Sometimes following the news about the state of evangelical (and Christian) higher education gets depressing. So many institutions have closed or contracted significantly in the recent past (John Fea has been covering many such stories on his blog), inspiring depressing thoughts and questions about the future of the evangelical mind.
But there are also many reasons to be optimistic about the future of the evangelical mind—you just have to know where to look. Last week I was privileged to spend time visiting with two thriving programs that are fairly new—one is in its fourth year, the other in its third. Both are doing excellent work in preparing students to be intellectuals for the church—in whatever vocation they pursue after graduation. It was a delight to speak to both of them about Cultural Christians in the Early Church and answer a lot of insightful questions.
Asbury University Honors Program is only in its fourth year and is growing and thriving. In addition to the honors core courses, intentionally themed around “Studies in Virtue and Human Value,” the program hosts regular colloquia with outside speakers. In a more informal discussion with the students after my lecture last Monday, I was impressed with the students’ critical thinking skills, their desire to engage with difficult questions head-on, and their sense of community and camaraderie in supporting each other. These are essential skills for the church, and these same skills are also essential for good citizenship. The church, just as our society at large, needs thinkers who are eager to pursue questions and not settle for easy answers that the world so readily offers in the age of AI.
Meanwhile, located less than half an hour away, Lewis House (right next to the University of Kentucky campus), does something very similar in building up the evangelical mind—but serving students at a large state university, rather than a Christian university setting. In this regard, it reminded me of the wonderful work that the Upper House is doing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was deeply encouraging to see Lewis House’s space, filled with students studying and taking classes, talking, doing life together intentionally in a Christian setting, even while attending a secular state university. I realized at the end of the day that pretty much every single conversation I had with the amazing staff and students over the course of the day was about theology. They really do live and breathe it.
Overall, I was impressed with the kind and thoughtful leaders and students I met at both Asbury and Lewis House, all of them passionate about loving God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength. John Fea noted a few days ago that “Ideas are best mediated through institutions, not by individuals.” I think this is as true for magazines like Current as for these programs.