Fides Quaerens Intellectum

It’s no secret that academia is, and has been, dominated by politically and socially left-tilting faculty members. For years now David Horowitz has been the most prominent voice on this issue, and indeed at times has been a voice crying in the wilderness. This is not an argument for conservatives to avoid higher [...]

This past week at IMPACT 360 (www.impact360.net) saw the awakening of students’ critical thinking capacities as those were brought to bear on the subject of ethics. Too broad? For sure. This was an introductory module to ethics–specifically an introduction to the major systems of ethics, including deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics. [...]

Perhaps the most powerful objection to a thoroughgoing faith/learning academic environment (i.e., in the classroom itself) and its supporting arguments is an argument from academic freedom. More than a few well-meaning professors put it this way: “Faith/learning integration in our classrooms ought not be imposed on us from the powers that be, because while intellectual [...]

Several weeks ago the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences from Union University (www.uu.edu), Dr. Gene Fant, came as an IMPACT 360 (www.impact360.net) guest professor.  Union U is IMPACT 360’s academic partner, and our students are technically Union students by virtue of the articulation agreement.  Like my alma mater, Erskine College (www.erskine.edu), where [...]

More than a few authors of late have chronicled the history of American higher education with a view toward restoring the foundational role that the Christian religion once played in educating students.  College presidents of yesteryear, including John Witherspoon (Princeton),  Noah Porter (Yale), and Francis Wayland (Brown) recognized that their institutions were not educating students primarily [...]

If our universities are to become more than professional schools, their rationalism needs to be in dialogue with other “traditions of inquiry.” For the most important matters in life include such matters as hope, depression, trust, purpose, and wisdom.  If secularism purges such concerns from the curriculum for lack of a way to address them, [...]

Since I started graduate school in 1997 I’ve appreciated the thoughtfulness that University of Chicago scholar Jean Bethke Elshtain has brought to bear on seemingly countless topics of faith and culture.  In my most recent wanderings through an as yet unread book on faith and learning in my personal library (although I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit I [...]

A fair portion of my Ph.D. dissertation is on the history of higher education in the United States.  In my research I came across the Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon’s account of the College of New Jersey (e.g., Princeton) where he served as president beginning in 1768.  Given my roles at the Chick-fil-A sponsored IMPACT 360 (www.impact360.net) [...]

“The purpose of a Christian education would not be merely to make men and women pious Christians: a system which aimed rigidly at this end alone would become only obscurantist. A Christian education would primarily train people to be able to think in Christian categories…”
-T.S. Eliot

Son of Westminster’s blogpost the other day on David Dockery and his blog interview on faith and learning in the Christian college inspired me to post something in the same vein, although what follows here is just a bit older by comparison.  Noah Porter, president of Yale in the late nineteenth century, delivered the keynote address at [...]