Truth and Revolution

Higher education needs the Christian university

Higher education is a tough place to be right now. Low-enrollment and increasing costs have led institutions like Seattle Pacific University to slash nearly twenty majors (including history, philosophy, and theology) and forced universities like Eastern Nazarene College to announce closures in the past few months. Even worse is the public perception of higher education as a bastion of radical ideology where professors “deprioritize the pursuit of knowledge” in order to “shape the students to be handmaids” of “social transformation.” At least, that is how conservative political analyst Yuval Levin recently characterized higher ed in both a Commentary essay and in an interview with Christianity Today’s Mike Cosper in The Bulletin. 

Levin’s essay and interview do not offer any new insights on the state of higher education in the United States. Rather this is yet another iteration of common misrepresentations regarding “the university.” Still, such representations must be addressed because left unchecked, they mislead the public about the realities within many American colleges and universities and the best course of action for moving forward. So what can we learn about the common misunderstanding surrounding the university that Levin broadcasts? And how might Christian institutions offer a different understanding of higher education?

The first representative mischaracterization in Levin’s argument regards “the university.” When Levin and others use this term, they mean prestigious east coast institutions run by a radical faculty with no apparent constraints from boards, administration, or the market. In reality, this institutional profile is a far cry from most universities in America—and may not even be accurate regarding the most elite institutions. In most universities, financial considerations, changing markets, and student demands drive faculty and administrative decision-making. 

Levin’s critiques of “the university” are particularly unhelpful within American evangelicalism, which has a historically complicated relationship with the life of the mind—it has often been skeptical of both radical ideas and elitism.  

The second representative misconstruction in Levin’s argument regards university faculty. Faculty are, he explains, divided into two categories. The “Academic traditionalists” believe the goal of the university is “teaching and learning in pursuit of greater knowledge of the truth and in an effort to form better human beings and citizens” in order to “strengthen and reinforce our society . . . equipping it with a more enlightened and responsible elite.” These he contrasts with the “radical activists” who “sought to deprioritize the traditional pursuit of knowledge” in favor of “social transformation of a particular sort—the liberation of the oppressed from their oppressors in every realm of life.” But this false dichotomy is alien to the Christian vision of education.

Truth should lead to liberation from legitimate oppression, and real liberation is always grounded in truth. Any “truth” that does not lead to liberation and human flourishing isn’t true. And any liberation that is not grounded in truth is only a new form of oppression. To separate truth and liberation is to fundamentally misunderstand and misrepresent the aims of education. Particularly within the Christian tradition of education, truth and liberation are always inextricably linked. Thus, when outlets like The Bulletin do not present alternative voices that contest the separation of truth and liberation, they implicitly endorse this false dichotomy.

A third representative misstep in Levin’s essay is that he reinforces a misunderstanding of the relationship between classical liberalism and moral relativism that persists in public discourse. Levin argues that radicals are moral relativists, and he positions classical liberalism as the antidote to such moral relativism. This is a misunderstanding that plagues conservative pundits and comes up often among students in Christian university classrooms—even among students who self-identify as politically moderate. 

Yet Levin’s own argument reveals the falseness of this construction. When Levin celebrates the classical liberalism of the academic traditionalists, with their “toleran[ce] of dissenting views” and “defen[ding] of unpopular opinions,” he inadvertently illustrates that classical liberalism had a pluralistic understanding of truth that made room for many views to coexist. In practice, such co-existence affirms a tacit endorsement of moral relativism. Within this context, “truth” is discoverable in the form of empirical fact, but not in the realm of ethics, theology, or philosophy.

In the late nineteenth century, this conviction drove many changes in the German research university (and American universities as well) and transformed many disciplines’ understanding of themselves. Notable examples include biblical studies and history. Although “Academic traditionalists” may have “lost the vocabulary of liberalism,” as Levin suggests, such vocabulary would not help much because it is fundamentally pluralistic—and, therefore, amoral. The language of radicalism is, conversely, a profoundly moral vocabulary grounded in the moral assumptions of Marxism that oppression, particularly of the poor, is evil. 

Because thinkers like Levin perpetuate the myth of a morally relativistic radicalism in the university, they can then be scandalized by those whom Harold Bloom has called “dogmatic moral relativists.” What Levin, Bloom and others who share their views misunderstand is that radical activists have always been deeply dogmatic, but not about the same things as traditional moralists or “academic traditionalists.” The “radical activists” were shaped by Marxism, which is an earnest moral system of thought; it is simply that its arena of moral discourse is economics. For traditional Marxists, the oppression of the poor by the rich is evil, and this moral sensibility infuses cultural applications of Marxism by radical activists. The difference, then, is not that the traditionalists are moral, and the activists are not. Rather, the two groups are morally dogmatic about different issues.

The final misstep in Levin’s argument concerns the purpose of education—and this is where the Christian university becomes particularly significant. Levin exhorts universities to return to the “real” purpose of education: “teaching and learning in pursuit of knowledge of the truth.” But Levin never addresses precisely what truth the university is meant to pursue—and Mike Cosper in the interview never pushes him for clarity on this point. Is the university to pursue the cult of democracy and civic pride? Or enlightenment economics and the public sphere championed by classical liberalism? Or a scientific understanding of nature and human society grounded in empiricism? Or is it the post-industrial capitalist story that defines the truth that we pursue more than anything else?

Secular universities may choose to embrace the stories of science and economics, or social justice and democracy, or of the civic mindedness and conservation that Levin endorses. But until Levin and those he sees as his antagonists become more aware of the stories within which they orient themselves—and become more honest about their real relativisms and dogmatisms—the battles of left and right will continue and the pursuit of human flourishing through education will flounder. 

But these stories of science or social justice or civic mindedness are not the only option for the Christian university. In fact, they are counterproductive. Rather, the Christian university must robustly reclaim its essential role of equipping the next generation for the work of liberation and healing, work that is only possible because of the revolutionary story of an ancient God striving to save a beloved and wayward creation through Christ. 

Jessica Ann Hughes is an associate professor of English and the chair of English, Languages, and Communication at George Fox University. Her publications include Jesus in the Victorian Novel: Reimagining Christ. Learn more about her work at JessicaAnnHughes.com