The Christian Scholar in Academia

In my first semester of graduate school, a professor told me, knowing I am a Christian, that Christianity and academia don’t go together, that they contradict, because academia, especially in the liberal arts, requires an open-mindedness to new ideas and philosophies that Christianity, in his words, won’t allow. From his perspective, being in the liberal arts requires a liberal thinking unassociated with the stereotype of conservative “American Christianity.”

There’s a certain amount of reasoning to his statement. Contemporary thought proscribes to a belief that logic and faith don’t go together. In my area of study, we reconsider everything, we reevaluate, we discuss controversial topics. We aren’t required to agree on issues, but we must be able to converse on points that might be considered oppositional to Christianity.

The truth is, my professor voiced a belief I’d already considered and personally struggled with. When I began graduate school, despite my passionate love for literature, I’d constantly struggled with feelings of doubt and guilt. Why did I love poetry and writers like James Joyce whose personal philosophies trusted aesthetics as opposed to religion? Why did I spend hours every day poring over literary works that have nothing to do with God’s Great Commission? My writing is esoteric with a narrow audience and is often devoid of spiritual themes. I’ve written explicitly about racism and gender issues and sexuality and many forms of spirituality in a way that might make accountants and new mothers squirm. And the truth is, I’m comfortable addressing these issues, in discussing Judith Butler’s ideas on gender as a performance, in addressing Edward Said’s philosophy of orientalism. And when I teach, I often assign worldly literary works to my freshman and sophomore college students without ever mentioning my absolute faith in Christ unless directly asked. In fact, I may stand in front of the classroom and speak in vague generalities that maintain a politically correct facade that won’t offend my students or make anyone feel uncomfortable or attacked.

Does this make me a worldly, desensitize Christian with a lesser (or even more upsetting - false) calling? My best friend is out on the front lines of ministry, serving in a spiritually barren part of Europe. I’ve often wondered if my work is less important to the world than her incredible work overseas. Is my professor correct; is it impossible to be a Christian in the post-modern, relative-loving, close-minded toward absolutes, world of academia today? A world that outwardly screams godlessness? Are academic goals contradictory to living for Christ? And even more importantly, will my work in academia matter for the kingdom of God?

Last semester, noted C.S. Lewis scholar Louis Markos spoke at my university about Lewis’ life as a scholar, and his presentation encouraged me to read more of Lewis’ work. Through this presentation and my following study of Lewis, I began to reevaluate my philosophy as a student and as an instructor. I began to see that God loves scholars, calls selected children to be scholars, and that the calling of the scholar is dangerous and radical.

In Lewis’ 1939 speech, “Learning in War-Time,” he echoes my concern, questioning “‘How can [scholars] be so frivolous and selfish as to think about anything but the salvation of human souls?’” (50). Lewis agrees that we must “inquire whether there is really any legitimate place for the activities of the scholar in a world such as this” (50).

To begin, he emphasizes the importance of knowledge in the Christian life, writing that knowledge isn’t exclusive from Christianity. It is important “in a sense, for [its] own sake, but in a sense which does not exclude [it] being for God’s sake” (56). Knowledge isn’t anti-faith. And it isn’t anti-God. In fact, Lewis writes regarding knowledge and beauty that “an appetite for these things exists in the human mind, and God makes no appetite in vain” (56). And in possessing an appetite for such there is the possibility of “pursu[ing] knowledge as such, and beauty as such, in the sure confidence that by so doing we are either advancing to the vision of God ourselves or indirectly helping others do so” (56).

These words are nice and encouraging but figurative. My question when discussing the scholar’s appetite for knowledge and beauty is how it can be used for God. What is the practical application of God-focused knowledge in a self-focused environment?

A significant application Lewis introduces is the scholar’s vital role in flushing out “bad philosophy” with “good philosophy,” that cultural life will go on whether the church participates or not, and for the church not to answer with intellect, to instead encourage every believer to remain uneducated and simple, is not as God intended (58). The scholar has the advantage in thoughtfully examining, understanding, and rebuking bad philosophy. Lewis practiced this in his own academic life by resisting and challenging “chronological snobbery” - the belief that just because something is new, it must be more accurate (a terrible false analogy). Or alternatively, the belief that if our age doesn’t believe something, that someone must have disproved it in the past.

It is the scholar’s act of reconsideration that allows for advancements in thinking, negotiations between the truth of the Bible and modern philosophies of man, and the promotion of Biblical truths. For example, Lewis wrote against ideas commonly held since the period of enlightenment that reason and knowledge are more valuable than emotion and faith. In fact, he didn’t believe they were binary categories at all - that reason and faith and knowledge and imagination can actually complement without contradiction. Christianity isn’t devoid of reason or imagination. And the scholar doesn’t have to sacrifice faith for reason or imagination.