In every major discussion within the university — from curriculum to career plans and from programming to politics — the academy demands one thing from us across the board: intellectual toughness. Granted, no two fields, and often no two people, define this toughness quite the same way, no matter what the GRE claims. Your average mechanical engineering prof probably will get a tad concerned if your grant proposal is in rhymed couplets, and your average English prof may break out in hives if your paper mentions, well, just about any math at all.
But even beyond our individual academic skills and our various professional standards, by and large academia insists that a given idea’s philosophical underpinnings — its worldview — matters as much as its actual content. During one recent class meeting, a professor of mine complained loudly about an assigned book's conservative viewpoint, and told us flat-out that after we were done reading as much of the book as we could stomach, we should burn it.
Whether inside the classroom or around the student lounge, this same impulse for interrogation targets our own beliefs, most vehemently those beliefs that assert Christ's lordship in our lives. According to one recent survey, 53 percent of university professors distrust evangelical Christians — not because of inconvenient politics, but because we, as a group, don't always play by the academy's rules.
