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183 - Things Change in Thirty Years |
Things Change in Thirty Years
RECENTLY in a religion course required of all sophomores at Muskingum College, I was reviewing for the class a unit on the New Testament in preparation for an examination. In that ten-lecture unit, I had spent two days discussing the Kingdom of God, because that is what (according to the synoptic Gospels) Jesus spoke about the most. I had stressed that "kingdom" means not a place but the event of God's rule, governance, or kingship. I pointed to three dimensions of God's kingship-(I) God's rule in our personal lives (Lk. 17:20, 21), (2) the social and historical consequences of that rule (Lk. 13:18-21), and (3) its eternal implications (Lk. 18:29, 30). Throughout, I emphasized Jesus' concern for God's kingdom to come "on earth" (Matt. 6:10), and that Matthew's use of the phrase "Kingdom of Heaven" was probably intended not to emphasize the third of these dimensions but rather to supply a pious euphemism, avoiding the frequent, cheap, or "vain" use of God's name (Ex. 20:7).
During the review session, I asked the class what it was Jesus spoke about the most, fully anticipating a chorus answering: "Kingdom of God." What I got in reply was first of all silence. When I insisted that this would not do, that I had spent two days on this topic, and that they should know the answer, a single hand went up. Hesitantly, questioningly, a young woman said: "We should believe in him?"
I have known this student since she was a pre-school child. She faithfully attends the local Presbyterian Church where the pastor is not at odds with what I teach. She is intelligent, and a superior student by any measure. Either she had not understood my lectures, or her understanding of religious matters was so decisively determined by other (cultural) factors that what I or her pastor said was inconsequential. I examined her notebook, and she had accurately reproduced my lectures. I therefore judge the second alternative to be the weighty one-weighty enough, in fact, to generalize. Religion, as perceived by many students today, is quite different from what college (and probably seminary) professors talk about in religion courses.
J.Edward Barrett is Professor of Religion at Muskingum College, New Concord, Ohio. A graduate of Susquehanna University, he received his doctorate at St. Andrews in Scotland. He has served as a guest professor in Taiwan and as a research fellow with the World Council of Churches in Geneva. An inveterate traveller, Dr. Barrett has circled the globe, visited Israel seven times, and participated in an archaeological dig.
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184 - Things Change in Thirty Years |
I
My undergraduate work was done in the early 1950s at Susquehanna University (Lutheran) in central Pennsylvania. My memories of those years always leave me puzzled by characterizations of religion in the '50s as intellectually soft and non-political. This was, of course, the decade of Eisenhower's faith in faith, "and I don't care what kind it is." But, academically, college introduced me to Edgar J. Goodspeed and the Chicago School of biblical criticism, to Albert Schweitzer's eschatological Jesus, and to Rudolf Bultmann's demythologizing program. Our course in Old Testament began not with creation myths of patriarchal legends but with a study of Amos and the literary prophets. You cannot get much more political than that. I had a course in the social teachings of Jesus, and read Reinhold Niebuhr's Introduction to Christian Ethics. Among those preparing for the ministry were (mostly) Lutherans, a Methodist, a Presbyterian (me), and a Moravian. None made claim to exotic knowledge; all were confident that religion is reasonable, and that the mainline churches, however lax, are God's instrument for good in human history.
We were aware that there were "fundamentalist" colleges, intellectually obscurantist and doctrinaire, but all our contact was with other "mainline" church-related colleges which seemed similar to us.
Although I read Sartre and Kierkegaard in college, I had little "existential" appreciation of their concerns. My seminary professors clarified for me the disillusionment Europeans felt with nineteenth century optimism, after two world wars and the Great Depression. But (at the time) I believed them to be morbidly influenced by European elitism. Today, my optimism is surrounded, chastened, and nearly choked by causes for pessimism. But during the '50s I was living in the post-war confidence that "progress" was but a secular description of what God was doing in history-a confidence that climaxed in the civil rights achievements of the '60s.
II
In 1964, after having run the gauntlet of graduate degrees, I joined the Department of Religion at Muskingum College (Presbyterian). There I learned that the only things that change more than the programs of denominational boards and agencies are the curricula of liberal arts colleges. When I arrived at Muskingum, the curriculum was, by any measure, worthy of a "church-related college." Isolating the religion requirements, all students took: (1) a sophomore course surveying biblical history, (2) a junior course in philosophy (emphasis on epistemology), and (3) a senior course in modern Christian thought (introducing Barth, Niebuhr, Bultmann, Tillich, Hartshorne, and Wieman).
Many students who graduated in those days continue to be theologically literate regardless of their professional interests. Every year at
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185 - Things Change in Thirty Years |
Alumni Day and Homecoming, I hear thankful tribute to the effectiveness of that program. I had no part in its creation. But I am grateful to have helped teach it.
I think of the early and mid-sixties as in continuity with the '50s. Indeed, the civil rights accomplishments of the '60s were the flower of prophetic religion in the twentieth century. Reinhold Niebuhr was the theoretician, Martin Luther King, Jr. the practitioner, and the mainline churches the institutions effecting change. It was the powerful Senate Republican leader, Everett McKinley Dirksen, who attributed the success of civil rights legislation to the advocacy of mainline churches.
Everyone knows that in the late '60s and early '70s a "shaking of the foundations" occurred in American society, that this was centered on college campuses, and that it climaxed at Kent State. It is proverbial in this connection to speak of the Vietnam War, drugs, and sexual promiscuity. But on many mainline church-related colleges, something additional happened. I am not thinking of the much heralded revival, which some evangelicals are forever predicting is just around the corner. To the contrary, accompanying the conspicuous decline in mainline church membership and influence during the past decade is a conspicuous loss not in classroom enrollments but in religion majors. Somewhere in the early to mid-seventies the Muskingum College Religion Department began to experience a sharp decline in majors-from more than a dozen each year down to one or two. There was no significant change in faculty or in what we taught. The change was in the students and their perception of religion. Religion was interesting, but hardly relevant to the real world, and certainly not a matter of vocation.
III
I discern three areas of perception where, I believe, students of the '80s are different from students of the '50s.
(1)The first has to do with epistemology. In the '50s, there was considerable agreement among thinking Christians that our starting point was Christological revelation. What was revealed was a relationship with God, not doctrines about God (Buber); and the character of God, known in this divine-human encounter, was clarified for us in Christ (Brunner, Barth; Col. 1:15, Heb. 1:3). We said that revelation was "personal" not "propositional." By "personal" we meant awareness of being in a working relationship with this Divine Person, whom thought could hardly hope to reduce to propositions or dogma. But the New Testament's picture of Jesus did (we said) provide an objective dimension for this subjective, personal relationship.
Today, however, students frequently use "personal," without reference to any objective dimension, to mean whatever ideas they are comfortable with, apart from any appeal to either revelation or reason (Hartshorne, Wieman). For them, "personal" means ideas that are
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186 - Things Change in Thirty Years |
emotionally stimulating, but (they know) with low academic credibility. Epistemologically, solipsism is the characteristic of the contemporary student.
When claims to revelation become suspect as arbitrary (or even arrogant), and attempts to reason become wearisome, it is unclear what else there is except what "feels right." Today's students who are religious are often conceptually schizophrenic-piously affirming the substitutionary atonement while candidly admitting their doubts about God, or dogmatically affirming that the Bible is the words of God while refusing to read it. In general, my own students are simply not interested in the intellectually disciplined exploration of faith. They may be religious, but (consciously or unconsciously) in their hearts they suspect religion is superstition which will not stand before rigorous intellectual investigation.
(2) As I already suggested, in the '50s we believed in historical progress. It was, of course, considered unsophisticated to subscribe to the suggestion that "every day in every way we are getting better and better." Nevertheless it seemed (to me it still seems) that a rough kind of progress was undeniable-in science, technology, education, communication, and even ethics (ponder the world-wide abolition of slavery). If many of today's students seem uncommitted to transforming history in the direction of the Kingdom of God, perhaps it is because confidence in progress has been replaced by dread of apocalypse. "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." Primarily, it is not familiarity with the very real threat of first-strike weapons which has made the difference, but the success of occult Christianity and the electronic church. Given the popular student epistemology, sectarian superstitions, uninhibited by academic considerations, often seem more authentic. But in the case of nuclear war, liberal apprehension confirms conservative suspicion that the end is near. Both agree on apocalypse.
(3) Not only did we believe in progress, but (in the'50s) we believed in the mainline churches as the instruments of progress. Students today, largely, do not. This is bitterly ironic, given the provable history of Protestant churches in twentieth century America, and given the stand of both Protestant and Catholic churches on nuclear war. One might be inclined to think that it is students who are irrelevant-not churches.
IV
I conclude this brief report with two closely related points-the first in the form of a question, the second a suggestion.
(1)When is someone going to write an exposé of the criminal collapse of youth movements within mainline Protestant churches? Today a whole generation is arriving at colleges who (along with their parents) have had neither the education nor the denominational loyalty that youth organizations provided. Cavalier neglect, not practical experience
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or astute reason, led to the conclusion that since young people are a part of the church, a separate internal youth organization is not needed. It would be difficult to identify any heresy which has been more harmful to the theological maturity of the church. In Westminster Fellowship, for example, we used to recite "Our Purpose" as being to discover God's will for our lives, in order to do it. I wish someone at 475 Riverside Drive would explain to me what factors in the modern world rendered the retirement of such a statement appropriate, and how contemporary college students who have grown up within the church are better off for being unfamiliar with it.
(2)Finally, I want to suggest that many seminaries actually undermine both the professional ministry and the maturity of the church by encouraging pre-theological students not to major in religion during their undergraduate years. Of course, there is a self-serving dimension to my concern over this; as there is also a self-serving dimension to the apprehension of seminaries that students' theology may become "set" too early. But the simple fact is that professional ministry, like professional medicine, requires more than three years of study, and a theologically mature church depends upon a truly professional ministry. Seven years of religious studies (including undergraduate) would not be extravagant. Maybe students coming to college would be more theologically mature if their pastors were more secure in their scholarship and less timid about tackling the intellectual dimensions of faith.