encourage not only the skills of thinking, but it has to suggest content.  A curriculum has to permit engagement, because we don’t know all that can be known.  A curriculum has to facilitate those things that we confess, and by that I particularly mean, if we confess, for example that this world is God’s world and it’s good, then a curriculum ought to facilitate discovery.   If we say that we don’t know all that can be known, God is mysterious, this curriculum ought to facilitate and encourage humility.  If we believe that God nonetheless has revealed himself and is knowable, then a curriculum ought to, with humility, nonetheless believe that some things can be known, in that there are things that can be affirmed  and that we’re not left with complete and utter mystery and darkness–that God is knowable.  And if, in the Christian faith, we’re called into community with God and one another, then our curriculum ought to encourage the ability to build community.  If we’re told that all the peoples of this earth belong to God and all the tribes and nations and tongues belong to God, then we ought to encourage the embracing of all of God’s people, wherever they are.  So citizenship building takes us beyond the boundaries of our own state.  We realize that even our own culture and nation, and even a liberal democracy, is subordinate to the confession that we have made that Jesus Christ is Lord. 

Q:  From your perspective, what roles do Baylor faculty members play in the formation of virtuous citizens? 

Sloan:  If I could put it this way, I think the faculty in many ways is even more important than the curriculum.  Now I think the curriculum is very important, because obviously the curriculum helps to facilitate the contract that we make when we enter into a relationship with students.  The faculty carry the intellectual freight, they should carry the traditions of learning–the content traditions and the methodological traditions; the engagement.  The faculty are the role models for citizenship, not just the professors in the role model for learning; they’re not role models for how to become a professor, they’re role models for how to be citizens. So faculty ought to be engaged in citizenship.  They ought to be exemplary citizens.  They ought to understand the integrative issues of citizenship, because citizenship itself is an integrative, and integrated task.  For the Christian, it’s living in this world, and trying to understand that, since I’ve confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord, what does that mean for me to live in this world.  How do I relate to other people? Professors, I think, have to understand a Christian worldview.  They have to understand the content of their own discipline.  But you see, in some ways those are two very different things.  The first one is [a] very integrative, cross-disciplinary task–a Christian worldview.  The second is a kind of depth and content issue.  They’ve got to drill down deeply within their own discipline.  They’ve also got to have the ability to engage .  Then they have to be models.  So its a very difficult task, and they have to have faith, hope, and love.  It’s very difficult.  I think particularly students look to the professors, teachers as role models and even if they don’t know they’re doing it, they’re imitating the professors.  They’re often repeating.  As a child learns to speak words that he or she doesn’t really understand, they learn language by imitation.  Students learn the language of scholarship from their professors and use it even before they understand it.  Their vocabularies outstrip their understanding.  And so it’s very important that professors realize the enormous power they have, the enormous influence they have.  They approach it with humility and with preparation. 

Q:  How does the faculty’s understanding of the faith/learning integration project affect their efforts to form virtuous citizens, in your view?

Sloan:  Well, I think it is of the essence that, if by “virtuous citizen” we mean a virtuous citizen who as a Christian lives faithfully in the world, as a virtuous citizen, then of course by definition the faculty must appreciate and understand a Christian worldview. Because the the product that we’re trying to produce, is a product, that is, in terms of the student, is a student who is bearing Christian citizenship.  So by definition the faculty must have the larger Christian worldview.  Because, again, I think citizenship is not just living in the sense of doing acts. It’s the intellectual life.  It’s understanding my core convictions.  It’s having people skills.  It’s learning how to adapt, how to see about myself; how to know what is good and right and just and prudent.  How to have courage.  How to promote justice.  And, again, the higher calling is the Christian calling.  The greater virtues are faith, hope, and love.  So again, if it’s Christian citizenship we’re aiming at, then having a Christian worldview is absolutely of the essence.  Now, it’s entirely possible of course, I think, to have a Christian worldview, and not work out those implications as one ought to.  So it may well be that you can have a Christian worldview and then still, we all still have to work hard both at our Christian worldview to be constantly expanding that and growing it; restoring our own wholeness and thus being able to teach and model for students what it means to live in the world.  How do you interpret the confessions that we make for life and for the world.  But citizenship is, I think, a nice label for in effect saying “how do I live?”  It means  with discipline. It means with love, with courage, with temperance, with prudence, with faith [and] confessing the Lordship of Christ. 

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