The Christian Academic in Higher Education: The Consecration of Learning

343 Pages·2018·2.53 MB·English

by  John Sullivan (auth.)

THE CHRISTIAN ACADEMIC
IN HIGHER EDUCATION
THE CONSECRATION OF LEARNING
John Sullivan
The Christian Academic in Higher Education
Endorsement
‘This remarkable work, drawing on a lifetime of experience and reflection, goes
deep into academic life and into Christian faith, and makes wise, illuminating
connections between them. More than that, it succeeds both in facing honestly
the pitfalls and difficult issues, and also in offering inspiration and practical
guidance that is relevant not only to Christian academics but to anyone who is
committed to learning and teaching as a vocation.’
—David F. Ford OBE, Regius Professor of Divinity Emeritus, University of
Cambridge
‘This original book provides a creative dialogue between Christian faith and
spirituality, on the one hand, and the everyday realities of academic life, on the
other. Over against the increasing commodification and managerialism of uni-
versities, John Sullivan shows how the basic tasks of academics may be evaluated
from moral, spiritual, and religious perspectives. His insights, especially on the
spiritual dimension of learning, will be illuminating and engaging for readers
with a wide variety of commitments.’
—Jeff Astley, Professor, University of Warwick, UK; Honorary Professor,
Durham University, UK
‘This is an extraordinary and impressive tour de force that explores the interaction
and creative tension between the life of Christian faith and the life of intellectual
and scholarly activity in the contemporary university. Sullivan draws from his
extensive professional experience and expertise in a range of academic disciplines
to produce this fascinating book about the nature and role of the Christian
scholar. This scholarly book offers serious challenges to Christian and secular
scholars and to the self-understanding and construction of the Academy.’
—Professor Stephen McKinney, Leader of Creativity, Culture and Faith,
School of Education, University of Glasgow
‘This study explores what it means to be a Christian scholar and teacher in
higher education. Reflecting the wisdom born out of high quality scholarship
and extensive educational experience, the book does two things particularly well.
While articulating the motivations and hopes coming from a Christian educa-
tional perspective, it addresses the professional commitments that a scholar of
any or no religious background should have, working in an open university in
a pluralist society.’
—Graham Rossiter, Professor of Moral and Religious Education,
Australian Catholic University
‘A timely and thorough consideration of university teaching and learning from
a Christian perspective, this book is particularly valuable in addressing both
the Christian university experience and the experience of Christian faculty in
secular universities. Affirming that intellectual work is part of any Christian
academic’s vocation, Sullivan explores ways in which to engage critically and
constructively with the challenges and opportunities presented by today’s world
of higher education.’
—Deborah Bowen, Professor of English, Redeemer University College,
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
John Sullivan
The Christian
Academic in Higher
Education
The Consecration of Learning
John Sullivan
Theology, Philosophy & Religious Studies
Liverpool Hope University
Liverpool, United Kingdom
ISBN 978-3-319-69628-7 ISBN 978-3-319-69629-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69629-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017961828
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This book is dedicated to Dom Illtyd Trethowan, OSB, 1907–1993,
monk of Downside Abbey, in gratitude for his generous and exacting
intellectual mentoring.
Foreword
I have come to believe that the post-enlightenment university has lost its
way; not because it has ceased to produce much of real value but because
buffeted by every storm in the market place and by governments com-
mending largely utilitarian ends, it is fast losing its coherence as a learn-
ing and enquiring community. The ‘university’ resembles too often a
disconnected ‘multiversity’ with self-contained academic units that have
little or nothing to do intellectually with each other. Scholars often exist
within it as self-contained ‘monads.’ These days, ‘think tanks’, ideologi-
cally predisposed, influence ministers of state much more than a coun-
try’s best scholars and thinkers—notwithstanding the endless
‘consultations’ about what has already been decided.
This book dares to talk about learning communities and the inner
compulsions of the teaching and researching scholar. The fact that
Professor John Sullivan has to make a case (and a much needed one) for
Christian scholarship today, describing its distinctiveness and its role in
the modern Academy, shows to what extent our age suffers from histori-
cal myopia. The unease about the importance (and the indispensability)
of religion in understanding human society or about the naturalness of
faith and serious intellectual enquiry is the accumulated result of much
ignorance about how we came to be Europeans or British, or literate, for
that matter.
vii
viii Foreword
It may be instructive to remember that in the eighth century
Charlemagne invited and Englishman Alcuin from York to come over
and help him establish the Cathedral School. The ‘cathedral school’ pre-
ceded the first European universities by about 250 years. Though lost on
the consciousness of modern people like us, the Carolingian Renaissance
in the eighth and ninth centuries was one of the earliest cultural revital-
izations in the history of how the west came to be civilised. It began with
the Church and it was inspired by the Holy Book.
Moderns tend to impose on these educational efforts normally a pros-
elytising motivation, but that was seldom the driving force. In this case,
with the Frankish kingdoms being so culturally backward vis-à-vis the
more sophisticated Byzantines and the scholarly Ottomans (especially in
mathematics), Charlemagne was faced with a largely unsophisticated
court and illiterate population. His educational campaign was a civilising
project. The Holy Scriptures spawned literacy as learning Latin promoted
writing and discourse across the dialects of small tribes locked within
themselves. The priests could then read the Latin Vulgate. Education was
an escape from parochialism and petty warfare. Therefore, the steeples on
our ancient cathedrals are not only symbols of our religiosity; they signify
more than that.
The idea ‘university’ was unprecedented in Europe. The name derives
from the first university established in Bologna (late eleventh century),
which was described as ‘a community of teachers and scholars’ (universi-
tas magistrorum et scholarium.) The standing of the earliest European
universities depended on papal or kingly patronage and often both; not
as moderns assume to keep control of them but to ensure that they were
protected from local politics. On numerous occasions the pope inter-
vened to protect the academic freedom of scholars. For example, students
were granted similar protection to priests by ensuring that they were tried
in religious rather than secular courts. Pope Honorius III supported
scholars at Bologna in 1220 when their rights were threatened; Gregory
IX acted similarly on behalf scholars in Paris in 1231. Innocent IV
granted the University of Oxford its degree awarding powers in 1254 so
that its graduates would be recognised as teachers anywhere in
Christendom.
Forewor d ix
And so, the Christian view on higher education is the long view. John
Sullivan’s book helps us to speak meaningfully about this important tra-
dition that has become marginalised. He is a seasoned scholar, much
admired by his students and colleagues, who has applied his mind to
these questions over a long career of dedicated scholarship. Into the hard
pursuit of knowledge in a world that has elevated individual pursuit and
success above everything else, Sullivan seeks to inject ‘the humane’—
something transcendent to the quantifiable and ‘one-dimensional’ func-
tionalism. The liberal arts tradition which is informed by the long view is
presently under siege as Sullivan clearly discerns. He describes for us
some solutions; an alternative way of living and working in the modern
Academy. He writes, perceptively, “The scholar works best in the context
of participating in, learning from and contributing to a community of
other scholars and students who question and critique, affirm and apply,
and who modify, build upon and go beyond one’s own efforts.” That is a
vision of the University, Christian or otherwise, that I share and am
delighted Professor Sullivan has prepared this book to help us recover
these ideals still worth pursuing.
Vice Chancellor Professor Gerald Pillay
Liverpool Hope University
Liverpool, UK
Preface
Christian discipleship is a life-long journey. When Jesus spoke about the
progress of the prodigal son or daughter, he described the inertia and the
pitfalls of the journey, but also the joy and transformation experienced
when we arrive at a much better place. At the heart of the Christian
vision for education is the hope that we can become ‘fully human and
fully alive’. The goal of human flourishing should be the central concern
of all educators and is at the core of the Christian faith: ‘I have come that
you might have life and have it to the full’ (John 10.10).
Professor John Sullivan is an experienced and wise guide for the
Christian academic wishing to explore further both new and familiar ter-
rain. He was the first to hold a Chair of Christian Education in England
and he has very considerable experience of teaching at secondary and
tertiary levels. His own commitment to research and reflection allows
him to seek to discern truths and to integrate insights from very wide
first-hand experience—in his own words, ‘this book brings together what
has elsewhere been left separate’.
In 2018 the Roman Catholic Church holds a Synod for bishops on
‘Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment’. The Preparatory
Document talks of the ‘fluidity and insecurity’ experienced in today’s
world—‘the transition to adult life and the building of a personal identity
increasingly require a reflective course of action’. Christian academics
have a crucial role in the guidance and formation of students. Professor
xi