Faith and the University

When I was a teenager, someone in my congregation gave me a dire warning about university. He made claws with his fingers and got a nasty look on his face. “They’re wolves,” he said. “And they will rip you apart. They’ll tear the Christian faith right out of you.”
The University of Toronto didn’t seem all that scary to me. And I wasn’t sure what to make of this man’s histrionics during coffee hour. But then again, at that time, I was blissfully unaware—some would say, in the dark—about a lot of church history.

In the medieval period, Western universities formed at Christian initiative and in happy tandem with the church. That has changed over the last 100 or so years, during which Harvard University’s motto went from Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae, meaning “Truth for Christ and the Church,” to simply Veritas.

In September, Presbyterian College, Montreal, hosted an international conference, Christian Faith and the University, to explore how “in the twentieth century, the traditional relationship between church and university, faith and reason, came under severe strain.”
Over 150 scholars, pastors, graduate students and campus ministers from a dozen different countries gathered to hear lectures related to religion and the university, as well as to consider the legacy of W. Stanford Reid, an outstanding Canadian Presbyterian intellectual, on the centenary of his birth. Reid was a historian at McGill and the University of Guelph who exemplified a disciplined Christian intelligence which held fast to the uniqueness and truth of Jesus Christ in the mainstream academy, while at the same time repudiating the separatism of the fundamentalist movement.

There may be a popular impression that religion and intellectual inquiry are normally at odds. David Bebbington of Stirling University, Scotland, suggested that over the past 40 years, various scholars have increasingly come to accept the evidence which points to religion as a central force in modern history. No longer is church history treated as a separate topic in a marginalized divinity faculty; you’re likely to find it fully – funded and embraced by trendy postmodern Ph.D. – seekers in the school of graduate studies.

Bebbington pointed to feminism and gender history as having generated a greater focus on women in history, which has recently allowed the story of religion, often practiced by women, to be told more fully. In addition, the emergence of postmodern history has undermined the modernist suspicion of religion as a mask for economic and other motivations and brought the study of ideas back to the main stage with a new attention to culture.

Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame, has perhaps done more than any other North American scholar this century to restore academic respectability to the study of religion and to encourage emerging scholars, Christian and otherwise, to take religion seriously.
In his lecture, Noll noted that Canada stands apart from the United States in its relative lack of controversy about biblical scholarship, evolution, and the larger issue of faith versus reason. In America, many denominations split and the university was demonized in some conservative Christian circles, but the Canadian church has offered more room for Christian university scholarship. In addition, Noll claimed that Canadian Protestants of all stripes, unlike their American counterparts, generally found it possible to accept evolution and higher criticism while maintaining faith in the Bible.

Prof. Margaret Somerville, University of McGill Law School, spoke on academic freedom. If the university is a place where divisive ideas should be hashed out for the benefit of society, she asked, how do we balance comfort and conflict? Creative conflict is an essential ingredient if the university is to fulfill its proper function. She illustrated the dilemma with reference to the abortion debate and the freedom of expression of pro – life students on campus in the face of their pro – choice opponents, some of whom have said that a “right to abortion” is not even debatable.

Somerville suggested that a facade of tolerance can mask a deeper intolerance which then threatens to undermine freedom. Political intolerance often operates through fear. Somerville gave a personal example, explaining that she is against same – sex marriage but is strongly in favour of full rights and protections for civil partnerships between same – sex couples. She described how her opposition to same – sex marriage has more often led to her vilification in the academy rather than creating an opening for conflict and constructive debate. She says she has colleagues who fear similar treatment.

Stanford Reid would have appreciated Somerville’s contrarian spirit. As Prof. A. Donald MacLeod of Tyndale Seminary, Toronto, pointed out in his lecture, Reid was a gadfly who liked to challenge the complacency of both church and college. Most of all, Reid displayed a commitment to academic excellence and an unwillingness to leave his Christian faith at the door. (MacLeod is Reid’s biographer and also my father.)

Reid would have told any Christian heading off to university to not be afraid of academic inquiry but to receive it as a calling and a privilege from the Lord. As a good Calvinist, he would have maintained God’s sovereignty over every square inch of university life. He would also have said don’t be naive about the challenges, but get involved in a local church and, most of all, remember your roots, who you are in Jesus Christ. And then he would have continued with his vocation, telling anyone who was too quick to accommodate to the world or too eager to hide from it where to go.