Written by P. Jesse Rine |
Wednesday, October 9, 2024
In many ways, the Christian academy has entered an uncharted territory, one that will require the fortitude of a pioneering spirit. For the sake of our callings as scholars and practitioners within Christian higher education, now is the time to lay aside our neutral world maps and get to the business of negative world exploration, cartography, and construction. 

Leaders in Christian higher education must constantly wrestle with one fundamental question: How can we position faith-based institutions to flourish without losing their souls? While this perennial dilemma has taken various forms throughout American history, its complexity depends upon the degree of discontinuity between Christian orthodoxy and the values of society at large. In times of general alignment, this negotiation is fairly straightforward; in times of opposition, the challenge intensifies.
What, then, are we to make of our present moment? How and to what extent should Christian colleges relate to the wider culture in which they are situated? Conventional wisdom among many leaders within Christian higher education points to a constellation of cultural engagement tactics.
Seek middle ground. Promote pluralism. Exude civility and hospitality.
Articles appearing in the latest issue of Advance, the semiannual magazine published by the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) and promoted as “the leading voice of Christian higher education,” illustrate how these tactics are typically justified. In “Stewarding Our Call to the ‘Middle Space’,” Jonathan Schimpf interviews Shirley Mullen, President Emerita of Houghton University and current member of the CCCU’s Board of Directors. Mullen describes the thesis of her new book, Claiming the Courageous Middle: Daring to Live and Work Together for a More Hopeful Future, which argues that Christians have a “particular calling” to function as “agents of active hospitality in a middle space—hosting conversations of ‘translation’ and ‘bridgebuilding’ that allow those on either pole to see each other as fellow human beings and not enemies or abstractions.” Mullen understands this calling as not limited to individuals; it also extends to institutions like Christian colleges and universities: “As believers who are entrusted with the tools of higher education, we also bridge aspects of the current polarization within our culture.”
While Mullen advocates for dialogue as a tool for navigating differences within society, CCCU Chief Communications Officer Amanda Staggenborg argues that difference is itself a social good. In “Meeting the Need for Faith in Challenging Political Times,” Staggenborg acknowledges our highly politicized environment and encourages readers to “lean into challenging conversations with faith and purposeful unity.” And why should the reader take such a personal risk? Because, according to Staggenborg, “inspiring and engaging in pluralism is the goal of a civilized society, both in and outside of higher education.” After reassuring the reader that “what we are experiencing in this modern political and cultural climate is not unique to history,” Staggenborg concludes by asserting that difference could actually be a source of faith: “Christians have found faith, not only in spiritual guidance, but in humanity. The core of a democratic society is the celebration of valuable differences of opinion.”
An essay by Staggenborg’s CCCU colleague, Vice President for Research & Scholarship Stanley Rosenberg, further surveys the current cultural landscape. In “Academic Criticism, Civility, Christian Higher Education and the Common Good,” Rosenberg traces the contentious contours of a public square marked by “incendiary comments, inattentive listening, ego-driven and hostile criticism, and polarized political positions” and lays partial blame for the current state of affairs at the feet of “incivility found in the modern American university.” How should Christian higher education respond? By countering the “damaging phenomenon” of incivility through an embrace of the Chrisitan scholarly vocation, which Rosenberg describes as “a particular form of caring, of expressing love, for our neighbour.” According to Rosenberg, the cardinal virtue of this scholarly vocation is hospitality: “Entrusted with the tools and content of knowledge, we are called to welcome others into the community of knowledge. This extends the grace of participation, profoundly reflects the vision of integration, and expresses a vision for the love of neighbour.”
The common thread running through each of these essays is a confidence in Christian higher education’s ability to maintain its mission and position within the wider academy by adopting a cultural engagement strategy. On the surface, the espoused tactics of bridgebuilding, promoting pluralism, and exhibiting civility and hospitality appear unassailable. Upon closer examination, however, a necessary precondition for the strategy’s efficacy comes into focus: an academic milieu characterized by mutual respect, populated with good faith actors, and committed to institutional diversity. Does a sober assessment of American higher education confirm such a climate, or have national leaders misread the current state of play?
To fully appreciate the dynamics of our present moment, we must first look to the past, for where we are today is far from where we started. The history of American higher education is largely a story of departure from founding commitments. As I’ve detailed elsewhere, the earliest American colleges were thoroughly Christian in nature and built upon a medieval model rooted in the Christian worldview. Over time, however, the American system secularized, beginning with the period following the Civil War. Although Christianity’s influence declined within much of American higher education over the following century, the system as a whole still sought to construct a unified understanding of the world under the banner of modernism, a scholarly project presupposing objective reality. This common intellectual framework fostered a forum where Christian colleges and universities could make the case for their particular truth claims.
The modern order would eventually give way to the postmodern turn, a cultural and philosophical movement that profoundly altered the postsecondary landscape. Instead of viewing language as a stable and unbiased medium of exchange for all individuals, regardless of personal background, postmodernists argued that meaning is inherently tied to one’s particular sociocultural context, and these contexts are inescapably shaped by power relations marked by privilege and marginalization. On the one hand, this reframing of reality resulted in the promotion of diverse perspectives within the academy, a move that appeared to be additive. This was the promise of postmodernism: intellectual discourse could be enlarged without diminishing existing perspectives. On the other hand, the ascendant critical theories that animated postmodernism sowed seeds of discontentment within the academy, which would flower into vines of ideological constriction. This has been the reality of postmodernism in practice: intellectual discourse must be policed to ensure that perspectives promoting oppression are excluded.
This progression within the academy at large—from principled pluralism to ideological gatekeeping—portends an inhospitable professional environment for Christian scholars, whose orthodox theological beliefs are viewed by many as oppressive. This gatekeeping is evident when detractors question elements of the emergent dogma, such as the concept of Christian privilege, which asserts that Christians enjoy certain benefits that accrue from the hegemonic status their religion has achieved in American society. Even the most rational and amiable of critiques can elicit a forceful rebuke.
Take the case of Perry Glanzer, a tenured full professor at Baylor University who has authored a dozen books and more than a hundred journal articles and book chapters. A scholar with particular expertise in the relationship between religion and education, Glanzer recently wrote a piece for the academic journal Religion & Education, a leading venue for publishing research studies that “advance civic understanding and dialogue on issues at the intersections of religion and education in public life.” His article explored complexities that are rarely acknowledged by scholarly treatments of Christian privilege, such as the disparities in experience across various Christian groups and the existence of secular privilege. It is important to note that while Glanzer critiqued certain narratives surrounding Christian privilege, he nevertheless accepted the notion that privilege exists and must be mitigated in order to foster an inclusive collegiate learning environment. His final paragraph concludes, “Overall, student affairs needs to champion and commit to creating the structures and conditions to which a just form of pluralism can flourish.”
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As we hold to our God-given assumptions in a dark world, we can speak calmly and lovingly to people desperate for the two foundational desires of human beings: to be completely known and completely loved. Failing to have dialogue would preclude knowing others deeply; failing to stand on our assumptions would preclude loving them truly.

I’m a Matthew 5:9 child. Were my heart a forest, peace would be the log cabin deep in the woods, with a spindling smoke trail winding above the evergreen. Still. Settled. Quiet. And longing to stay that way.
But my heart isn’t a forest. Peace isn’t tucked away in the woods. The world is loud and broken. There is so much shouting, and sarcasm, and caricatures, and reductionism. In the loud world, my heart might as well be in Times Square—shaken by the decibels of discontent. Today’s controversies and disagreements literally make my stomach turn. Awkward pauses reeking with judgment swell my throat. Heart palpitations thunder when I watch people cut each other off. So, when I finished watching a recent documentary on identity, you can imagine how I felt.
But what struck me by the end of watching was how many unspoken assumptions weren’t voiced—assumptions that would’ve explained so much not just about what people thought but why. If we don’t know why someone thinks something, conversation is bound to get hijacked by misunderstanding, and offense isn’t far behind. Assumptions—our own—is where we need to start before we engage with anyone who differs from us. And in a culture where Christianity is continually marginalized, we’re going to meet a lot of people who differ from us.
Three Types of Assumptions
Assumptions are the countries we live in, the things we walk on. They are the patterns of thought and underlying conditions our feet always find. We live on our assumptions in order to function in the world. And there’s no one on the planet who doesn’t have the three main types of assumptions I’ll discuss in this article. The academic labels for these are metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. But we’re simply talking about what exists, how we know things, and what makes something right or wrong.
If we want to engage peaceably with people who differ from us, we need to know what our assumptions are in these areas, and then we can use conversation to discover where others stand in the same areas. This doesn’t mean we’ll then be more likely to agree with others in the broader culture. In fact, for Christians, what we assume about metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics will ensure we’ll likely disagree with most people. But at least we’ll know why. And we’ll also establish a clear means for our conversation partners to express their own views. This can at least provide civility in a world where polarization and the demonization of dissenters reigns.
Metaphysics
What exists and where did it come from? The first part of that question seems simple enough, but you’d be surprised (or maybe not) how much variation there is in today’s world of what Charles Taylor called expressive individualism. For now, let’s break up Christian assumptions about metaphysics into two points. And then we’ll need to draw a conclusion about our identity, which is the screaming topic of our culture and an important facet of public theology.
First, as Christians, our basic assumption is that this world isn’t all there is. There is God, who made and governs all things, and then there is the world, creation. Theologians call this the Creator-creature distinction, and Cornelius Van Til was adamant about its centrality. He said we must “begin our interpretation of reality upon the presupposition of theCreator-creature distinction as basic to everything else.”[1] As Christopher Watkin wrote recently,
This creator-creature distinction sets the biblical account apart from the dominant picture of reality in our own culture, which holds that there is only one sort of existence, often with conflict at its heart. This view is summed up in the words of Carl Sagan, ‘The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or evil will be.’ It is a monism, or what Van Til called a ‘one-circle’ view.[2]
There are two circles of reality, not one. And because of how God created all things—the Father voicing the Son in power of the Spirit—what exists in our world is dependent on and derivative of his character. Everything, including humans, reflects God—though humans do this in a special way. In short, we are not here on our own. The world is not a neutral playground. God is present and uses everything to point us to our eternal home in himself.
Second, everything we see around us came from and is sustained by the speech of God. This highlights not only the deeply personal nature of our world but also the centrality of Scripture, as God’s personal word to us. As Vern Poythress wrote, “Scripture is our natural instructor as to the metaphysics of the world, since the metaphysics of the world is completely determined and specified by God’s speech governing the world, and his speech takes place in Christ the Word (John1:1).”[3] The speech of the Trinity has shaped and stewarded every fleck of the material universe—from the silent stars to your cereal spoon. We exist because he spoke. We find our identity, purpose, and meaning in that speech. As Christians, we cannot account for what exists or even who we are apart from God speaking.
Now, third, what does this mean about our identity, about who we are? In looking to the speech of God for our answer, Christians must say image bearers, one of the earlier teachings of Scripture (Gen. 1:26–28). But we can go further, since many people (even Christians) don’t really know what this means. To be an image bearer of God means that we holistically resemble him on a creaturely level. We are, as Carl Trueman restated recently, mimetic creatures.[4] We imitate. We look at God’s hand in history and in our own lives. And then, by the power of God’s own Spirit, we do what he does as little reflectors of his eternal light, a light of truth, love, and beauty. The image of God covers everything that we think, say, or do.
But this holistic imitation always has a relational goal. Put in the words of the Dutch theologian Geerhardus Vos,
That man bears God’s image means much more than that he is spirit and possesses understanding, will, etc. It means above all that he is disposed for communion with God, that all the capacities of his soul can act in a way that corresponds to their destiny only if they rest in God…According to the deeper Protestant conception, the image does not exist only in correspondence with God but in being disposed toward God. God’s nature is, as it were, the stamp; our nature is the impression made by this stamp. Both fit together.[5]
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Love always seeks the best for a person. And what is best for a person is what God says in His Word. We must love men and women who are being led to the slaughter enough to point them away from these diabolical fantasies, the damned identity politics dreamt up by demons and instead bid them to turn to the truth of the Holy Scriptures. We must love them enough to call them out of their sins and perversions, leading them toward the belly of the fiery abyss. We must love them enough to call them to repent and turn to the Lord Jesus Christ before it is too late. Placating them is not loving them!

A MATTER OF LOVE
Generally speaking, every Christian has some level of understanding that God has called us to love. It is kind of the point of being a Christian, right? Paul says if we do not have love, we are nothing. Jesus said that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. And He did not provide such a glorious and precious Son to reproduce more Grinches on Mt. Crumpit or more Ebenezer Scrooges on Business Street in London.
God saved us and did it through the greatest act of love ever recorded to make us loving people. Jesus even said that they (the world) will know that we are true disciples of Jesus by the way that we love one another, which means how we love other Christians (John 13:35). But, Jesus also taught us that we are to love our enemies and to pray for the ones who persecute us, which means our love must extend beyond the people who attend Church with us. We must be willing and ready to love anyone, even those who hate us most ferociously.
And this is where the confusion occurs. Just because we are to love people does not mean we are to love what they do or the sinful movements that they have ensnared them. It is my contention, and what I will be arguing here, that standing against a MOVEMENT is wholly necessary, and it is one of the chief ways that we genuinely love the PERSON.
For a moment, pardon me for my pungency. I will grab the flame thrower to light a couple of candles, and I will do this on purpose. Sometimes, we need a mother’s soothing lullaby to help us fall gently to sleep. Yet there are other times when we need to be shaken from our slumber by the father because the house is on fire. Today will be more like the shaking.
THE ABORTION MOVEMENT
I said above that we must love the sinners caught in sinful movements while hating the movements that trapped them. This is true. Which means we must not hate women who have had abortions. We must love them (profoundly so). This means we must love them enough to hear their stories of pain, to empathize with their struggle, but also to refuse to sugarcoat what they have done and to bid them to repent for murdering one of their children. If that language seems overly harsh, perhaps you are part of the problem.
Think about it, how many children in this country, and around the world, have to brutally die before we start taking this issue seriously? How many heartbeats need to stop for us to go beyond conservative incrementalism and heartbeat bills to flat-out abolish this disgusting, immoral practice? And let me just ask the obvious question: can our actions really be called loving if we allow this culture of death to continue? Are we really being kind to all the innocent babies who were chopped up into bloody pieces inside their mommy’s womb or chemically roasted by toxic abortifacients when we say things to the mother like: “It wasn’t your fault” or “You had no other options.” How sick and demented do we need to be to believe this garbage? Biblically speaking, abortion is the wanton sacrilege of human life, plain and simple, and total abolition of it is the only just outcome. To tell a woman anything else is to lie to her, make excuses for her sin, and allow her to believe the lie that God is not enraged over the shedding of innocent blood. He is the one who heard Abel’s blood crying out from the ground, and He is the one who hears every tortured fetus screaming from the cold metallic pan. And He will avenge them.
From a Biblical and ethical standpoint, there is nothing morally different between a woman getting an abortion and hiring a hitman to kill her toddler. In both instances, she bought and paid for a professional to kill someone she was supposed to love, care, and protect. We must stop euphemizing our language and call this precisely what it is. Abortion is not healthcare. Abortion is the intentional, inexcusable, and unauthorized decision to terminate a precious life that belongs to God alone, who endowed it with significance, dignity, and personhood.
And, while you may still be reeling from my descriptions, this is precisely how we love people. We love them by telling it to them straight and by pointing them to the risen Christ as their only hope. We love man and woman by exposing the lethality of sin, which is awful news, and then by providing them with the remedy, which is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is the only one who can heal the wounds of a mother who killed her child. He is the only one who can forgive a man for pressuring his wife to let medical serial killers in planned parenthood dismember his legacy. He is the only one who can forgive the murderous doctors who have gallons of blood dripping from their hands. And the only way to truly be loving is to point everyone to Him.
And, what I find most astonishing is how the amazing grace and tender mercy of our perfect spotless savior totally and completely buries all of our sins! As reprehensible as abortion is, and as much shame as that should induce if left to our own devices, a woman who turns to the Lord Jesus Christ is not only forgiven but her shame is also eliminated! Her sins have been washed white as snow, and He restores her to royalty in His Kingdom. She has been given a new and glorious nature that cannot be taken away from her. She is healed! She is loved! She is restored! She is no longer known by a scarlet letter. And she may well worship in eternity alongside her aborted child. How? Because He took the curse that she deserved and gave unto her the honor she could never earn! Jesus Christ, her Lord and Savior, overpowered the putrescence of our iniquities and rescued us for His glory and our great good. This is true for all sinners! Why do we hold back from declaring this message? Why do we think this is unloving? And because of that, why do we entirely pervert this glorious Gospel by avoiding nearly half of it, skipping past the bad news of sin and death, to accommodate a sinner’s fragility? If you throw out the bad news, the good news makes no sense! If you throw out the need for a savior, you no longer have the Gospel! That is not the path of love or how we ought to love anyone.
At the same time, while I love the woman who has had an abortion, I must hate the abortion movement with every bone in my body. I will ever be at war against this modern day temple to Moloch! Why? Because it is the movement that is promoting, cheering on, and subsiding the murder of nearly a million image-bearing humans every year! This movement was dreamt up in the recesses of hell, fueled by the power of demons, and has captivated a swampy and pathetic government of fiends who would rather kill its citizens than lose political power or funding. I will love the person enough to hate such a despicable movement. And I will hate the movement enough to make war with it all my days.
THE LMNOP MOVEMENT
We must not hate the sodomites or lesbians who are caught in nature-denying, God-hating behavior. We also must not hate transgender people who have denied one of the most basic tenets of reality: their own biological gender. And, furthermore, we must not hate human beings who are mired in such delusional confusion, that single persons now want to identify as plural pronouns, or the genetic human who now want to use a litter box instead of a toilet. This is not to mention the kind of mental disorder that would cause a homosapien to identify as a two-spirit penguin. This would be hilarious if it were not true. Being true, I am heartbroken for them. I am shocked and grieved that such an apparent mental health crisis, of this magnitude has broken out in the Western world, and the “adults in the room” are trying to cure it with identity politics and clever deceptions. This is like trying to put a fire out with gasoline or trying to plug that hole in the Titanic with bubble gum. Instead of receiving the help they need to confront such vivid and wretched delusions, people today are force-fed horse manure from a society that absolutely hates them and a medical establishment that is profiting from lopping off their genitals.
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