EDITORIAL: NOT JUST MY JOB
Actually, I planned to title this editorial The Eichmann Attitude. Remember the Nazi who was responsible for the torture and death of so many during World War II? His attitude was, I was just doing my job, as though that excused him from moral judgement about his actions. Just so, some Christian faculty look at their position as their job rather than a ministry of service.

The June 14, 1996 CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION featured a series called, The Widening Gap. The main point was that higher education was becoming a place for the haves,and as a result more and more have nots are suffering. Some of the have nots were: students from poor and middle class families and minorities, adjunct faculty, computer poor students and campuses, members of departments that the university feels it can no longer fund, those not receiving outside grants for their research. You may be a have or a have not here. The question for Christian faculty is, How do you respond? For the haves the question is, what kind of stewardship are you practicing over what you have been blessed with? For the have nots, the question is, How can God supply my needs? Put another way, the question for Christian faculty is, which group is the baseline for your self understanding? Today's faculty in your discipline or the church of Jesus Christ through the ages? If the latter, then times of blessing and times of hardship have been known through the centuries and resources have been found in the Lord. If the former, then the only resources available are struggles for power between various groups on the campus.

I call again for Christian faculty to form small groups to pray about these issues and seek God's direction and power to do something about this widening gap, and to take responsibility for the university and its state of need today. A recent letter from a praying friend talks about intercessory prayer as in behalf of prayer, representing the needy before God. Let's lift the problems of the universities together before the Lord representing the have nots to the One who can meet their needs. It's not just a job, it's a calling!

KEEPING UP
Finding God at Harvard: Spiritual Journeys of Thinking Christians, Kelly Monroe, Editor, Zondervan Publishing House, 1996: Many of you have been part of or heard about the VERITAS FORUM which is happening at many universities. This has its roots in the work of Kelly Monroe and other Christians at Harvard and in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The book is a collection of brief essays by those nourished by or somehow connected with the Christian community at Harvard, MIT and in Cambridge. The list of contributors is very impressive. Some are graduate students, some have moved out to places of leadership in the culture, some are faculty at places such as Harvard and Yale and some are well known international figures. They represent public policy, family life, medicine, psychiatry, theology, missions, business, science and education amongst other disciplines. Some of the contributors you will recognize are: Robert Coles, Glenn Lowry, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Armand Nicholi Jr., Nicholas Wolterstorff, Habib Malik, Lamin Sanneh, Elizabeth Dole, and Owen Gingerich. There are a number of illustrious names and some very powerful writing. Much of it is autobiographical. All of it reflects deep thought and rich experience.

Some sample paragraphs:

In The Search For God at Harvard, written while Finding God at Harvard was also in the making, author Ari Goldman found that Harvard's motto, Veritas, was just another shorthand way of recognizing Jesus Christ, who was seen as the ultimate Truth. But Mr. Goldman was disappointed in his search, which was confined to Harvard Divinity School, upon finding no one to speak of the gospel (good news) and person of Jesus Christ. In this book, we find this gospel and this person by entering the whole university. We meet professors, alumni, and students in the college and ten graduate schools-scientists, philosophers, medical doctors, an Olympic medalist, homemakers, environmentalists, an economist, a sophomore who is battling bone cancer. Their searches and research reveal a high common denominator. Their microscopes, telescopes, and eyes are windows surveying a shared horizon. Through their stories, we see the gospel-the first light of America's first college.

Beyond their work, writers describe their personal stories of wonder, despair, love and hope. They challenge popular cynicism by sharing with us their questions, turnings, joy, and the one whom they have eventually come to know as Truth. (pg. 13)

The Harvard Gazette reported in 1993 that the humanist chaplain on the Harvard-Radcliffe United Ministry, a committed atheist whom few students had heard of, has a huge following: the entire university. The chaplain said, and the paper agreed, that secular humanism is constantly reinforced in the classrooms. Less tolerated is the Christian concept that the gospel and the imago dei (beings created in the image of God) lay the surest foundation for humanism, rights, and lasting dignity for all people. (pg. 16)

In a graduate commencement address, another student said: 'They tell us that it is heresy to suggest the superiority of some value, fantasy to believe in moral argument, slavery to submit to a judgment sounder than your own. The freedom of our day is the freedom to devote ourselves to any values we please, on the mere condition that we do not believe them to be true. (pg. 17)

The Harvard-Radcliffe Christian Fellowship (HRCF) documents the need to increase minority faculty hiring, remembered daily in noon prayer. They join other fellowships on Friday nights to explore The Fall of the Iron Curtain, The Role of the Church and Jesus and the Dynamics of Diversity. They sing and pray with Christian grad students also off to serve the poorest of the poor in inner cities as close as Dorchester and as far away as Kuala Lumpur. (pg. 19)

I very highly recommend that you get this book, read it and share it with others. It gives deep insights to the problems of higher education. Here are America's best and brightest who have found that Harvard on its own has very little to contribute to solving the world's problems because its problem solving is couched in humanistic values at best and greed driven capitalism and self-centeredness at worst. But these Christians, who found strength in the Christian community there and in the Lord's providing, are now in places of significant spiritual ministry as leaders in many sites around the world. This is a book to leave out on your desk as well as to pass around with book marks for the appropriate passages to your friends in the various disciplines. In fact it would make a wonderful case study for higher education classes.

Some of you have lengthy commutes, some of you like to work in your workshops etc. while amusing your mind with other things. I have the perfect thing for you! Mars Hill tapes are things I have been enjoying for about 3 years. Ken Meyers, a former NPR news person, puts together a bi-monthly audio magazine of contemporary culture and Christian conviction. I find each issue one that I want to save and listen to. They are not tied to particular events in the newsworld. Often they are related to books and music and art work or significant events in the culture such as Supreme Court cases. Ken interviews and converses with profound thinkers, academics, non-academics, people in art, music, English literature, business, government etc. I think you would find this a wonderful way to stimulate your mental growth and fill up your time with quality in-put.

Let me review tape #20, March/April, 1996. The first interviewee is Dr. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese on the faculty at Emory University. They are discussing the then-happening VMI Supreme Court case where a formerly male-only educational system has been forced to open its ranks to females. Dr. Genovese discusses with Ken the problems of gender concepts today. She has some strong opinions, some unusual insights, which I think, whether you agree or disagree, will force you to do some clear and deep thinking.

The second and third interview have to do with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Dr. Robert Richardson, Jr. who published a recent book on Emerson, discusses why Emerson continues to attract certain kinds of religious seekers. Richardson asserts that Emerson himself was a life-long seeker of God. I was amazed to see how the direction, the ideas, even the words of his volume, Self Reliance, show up. For instance our current phrase, Do your own thing, for bumper sticker erudition, comes right out of the language of Self Reliance. Indeed our current New Age thought, God is in every man, is direct from Emerson.

This theme is then discussed with the next scholar, Roger Lundin from Wheaton College, who gives an extremely good picture of Emerson; his roots, his way of working. He uses his insights to Emerson to talk about everything from a current Reebock ad using Emerson to sell shoes to some of the reasons for the success of mega-churches in our culture. He sees Emerson as the source and undergirding of much of 19th and 20th century Liberalism.

Several other good interviews occur and on the other side there is a very interesting in-put from sculptor, Ted Prescott, on the then current abstract art exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum. In some ways it's a primer for looking at abstract art. I found it very useful and hope to review it again before I visit a museum.

The final interview is with Ted Libbey on Haydn's THE CREATION. A most intriguing insight to what Haydn was saying and what we can get from it, with a reproduction of some glorious sound.

This is typical of the contents of the tapes I have listened to and I look forward to continuing to receive them and reflect on them. In fact it's enough to tempt one to take long car trips just to listen to them or to re-paint the bedroom so as to have hands occupied while mind is listening to the tape. I highly recommend them.

MODELS OF MINISTRY: USING EVERY OPPORTUNITY
Dr. Eric Schonblom, Professor of Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, says, A colleague of mine posted Why God Never Received Tenure at Any University on his door with the attached reasons. I walked by it several times and then attached a hand-written rebuttal. This summer while I was away someone typed up the whole thing and placed them in the faculty mailboxes. Dr. Schonblom gave thought to something all of us have seen in many different places but instead of saying Oh cute!, he responded with some thought, put it out for public interaction and got response. He says, Feel free to use my work as you choose. I might add parenthetically that Dr. Schonblom has used his summers and now all his days in retirement to run a computer camp for young people in Appalachia. How's that for Carpe Diem!

Why God Never Received Tenure At Any University
By Ric Schonblom