Can Christian faith sustain the life of the mind? To many academics
this question seems absurd. In their judgment, religion is
fundamentally dogmatic while the life of the mind requires
openness, creativity, and imagination. This stereotypical
assumption about the nature of religion in general, and
Christianity in particular, has contributed significantly over the
past century to the divorce between faith and learning at countless
colleges and universities in the United States. But is this
assessment of the intellectual nature of faith justified, or the
academic rift it has opened?
In this powerful -- yet very personal -- reflection on faith and
scholarship, Richard T. Hughes counters the widespread perception
of Christians as steeped in narrowness and dogmatism and provides a
compelling argument that faith, properly pursued, in fact nourishes
the openness and curiosity that make a life of the mind possible.
Neither an assessment of church-related higher education today nor
a lamentation over the process of secularization, this book is
instead a badly needed aid for academics in both private and public
institutions who want to connect Christian faith with scholarship
and teaching in meaningful and effective ways.
Defining the "life of the mind" in terms of disciplined search
for truth, conversation with diverse viewpoints, critical analysis,
and intellectual creativity, Hughes shows that such life, far from
being impeded by Christian faith, can actually be enhanced by it --
but only if Christians learn to think theologically and break
through the particularities of their traditions.
Hughes first examines the way that the Deism of the Founding
Fathers defines the values of themodern academy in the United
States, and he asks how the Christian tradition might interact with
these values in meaningful ways. He then looks at four different
Christian traditions -- Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, and Mennonite
-- and the different ways they sustain the life of the mind. When
he turns to teaching, Hughes uses his own classroom work as an
illustration of how a commitment to some of the great themes of
Christian theology can undergird both the form and the content of
the teaching task. Finally, in an especially poignant chapter,
Hughes explores how good teaching and scholarship can be rooted in
human suffering and tragedy.
After a spate of books and articles that merely mourn the
decline of Christian intellectual life, here -- at last -- is a
volume that offers a constructive assessment of how Christian faith
might, indeed, sustain the life of the mind.
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