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fred
Catechumen

188 Posts Posted - 11/25/2002 : 10:34:00 PM
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Well, haven't converted you. Too many ruts.

But this is something to read. (Tom, I'm deeply, deeply gratified that you actually read them!)

Here is something else, that has those three terms in it.


quote:
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Creation, Fall, and What?

+ Kurt C. Schaefer +
Professor of Economics
Calvin College

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quote:

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Recipient of the 1992
Ted Ward Writing Award on
"The Christian Mission in Higher Education"
=====================================

Worldviews, Modernity and
the Task of Christian College Education

+ Brian J. Walsh +
Senior Member in Worldview Studies
Institute for Christian Studies


"Worldviews" and North American Evangelical Scholarship

The ascendancy of "worldview" language as part and

parcel of the vocabulary of the intellectual evangelical

community in North America is intriguing. It is intriguing

because apart from anthropologists describing non-Western

cultures, "worldview" language has not been a dominant motif

in the North American academic tradition. As the Germanic

origin of the term suggests, Weltanschauung has a European

pedigree and it is fair to say that the dominant formative

forces in North American evangelicalism are mostly domestic

or British, with European thought having less influence.

In this light, a significant question is: "How did

evangelicals pick up this language and, more importantly,

begin to integrate the whole notion of worldview into their

thought and, indeed, discipleship?" The historian of North

American evangelicalism, George Marsden, might have an

answer to this question. In his plenary keynote address in

June 1987, at the conference entitled, "A New Agenda for

Evangelical Thought," held at Wheaton College, Marsden spoke

of "the triumph of Kuyperian presuppositionalism" in the


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North American evangelical scholarly community. Marsden

describes this Kuyperianism as


. . . a style of Christian thought that emphasizes
that crucial to the differences that separate
Christian worldviews from non-Christian ones are
disagreements about pretheoretical first
principles, presuppositions, first commitments or
basic beliefs. Thus, without denying the value of
human rational-ity, it denies the autonomy or
competence of reason alone to adjudicate some of
the decisive questions concerning the context
within which rationality itself will operate.
This viewpoint can be contrasted with the older
common sense Baconian tradition that once
dominated American evangelical thought. That
tradition assumed that there was only one
objective science for all people and hence that
ultimately there could be no real distinction
between Christian thinking and clear thinking.
Christianity, they thought, should therefore be
able to win its case on rational or scientific
grounds.
The prevailing view now emphasizes that
Christian thought and non-Christian thought, being
founded on some opposed first principles, reflect
wide differences in total worldviews.1
Insofar as North American evangelicals are talking

about worldviews and thinking "worldviewishly"

(Weltanschauunglich), they are standing in the tradition of

the 19th-century Dutch theologian, statesman and journalist,

Abraham Kuyper.2 Kuyper was one of the first theologians to

apply the notion of worldview to both Christian theoretical

or scientific activity and to Christian socio-cultural

analysis and action. When Carl Henry spoke of the need to

challenge the controlling presuppositions of the secular

mind and clearly to articulate a Christian "world and life

view" in his 1947 work, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern

Fundamentalism,3 he was directly indebted to the tradition

of Kuyper.4 And now a historian the stature of George






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Marsden says that this Kuyperian emphasis on worldviews is

the prevailing view in North American evangelicalism.

More recently than Henry, of course, the whole notion

of worldview came into the evangelical vocabulary through

Francis Schaeffer5 who, in turn, influenced people like

James Sire in his book, The Universe Next Door.6 And while

Schaeffer's own fundamentalism made him very skeptical of

the tradition of Kuyper, it takes little historical

imagination to note his own indebtedness to this tradition.

It was, after all, the neo-Kuyperian art historian Hans

Rookmaaker who introduced Schaeffer to worldview thinking.

While I am not so sure that Marsden is right when he

says that this kind of Kuyperian worldview thinking is the

prevailing view in North America, as a person who

consciously stands in that Kuyperian tradition, I am

flattered that he thinks so. The point here is not to boast

of any "triumph" of this tradition but simply to note this

historical connection and to confess a sense of profound

gratitude that this tradition of Christian thought and

cultural witness has been able to make such a contribution

to North American evangelical scholarship and social

witness.

What is a Worldview?

The fact that evangelicals are talking more about

worldviews does not necessarily mean that they are all

talking about the same thing, however. If one were to

survey the various ways in which the term "worldview" has







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been used in Christian literature since Henry's 1947 book,

one would likely be able to categorize those various

functional meanings according to the worldviews of those

employing the term. While it is not my intent to provide

such a survey here, there is at least one observation that

is worth making about how evangelicals tend to use the term.

The term worldview is often used by evangelicals as a

synonym for theology, and that theology is still understood

in the Protestant scholastic sense of a series of dogmatic

propositions coherently organized and rooted in a divinely

inspired, infallible and inerrant Scripture. This is, I

think, the heart of Schaeffer's use of the term, and would

seem to characterize the work of scholars like Norman

Geisler and William Watkins.7 In a modified form such a

theologization (or at least intellectualization) can be

detected in Jim Sire's early book. One notes in The

Universe Next Door that Sire deals with worldviews primarily

as systems of thought, as theoretical constructs. He seldom

addresses the question of how worldviews work, what they do,

or what the cultural fruit of a particular worldview might

be.8 It should be said, however, that his more recent

Discipleship of the Mind has gone a long way towards

correcting this deficiency.9

While the notion of worldview has a varied history,

beginning with Kant in 1790, picked up via Fichte by

Schelling, Schleiermacher, Hegel and Goethe and then on to

Rickert, Wildebrand and Dilthey, one of the most common







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features of the term's use (Engels being a notable

exception) has been that worldviews are pre-theoretical in

character.10 A Weltanschauung is a global anschauung, that

is, a view, outlook, perspective in life and the world that

characterizes a people or a culture.

Such an anschauung is distinct from philosophy and

science because it is held by all people regardless of their

intellectual capabilities. Consequently, a worldview is

non-theoretical and, if interpreted positively, it is seen

to be pre-theoretical in the precise sense of being the very

foundation of all theorizing.11 If interpreted negatively

(as in Comte's positivism), worldview denotes the

unscientific view of the unenlightened masses or primitive

people.

It is this non-theoretical character of worldviews that

made the idea so attractive to anthropologists. A. Irving

Hallowell coined the term "ethno-metaphysics" to describe

the exploration and analysis of various cultures.12

Worldview seemed an appropriate category for anthropologists

because so-called primitive people clearly had a set of

conceptual presuppositions that functioned in an integrative

way in their culture, yet these conceptual presuppositions

were not theoretical in character. They were not anything

like what we in the West called philosophy or science. In

fact, they bore more relation to what we describe as myth.

But if non-Western peoples led their lives and formed

their cultures in terms of a worldview articulated in the







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form of myth, could it not be the case that Western culture

was also founded in a worldview, in a mythos? Many

sociologists, historians and theologians have answered this

question affirmatively. Langdon Gilkey is here

representative:


Social existence involves and depends on a shared
consciousness, a shared system of meanings. This
shared system of meanings is structured by symbols
that shape or express the understanding of
reality, of space and time, of human being and its
authenticity, of life and its goods, of
appropriate relations, roles, customs and
behaviour, symbols which together constitute the
unique gestalt, the identity or uniqueness, of
that social group. To be a member of any
community is to be aware of, to participate in,
and to be oneself shaped, energized, and directed
by this common symbolic mythos.13
This shared consciousness, this shared system of meanings

that gives rise to a historical way-of-being-in-the-world,

and which constitutes the identity of a particular group,

people or culture, is what we are trying to get at when we

talk about a worldview.

One of the most helpful articles that I have read on

worldviews is by James Olthuis, simply titled, "On

Worldviews."14 Olthuis describes a worldview as "a

framework or set of fundamental beliefs through which we

view the world and our calling and future in it. It is the

integrative and interpretative framework by which order and

disorder are judged, the standard by which reality is

managed and pursued."15 A worldview, then, is a vision of

life. It provides its adherents with a vision of the world,

a perspective through which to make sense of life.







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Further, because the world is temporal, in process, a

worldview always entails a story, a myth which provides its

adherents with an understanding of their own role in the

global history of good and evil. Such a story tells us who

we are in history and why we are here.16 The way in which

American history is taught to children and proclaimed on the

political campaign trail is a good example of such a mythos.

The worldview of the "American Dream" is the official and

orthodox worldview of the United States and is proclaimed

with equal conviction by both Democrats and Republicans.

This worldview is rooted in the Enlightenment "progress

myth." This myth is something of a secularized

Heilsgeschicte which "sees history, beginning way back with

Egypt and Greece, as a story of cumulative development

leading up to modern times temporally and to Western culture-

especially America-spatially."17 Here and now, with us, the

goal towards which this story has led has been, or at least

is being fulfilled. Scholars as diverse as Christopher

Dawson, Reinhold Niebuhr, Bob Goudzwaard and J. B. Bury have

described this as the myth that governs our common

existence.18 Again, Langdon Gilkey's description of the

role of the myth of progress in our lives proves to be

illuminating:


It helps us determine what is creative and what is
not in the world, and what our own priorities are
or should be. It tells us what to defend and why
we defend it. It gives meaning to our work,
confidence in the midst of failure, and hope in
the face of tragedy or of temporary
discouragement. It helps us to distinguish good







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from evil forces in the world around us, and gives
us confidence in the ultimate victory of good over
evil in history. Above all, it tells us who we
are in history and why we are here. It forms the
ultimate set of presuppositions for most of our
aims and so for our patterns of education.19
This leads us to another dimension of worldviews. A

vision of the world and of history is always a normative

vision. A worldview is always a foundation for

socio-cultural action-it is always a vision for the world.

It tells us both what is the case (vision of the world) and

what ought to be the case (vision for the world).20 As

anthropologist Clifford Geertz notes, worldviews are both

descriptive and normative.21 For example, if a culture's

worldview includes a view of economic life as guided by

self-interest, of land as a commodity which can be bought,

sold, subdivided and exploited, of history as progress

defined as ever-increasing scientific mastery and

technological control, of work as a disutility, of the

environment as disposable, of happiness as consumptive

satiation, and of government as the guarantor of such

satiation, then that worldview will have definite (and

usually devastating) ramifications for economic life, for

the land, for historical development, for our work lives,

for the environment, for the emotional well-being of its

adherents, and for political life. And these

historico-cultural ramifications would be drastically

different in, let's say, a native North American worldview

in which economic life is concerned with maintaining the

necessities of life for the community; land is viewed as







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Mother; history is entrustment; work is an integral part of

a subsistence, land-based, labor-intensive lifestyle; the

environment is a gift of the Great Spirit and an inheritance

from the past; happiness is found by living in harmony with

nature and with one's clan and by learning the wisdom of the

animals imparted through the stories of the elders; and

community leadership (or government) is communal and tribal.

We can see, then, that a vision of life is always a

vision for life: it bears cultural fruit, it is

inculturated, taking on historico-cultural flesh-for good or

evil. It characterizes the distinct historical élan of a

particular culture or people. As James Fowler puts it, a

worldview is the way one "leans into life."22 Never a

matter of interesting speculation, a worldview, not unlike

the leaven of the Gospel, permeates and flavors one's whole

life.

It is also important to note that worldviews are

religious in character. They are frameworks of beliefs but

these beliefs are not theoretical in character. Such

beliefs cannot be argued to on the basis of either inductive

or deductive reasoning-rather, they are the very foundation

of such arguments. Worldview beliefs are more likely argued

from than argued to.23

A worldview is rooted in beliefs that are ultimate in

character because these beliefs are answers to what Stephen

Toulmin has called "limit" questions.24 Such questions are

at the limits of our rationality or, to change the metaphor,







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they are the ground of our rationality. Their answers

provide us with what Nicholas Wolterstorff has described as

"control beliefs."25 It is at this level that Wittgenstein

says, "If I have exhausted the justifications, I have

reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined

to say, 'This is simply what I do.'"26

In The Transforming Vision, Richard Middleton and I,

like Toulmin, Gilkey, Sire, Holmes and others before us,

attempt to list the kind of questions that can legitimately

be described as worldview questions.27 We proposed that

there are at least four questions that are simply

constitutive to human life and that are implicitly answered

in one way or another in all worldviews and, therefore,

which guide all human culture forming. They are: 1) Where

am I, or what is the nature of the reality in which I find

myself? 2) Who am I, or what is the nature of human being?

How do we relate to non-human reality? How do we relate to

each other (as male and female, as different races,

different cultures and different generations)? And, what is

our relation to the divine (if any)? 3) What's wrong?

Since we all recognize that something is amiss in life, that

life is out of balance, disordered and broken-in short, that

there is evil-we are all forced to find some way to account

for, or at least understand, this brokenness. 4) What's the

remedy? How do we find a path through our brokenness to

wholeness? Wherein is the hope that gives us the strength

to continue to live and to expect a better day? Since all







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worldviews entail an answer to this question, all worldviews

are soteriological and eschatological in one way or another.

Such ultimate questions require ultimate answers, and

answers that are characterized by ultimacy are faith

answers. One's worldview, then, and indeed the worldview of

a whole culture, is rooted in a faith stance-a stance in

relation to that which is taken to be ultimate, an "ultimate

concern."28 From a Christian perspective, this ultimacy

will either be appropriately directed to the one who is

Ultimate-our Creator revealed to us in Jesus Christ-or to a

pseudo-ultimacy, a pseudo-god, an idol.29

At this point our description of worldviews remains

incomplete. We have seen how worldviews are foundational

for human culture-they are visions of and for life which are

themselves founded in an ultimate faith stance.

Consequently, we have seen the following pattern of

relationships:



faith _ worldview _ way of life
(ultimate answers to(storied vision of (socio-historical
cultural
ultimate questions) and for life) patterns in community)
[Weltanschauung] [Lebenswelt]
The problem with this diagram is that the arrows only

go in one direction, whereas the relation of faith,

worldview and way of life is, in fact, not unidirectional.

Rather, they are in a reciprocal relation. In other words,

a worldview depends for its validation not only on its

underlying faith30 but also on the way of life that it

engenders-whether the worldview really does open up,






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illuminate and integrate life in all of its dimensions or

not.31

Olthuis describes this reciprocal relation when he says

that a worldview "is a medium through which the ultimate

commitment of faith plays out its leading and integrating

role in daily life. Simultaneously, a worldview is a medium

by which daily life can either call faith into question or

confirm it."32 Consequently, the arrows go both ways:

faith ó worldview ó way of life

If a worldview is a vision of life and for life, then life

itself must have some meaningful input into the worldview.

Indeed, it must be able, in principle, even to change the

worldview, and such change could mean change in the faith

which is the very foundation of the worldview. All of the

dimensions of reality that comprise a way of life (which

include societal institutions such as government, education,

business, gender relations, family structures and

child-rearing patterns, race and even geography and climate)

are formative of a culture's worldview-just as that worldview

(and its underlying faith) is formative of those cultural

patterns. The relation is reciprocal, perhaps even

dialectical.

What Paul Ricoeur calls the "hermeneutics of suspicion"

has legitimately shown us that a way of life could be rooted

in a distorted perception of life (or worldview) that is

itself rooted in either personal/cultural neuroses (Freud)

or oppressive societal ideologies (Marx).33 Indeed, a







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worldview could be an ideological or neurotic justification

for a certain way of life. This would be a distortion in

the normative faith/worldview/way of life relation. But at

certain points such neurotic distortions and ideological

oppressions can, through various means, be brought to light.

When this happens a new worldview framework is required

(among other things) to account for the new perception of

reality. If the worldview shift is radical enough it may

even entail a conversion on the most fundamental religious

level. People in both psycho-therapeutic and revolutionary

contexts often speak of such conversions.34

Another way in which we can see the reciprocity in the

faith/worldview/way of life relation, which is less

theoretical, is to comment on a reality shared by all

self-aware human beings, namely the experience that there is

in fact a gap between our worldview (and ultimately our most

firmly held faith commitments) and our way of life. The

awareness of that gap leads us to evaluate our lives, but

also, especially during times of crisis, to evaluate our

worldview and our faith.35 Insofar as this gap is

experienced as the inevitable tension between a normative

vision of life and the present unfulfilled fallen character

of our real existence (what we might call the "Romans 7 gap"-

the "I-do-not-do-what-I

want-but-I-do-the-very-thing-that-I-hate" gap) then it

should function as a creative tension in our lives. Such a

tension should be able to militate against the neuroses and







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ideologies mentioned above. But if the gap between our

worldview and our actual experience becomes too great-if

actual experience seems totally unrelated to our worldview-

then we have a worldview crisis on our hands. And a

worldview crisis gives rise to what Clifford Geertz has

described as "the gravest sort of anxiety."36 In such a

situation the very ground on which you stand is uncertain,

you are no longer sure of who you are, what the meaning of

life is, what you are to do or where you are going.

Ultimate questions that once had some form of ultimate,

faith-committed answers are reopened and such a reopening is

usually horrific.37

Worldview Crisis: Reformation, Conversion or Entrenchment

When such a crisis occurs within the dominant worldview

in a culture, the very scaffolding on which the culture

stands begins to collapse. Jeremy Rifkin describes this in

terms of a wide-spread cultural angst:


When a particular worldview begins to break down,
when it can no longer adequately answer the basic
questions to the satisfaction of its adherents,
faith is broken, uncertainty and confusion set in,
and the individual and the masses are cast adrift-
exposed, unprotected and above all frightened.38
It is my view that the culture of modernity, the

culture animated by the progress myth, is presently entering

into such a crisis period.39 Robert Heilbroner, in his

trenchant and disturbing book, An Inquiry into the Human

Prospect40 says we have come to the end of the

Enlightenment. The Enlightenment dream of progress which

will inevitably result in "le perfectionnement de l'homme"






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(Condorcet), that believed that "the Golden Age lies ahead

of us not behind us" (Dewey) and that it is attainable

through the autonomous exercise of human reason translated

into technological power and economic abundance, has been

proven not only to be an illusion, but is also dangerous.

It not only lied to us about the world and ourselves, it has

cursed us and cursed future generations.41 Consequently,

the late George Grant wondered whether the whole experiment

of modernity might not have been a mistake.42 And Daniel

Bell was right when he said that "the real problem of

modernity is the problem of belief." Bell went on to say,

"To use an unfashionable term, it is a spiritual crisis,

since the new anchorages have proved illusory and the old

ones have become submerged."43

Consequently, the question that Bell and many of our

most sensitive social analysts is forced to ask is: What

holds one to reality if one's secular system of meanings

proves to be an illusion?"44 In other words, when a chasm

has developed between one's faith and worldview and the

reality of one's life, what is one to do?

There are perhaps three possible responses. One

response is reformation. The reality of life leads an

individual or a community to a refocusing or a reforming of

their worldview. At best, this refocusing can occur in such

a way that the initial faith is left mostly intact. In fact

it might even appear that the reformation brings the

worldview even closer in line with the founding faith.45







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Indeed when such refocusing is occurring one often hears

debates about the content of the founding faith.46

For example, at least part of the success of the civil

rights movement in the United States is because those who

have attempted to shift or refocus the American dream-or the

American civil religion-or the American worldview-have done so

by arguing that the reality of racism, even a racism

embedded in the American worldview, conflicts with both what

we experience to be just and with the vision of freedom and

equality of the founding fathers. Whether the vision of the

founding fathers was emancipatory or not I leave to

historical judgment, but arguing that it was, or even that

racial equality was implicit in their vision and needs to be

enacted explicitly, made the message of the civil rights

movement convincing to a large segment of the population.

In other words, the refocusing of the worldview (in this

case the liberalization of the worldview) is occasioned by

an intolerable social reality and legitimated by wrapping

the message in the American flag and waving the

Constitution.

Sometimes, however, such a worldview reformation is not

possible because the gap between reality and worldview is

simply too great and the worldview seems to be compounding

the problems, not being a creative source of their solution.

In such a situation, a culture (or at least sensitive

members of a culture who do not allow their worldview to be

ideologically co-opted into further legitimation of







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intolerable socio-historical conditions) suffers a crisis of

confidence and identity. And as the worldview suffers

collapse, the entire world seems to come crashing down with

it. It is at this point that all reformations and

adaptations seem to be mere window dressing, not really

addressing the fundamental problems. And then one is open

to the second option, namely, conversion-the abandonment of

one worldview for another. In other words, the reality

which has discredited a particular worldview also dismantles

the faith which underlies that worldview. And because it is

impossible both to live a human life without faith, and to

have a culture-directing-and-forming worldview without a

faith foundation for that worldview, one is necessarily set

on a quest for a new faith.47

The widespread fascination with the New Age

consciousness movement in our time is indicative of the

sense of lostness and betrayal of many people in our

post-Enlightenment culture. Such people are looking for a

new faith. They are ripe for conversion. And any of us who

have had deep doubts about our own faith (or indeed who have

experienced conversion) know what such a spiritual quest is

like.

There is, however, a third possible response to a

worldview crisis. It is perhaps the most prevalent and, in

the context of a declining culture such as ours, the most

dangerous. It is what we could describe as entrenchment.

In a time of crisis we often witness a conservative backlash







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and entrenchment. Rather than creatively dealing with the

crisis, cultures (and individuals) tend to dig in their

heels and hang on to what they've got. A survivalist

mentality emerges, and we witness a culture-wide

recommitment to the very worldview and the very faith that

seems to be discredited by one's historical reality. At

times such a recommitment takes on the character of a

revival service-"give me that old time religion of faith in

human progress and the American dream of life, liberty and

the pursuit of happiness."


Listen to the liberal optimism of futurist Herman Kahn:
On the whole . . . this problem-prone,
super-industrial period will be marked by rising
living standards and less rather than more
sacrifice. Eventually, almost all of the problems
will be dealt with reasonably satisfactorily, so
that at the end of the transition period, the true
post-industrial society can emerge.48
There is still hope that the secular eschaton will dawn.

And the neo-conservative revival seems to be a right-wing

version of this same secular hope. "If only we can hold off

the feminists, stamp out abortion, calm down the

environmentalists, deregulate business-give it full reign,

and break down trade barriers, then surely our cultural woes

will be over and the rest of the world's problems will go

away." Personally, I find it easier to believe in a literal

six-day creation some 6,000 years ago and Jonah being

swallowed by a big fish, than to believe that the very

cultural belief system that got us into our trouble will now

rescue us from it.

Sadly, this stance of entrenchment has characterized






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much of the cultural response of evangelicalism. Many of

the calls "back" to the Judeo-Christian heritage of our

culture, which we hear from many an

evangelical/fundamentalist pulpit, are, in fact, thinly

veiled calls to recommit ourselves to the Western worldview

and way of life that is presently crumbling. Perhaps the

biggest problem with developing a Christian cultural

response and an integrally Christian educational perspective

in our cultural malaise is that Christians are often at the

forefront of defending the status quo of the dominant way of

life. How else can we understand the perverse, if not

heretical, gospel of wealth doctrine combined with a fierce

ideological, if not idolatrous, American nationalism that

characterizes almost all of the televangelists and most

fundamentalist churches? Certainly such Christians want to

oppose certain elements in our culture because of their

Christian faith (like abortion, pornography and liberalized

education), yet they still want to conserve some of its

central features (technological superiority and military

power, a commodity-oriented lifestyle in the context of a

growth-oriented economy, a rapacious attitude toward

creation, and an unjust, often racist attitude toward our

Two-Thirds World brothers and sisters). Such a stance is, I

submit, schizophrenic (believing that one can indeed serve

two masters) and spiritually bankrupt. In place of this

Christianity-legitimated cultural entrenchment we need a

radically comprehensive cultural vision. In the next







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section I will attempt to sketch out the contours of what

such a vision might look like.

A Christian Worldview in a Declining Culture

While it is not possible to discuss here with any

exhaustiveness the nature and role of a radically

comprehensive worldview in the context of our present

cultural crisis, I will present fourteen theses for

consideration.

1) A Christian worldview is only Christian insofar as

it is biblical. I take it as a fundamental given that the

Scriptures are foundational to a Christian worldview. The

Bible answers for us the ultimate worldview questions. They

tell us where we are (in God's good creation); who we are

(God's covenantal image-bearers called to stewardly

service); what is wrong (we have broken the covenant with

our Creator and chosen to serve and image idols rather than

being his image-bearers); and what is the remedy (Jesus

Christ, the incarnate image of God has died and risen again

in order to reclaim God's creation and his rightful

image-bearers-thereby establishing his Kingdom).

The Scriptures are a worldview book telling the story

of God's relation to us and to all of creation-a dramatic

story of creation, lostness and rescue which becomes our

story and the basis of our identity as the people of God

when we turn to Jesus Christ in faith.

2) A biblical worldview is one which understands

creation, fall and redemption in comprehensive terms. All







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of reality is creaturely, all of creation is distorted by

human disobedience, and Jesus Christ comes to restore all

things.49 Consequently, the biblical worldview is truly a

worldview-all of reality falls within its compass.

3) The tradition of dualism, rooted in the

neo-Platonic subversion of the Gospel and reaching a new

height of expression in North American evangelical pietism,

undercuts or shortcircuits the dynamics of the Gospel by

privatizing Christian faith, thereby failing to grasp or be

grasped by the world-transforming power of a biblical

worldview.50 Consequently,

4) North American evangelicalism has generally

shortchanged itself of the worldview resources of its own

Scriptures. Reading the text dualistically we have not been

able to see how the Scriptures address our culture. We have

been left with an infallible and inerrant, though also

irrelevant, text. Therefore,

5) North American evangelicalism has de facto been

taken captive by the dominant secular worldview and is,

therefore, as much a part of the problem in the present

crisis as it is part of the solution.51

6) A Christian worldview in a culture which views

nature as mere resource for human exploitation and which is

coming perilously close to a major environmental crisis,

needs to be firmly rooted in the goodness of God's creation.

We are to love, protect and heal the creation because it is

God's not ours-the work of his wise and loving hand and the







21











object of his redeeming work. Wanton destruction of

ecosystems is not only unwise, it is a sin against the

Creator and a belittling of Christ's sacrifice on the

cross.52

7) In a culture based on self-interested greed and

competition, a biblical worldview insists that God's

image-bearers are called to stewardly care for the earth,

reaping its fruit for the benefit of all of the earth's

inhabitants. Such a call to stewardship entails a call to

an economics of care and equality.

8) In a culture still hanging on to the worn-out

Enlightenment ideals of human progress, a biblical worldview

provides a more sober estimate of human culture-forming.

Such an estimate is rooted in the biblical understanding of

idolatry. Those who do not image their Creator, necessarily

image a creature or dimension of creaturely life. Such

idolatry results in death-personally, spiritually and

culturally. Therefore,

9) A Christian worldview provides the basis for a

prophetic critique of the dominant worldview's idolatry. In

our context this requires a dismantling of the false trinity

of scientism, technicism and economism.53

10) Such prophetic critique must begin with the

household of faith. By dualistically limiting the Gospel to

a narrow dimension of life, the church has tacitly adopted

the idols of the false trinity in most areas of life.

Consequently, the church is, to an alarming degree, held







22











captive by the dominant worldview.

11) A prophetic worldview must also go beyond critique

to setting the cultural imagination of the church free to

embrace new ways of living and to embody an alternative

reality.54 Concretely, dreams of the Kingdom must replace

the American dream. The biblical worldview must energize us

(fill us with the Spirit) so that we can begin to walk in

new paths of discipleship.

12) In the Scriptures being energized in such a way

that we discern new paths of obedience in creation is called

Wisdom. Wisdom is God's loving way with the creation and to

be wise is to celebrate and be at-home in God's good

creation and to follow that way-it is to discern a path and a

direction for our discipleship.

13) In a culture that has no normative foundation

beyond individualistic rights and utilitarianism, a biblical

worldview insists that God's world is a normed world. God's

creation is subject to norms or a creational torah that

leads to the fulfillment and healing of life. Disobedience

results in death. Consequently, in place of economic

self-interest, Christians will strive for an economics of

sharing and care; competitive individualism is replaced is

replaced by community cooperation; an economics of

exploitation gives way to an economics of stewardship;

unceasing economic growth is replaced by a contented

lifestyle of "enough"; and in the face of an oppressive

politics of power and control, Christians will seek justice







23











through service and cross-bearing. These are some of the

norms of the Kingdom. To live out of such norms would be

culturally subversive.

14) In a culture that believes that only human progress

will bring the Kingdom

(= secular utopia), a biblical worldview firmly, yet

lovingly, proclaims that only God brings the Kingdom, and he

does so on a cross. We are not called to bring the Kingdom

but simply to erect obedient signposts of the Kingdom. In a

time of cultural anxiety the Christian's deepest source of

hope is that "the kingdoms of this world will become the

Kingdom of our God and of his Christ. And he shall reign

for ever and ever." (Revelation 11:15)

The Calling of A Christian Liberal Arts College

I will conclude this paper with a few "thesis-like"

remarks on the significance of this analysis of the nature

of worldviews and the power of the biblical worldview in a

declining culture for the life and mission of a Christian

liberal arts college. Perhaps these comments are something

less than theses. Let's call them "tentative proposals."

1) All education is rooted in a worldview and all

education nurtures students in that worldview. More

specifically, however, the college stage of life (between

the ages of 18 to 22) is a crucial and pivotal stage in

one's worldview development. It is at this stage that young

people make life decisions and career choices that

implicitly or explicitly affirm for themselves the worldview







24











of their upbringing and of their culture (or subculture), or

begin along another path which either denies and abandons

the worldview of their parents or significantly refocuses

and reforms that worldview. Therefore, a Christian liberal

arts college should take formative participation and

guidance in that late adolescent process of worldview

formation as its central educational calling and task.

2) In the historical context of a church that is held

spiritually captive by a dominant secular worldview that is

itself sensing its own mortality, such worldview education

must be prophetic and will generally be characterized by a

spiritual battle-a conflict with principalities and powers.

From a biblical perspective, worldview education is a matter

of life and death.

3) The prayed-for objective of such education is

nothing less than a transforming vision of and for life-a

setting students free from cultural captivity and blind

service to the dominant idols so that they can have opened

eyes to new and radical paths of Kingdom obedience.

4) Such an educational vision could put a liberal arts

college on a collision course with the very community that

gave it birth and that supports the work of the college.

Consequently, a worldview-focused educational vision

requires the courage to take up a prophetic role in the

community-not by angry denunciation but by passionate

proclamation.

5) Insofar as a worldview-focused education is







25











concerned with wholistic knowing55 and insofar as a

Christian worldview discerns the idolatrous character of

fallen humanity, a Christian liberal arts college must have

grave concern (philosophically and pedagogically) with both

narrow specialism and single-minded careerism or a

vocational focus for college education. Consequently,

6) Worldview education will be self-consciously

interdisciplinary in character, attempting to open the

student to the breadth of human thought, culture and

experience in terms of an integral Christian perspective.

The primary goal of such education is to help the student to

learn and follow Wisdom, and it is only in this context that

specialized theoretical research or certain vocational

training can occur.

7) Insofar as a worldview is integral, the kind of

education, theorizing and vocational life that it will

engender will be integrated-therefore, the integration of

faith with learning, faith with theory, and faith with

careers is the goal of a Christian liberal arts college.

And while such integration is never fully achieved (which is

simply to say that sanctification is an ongoing process),

our goal must be to make Christian learning a reality56 and

disciple Christian biologists, sociologists, philosophers,

doctors, lawyers, politicians, artists and engineers.

Discipleship to Jesus Christ requires nothing less.

Let me give you some examples of what I mean here. A

Christian college concerned with worldview-focused education







26











could very well develop a MBA program, but the goal and

purpose for developing such a program would not primarily be

to train our young people to be successful in the corporate

world. Rather, our goal would be to develop the tools that

are needed to do business in a way that is stewardly,

environmentally sensitive and concerned with sharing the

resources of creation with all people-but especially the

poor. We need to be training economists who will understand

the patterns of oppression, the nature of work, the

relationship between war and business, and the call to

stewardship. We need to train engineers who will develop

technology that is appropriate to the needs of our times and

the limits of our resources; biologists who will give us

guidance in a world choked by industrial pollution and

impoverished by an ever-increasing rate of species

extinction; and sociologists and philosophers and

theologians of culture who can help us understand and deal

with the social crises that we now experience and that will

be compounded in the future. And we need to nurture in a

worldview-focused education a generation of novelists,

poets, film-writers, actors, musicians and composers who

will break through both the commercialization of the arts in

our culture and the narrow evangelization of the arts common

among Christians, and find new ways to open our lives up

aesthetically and give wise expression to a Christian view

of life in the their art. This leads to the next thesis:

8) Insofar as a worldview is not only a vision of the







27











world but also a vision for the world, then

worldview-focused education must be education for cultural

praxis. As Paulo Freire and Thomas Groome have taught us,

education can have, and should have, liberative power in the

lives of those who are being educated and in the culture as

a whole.57 Education for praxis is education which empowers

people for cultural action of reform and redirection.

Following Nicholas Wolterstorff, we need to move beyond

cognitive learning (of data and theories, and even the

conceptual contours of a Christian worldview) to tendency

learning-a learning for discipleship.58 This is worldview

education that takes seriously the vision-for character of

worldviews and avoids the intellectualistic reduction of

worldviews to mere conceptual visions of the world. We must

not only train students to think Christianly, but, in

dynamic relation to that thinking, to live Christianly. An

education for obedient cultural praxis is what Wolterstorff

has called an education directed to shalom.59

9) If we take socio-cultural praxis as a necessary

implication of a worldview-focused educational vision and if

we want to experience our theory and praxis as integrally

related, then a spiritual discernment of our present

socio-cultural context will guide us both in the theories we

adopt and the problems we choose to address.60

10) Insofar as a worldview is truly open to reality and

requires experiential validation if it is to be viable, it

is, by nature, in process-open to reform, correction,







28











redirection and refocusing. Consequently, a

worldview-focused education must also be characterized by

such openness. A canonized worldview results in a stifling

conservatism, scholasticism and separatism-none of which is

conducive to the atmosphere of a "liberal" arts college.

Being rooted in Jesus Christ gives one the courage to say

that we don't have all the answers, nor do we need them.

The world is in process and so is our worldview. It is in

this context that both faculty and students can experience

the academic freedom they have in Christ.61 And finally,

11) Worldviews are communal and therefore a

worldview-focused Christian liberal arts college is to

function as a community-the center of which is worship and

service to Jesus Christ which naturally leads to a communal

sharing of ideas and insights, and a struggling together to

discern where God is leading us as educators at the end of

the twentieth century, and indeed, at the end of the

Enlightenment.





Notes

1George Marsden, "The State of Evangelical Christian

Scholarship," Christian Scholar's Review, XVII, 4 (June

1988), p. 355.

2For an introduction to Kuyper's view of Calvinism as a

"world and life view" see his Princeton Stone lectures of

1889, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,







29











1931), especially chapter 1.

3(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1947). For a more recent

statement from Henry on these matters see his book, The

Christian Mindset in a Secular Society: Promoting

Evangelical Renewal and National Righteousness (Portland,

OR: Multnomah Press, 1984).

4See Marsden, "The State of Evangelical Christian

Scholarship," p. 352.

5See Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There (Downers

Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1968).

6James Sire, The Universe Next Door (Downers Grove, IL:

InterVarsity Press, 1976); 2nd ed, 1988).

7See Norman Geisler and William Watkins, Perspectives:

Understanding and Evaluating Today's World Views (San

Bernardino, CA: Here's Life Publishers, 1984). A similar

critique would seem to be applicable to W.A. Hoffecker and

G. S. Smith, eds., Building a Christian Worldview,

Vol 1: God, Man and Knowledge (Phillipsburg, NJ:

Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1986).

8I have raised this critique in a review article, "Two

Books on the Christian Mind," in Anakainosis 2, 1 (September

1979): 9-13. While Arthur Holmes is diligent in this

Contours of a Worldview (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983)

to insist that worldviews are "prephilosophical" (p. 31) and

to investigate the cultural implications of a Christian

worldview (Part III), even his description of the Christian

worldview and its rivals tends to be overly theoretical. A







30











similar critique could be leveled at Al Wolters' otherwise

very helpful book, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a

Reformational Worldview (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985).

9James Sire, Discipleship of the Mind (Downers Grove,

IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990). R.C. Sproul's Lifeviews:

Understanding the Ideas that Shape Society Today (Old

Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1986) makes similar

attempts to discern the social influence of worldviews but

also seems to have a rather intellectualistic understanding

of worldviews.

10For a more nuanced discussion of the historical use of

the term see Al Wolters, "On the Idea of Worldview and Its

Relation to Philosophy" in Paul Marshall, Sander Griffioen

and Richard Mouw, eds., Stained Glass: Worldviews and

Social Science, Christian Studies Today Series (Lanham, MD:

University Press of America, 1989), pp. 14-25.

11It is important to note here that referring to

worldviews as pre-theoretical is itself indicative of the

role of theorizing in the Western worldview. It is

precisely the overemphasis on reason and theory-making in

the Western consciousness that makes it necessary to

highlight the pre-theoretical character of worldviews.

12A. Irving Hallowell, "Ojibwa Ontology, Behaviour and

World View," in S. Diamond, ed., Culture in History (New

York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 19-52, as cited

by Thomas W. Overholt and J. Baird Callicott, Clothed in Fur

and Other Takes: An Introduction to an Ojibwa Worldview







31











(Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982), p.

xi.

13Langdon Gilkey, Society and the Sacred: Toward a

Theology of Culture in Decline (New York: Crossroad, 1981),

p. 43. I have discussed Gilkey's understanding of the

religion/culture relation at some length in Langdon Gilkey:

Theologian for a Culture in Decline, Christian Studies Today

Series (Lanham, New York and London: University Press of

America, 1991), ch. 3. The philosophical foundations of

Gilkey's approach are discussed and critiqued in my article,

"The Dimension of Ultimacy and Theology of Culture: A

Critical Discussion of Langdon Gilkey," Calvin Theological

Journal 24, 1 (April 1989): 66-92.

14Christian Scholars Review XIV, 2 (1985): 153-64. This

article also appears in Stained Class (see note 10 above):

26-40.

15Christian Scholars Review, p. 155.

16On the centrality of story in worldview formation, see

Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a

Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame and London:

University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), especially parts 1

and 2. In my inaugural lecture, Who Turned Out the Lights:

The Light of the Gospel in a Post-Enlightenment Culture

(Toronto: Institute for Christian Studies, 1989), I refer to

worldviews as "storied visions of and for life."

17Gilkey, Society and the Sacred, p. 23.

18Christopher Dawson, Progress and Religion: An







32











Historical Inquiry (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1938);

Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. II

(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1943); Bob Goudzwaard,

Capitalism and Progress, translated by Josina Van Nuis

Zylstra (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979); J.B. Bury, The

Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into its Origin and Growth

(London: Macmillan, 1920).

19Society and the Sacred, p. 24. Gilkey also discusses

the notion of progress in Reaping the Whirlwind: A

Christian Interpretation of History (New York: Seabury,

1976): part 1.

20See the present author's book (co-authored with J.

Richard Middleton), The Transforming Vision: Shaping a

Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press,

1984), ch. 2.

21Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New

York: Basic Books, 1973), p. 93.

22James W. Fowler, "Moral Stages and the Development of

Faith," in B. Munsey, ed., Moral Development, Moral

Education and Kohlberg (Birmingham: Religious Education

Press, 1980), p. 134.

23See Langdon Gilkey, Religion and the Scientific Future

(New York: Harper and Row, 1970), ch. 2.

24See Stephen Toulmin, An Examination of the Place of

Reason in Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1961), chapter 14. Toulmin's notion of limit questions has

been employed in theology by Landgon Gilkey, Naming the







33











Whirlwind: The Renewal of God-Language (New York:

Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1969), Part II, chapters 2 and 3; and

David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in

Theology [A Crossroad Book (New York: Seabury Press, 1975)],

chapters 5 and 7.

25See Nicholas Wolterstorff, Reason Within the Bounds of

Religion (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976), especially

chapter 9. For an insightful discussion of the role of such

committed beliefs in science, with specific reference to

Kuhn, Polanyi and Radnitzky, see Clarence Joldersma's

published M.Phil.F thesis, Beliefs and the Scientific

Enterprise (Toronto: Institute for Christian Studies, 1983).

26Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

(Oxford: Blackwell, 1967): section 217.

27See especially chapter 2.

28See Paul Tillich's notion of ultimate concern in

Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), chapter

1; and Systematic Theology I (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1951), pp. 11-15.

29Cf. Psalm 115 and Romans 1:20-25. Bob Goudzwaard

discusses the dynamics of idolatry in modern culture in

Idols of Our Time, translated by Mark VanderVennen (Downers

Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1984). See also Pablo

Richard et al., The Idols of Death and the God of Life (New

York: Orbis, 1983).

30This is what Middleton and I have called the criterion

of coherence. Transforming Vision, p. 38.







34











31Middleton and I call this the reality criterion-is the

worldview really a world view? See Transforming Vision, p.

37.

32James Olthuis, "On Worldviews," pp. 156-7.

33See Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on

Interpretation, translated by Denis Savage (New Haven and

London: Yale University Press, 1970), pp. 32-36; and The

Conflict of Interpretations, Don Ihde, ed. (Evanston:

Northwestern University Press, 1974), pp. 148-50.

34Thomas Kuhn also speaks of conversion in the context

of paradigm shifts in scientific research. See The

Structure of Scientific Revolutions, rev. ed. (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1962), pp. 147, 149-50, 157.

35I have addressed the difficulties of the

worldview/way-of-life gap within the Christian community at

greater length in Subversive Christianity: Imaging God in a

Dangerous Time (Bristol, UK: Regius Press, 1992), especially

ch. 2.

36Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 99.

37It is something of this experience of anxiety that

Jean-Paul Sartre captured in his novel Nausea, translated by

Lloyd Alexander (New York: New Directions, 1959).

38Jeremy Rifkin (with Ted Howard), The Emerging Order:

God in the Age of Scarcity (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons,

1979), p. 212.

39Arnold Toynbee referred to such periods as "times of

troubles," in A Study of History (London: Oxford University







35











Press), I (1934), p. 53; and IV (1939), pp. 1-5. See

Langdon Gilkey, "Theology for a Time of Troubles: How My

Mind has Changed," Christian Century 98 (April 29, 1981):

474-80.

40Robert Heilbroner, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect

(New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1974).

41I have addressed the decline of modernity at greater

length in The Transforming Vision, ch. 9, Langdon Gilkey,

ch. 3, and Subversive Christianity, chs. 2 and 3.

42In an interview on the Canadian Broadcasting

Corporation.

43Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of

Capitalism, 2nd ed. (London: Heineman, 1979), pp. 29-30.

44Ibid.

45The present crisis of modernity has led to such

responses of reformation. See Charles Taylor's defense of

the Enlightenment preoccupation of "authenticity" in a way

that attempts to go beyond modernity's debasement of the

notion in The Malaise of Modernity (Toronto: Anansi, 1991).

46See Walter Brueggemann's notion of "reorientation" in

The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary

(Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984).

47Postmodernity is characterized by such a quest for a

new worldview that will serve to integrate life after the

disintegration of modernity. Radical postmodernism such as

deconstructionism, however, claims to have totally abandoned

any attempts at worldviews with their totality concepts and







36











meta-narratives. While I cannot argue this point at length

here, it is my contention that worldviews are

anthropologically constitutive and that the attempt to

totally abandon worldviews will either fail outright or will

ideologically import an unexamined worldview in the back

door. For a helpful introduction to postmodernism see Linda

Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism (London and New

York: Routledge, 1989). The last chapter of this book is

illustrative of my point. For Hutcheon the one thing that

is not subject to deconstruction is feminism. A more

popular introduction can be found in Walter Truett Anderson,

Reality Isn't What it Used to Be (New York: Harper and Row,

San Francisco, 1990).

48Herman Kahn, "The Economic Future," in Frank Feather,

ed., Through the 80's: Thinking Globally Acting Locally

(Washington: D.C.: World Futures Society, 1980), p. 208.

49See Paul's wonderful Christological poem in Colossians

1:15-20. In Christ "all things" are created and all things

"are being reconciled." Wolters emphasizes this

comprehensiveness in Creation Regained.

50For a helpful critique of dualism written at a popular

level see Steve Shaw, No Splits (London: Marshall, Morgan

and Scott, 1989).

51See Os Guiness' creative, yet disturbing, portrayal of

the modern church in The Gravedigger File: Papers on the

Subversion of the Church (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity

Press, 1983).







37











52See Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, A Worldly

Spirituality: The Call to Take Care of the Earth (San

Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984); and Loren Wilkenson, et

al., Earthkeeping in the 90's: Stewardship of Creation

(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991).

53See Middleton and Walsh, The Transforming Vision, chs.

8 and 9.

54See Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978).

55Or what Michael Polanyi called tacit knowing in

contrast with focal or theoretical knowing in The Tacit

Dimension (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1966).

56See the helpful book edited by Harold Heie and David

L. Wolfe, The Reality of Christian Learning (Grand Rapids,

MI: Christian University Press and Eerdmans, 1987).

57Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York:

Continuum, 1970); Thomas Groome, Christian Religious

Education (New York: Harper and Row, 1980).

58Nicholas Wolterstorff, Educating for Responsible

Action (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980), especially

chapters 1 and 2.

59Nicholas Wolterstorff, "Teaching for Justice," in Joel

A. Carpenter and Kenneth W. Shipps, eds., Making Higher

Education Christian (St. Paul: Christian University Press,

1987), pp. 201-16.

60Again, Wolterstorff has been most helpful in

addressing the question of praxis in educational practice.







38











See his chapter on "Theory and Praxis" in Until Peace and

Justice Embrace (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983), ch. 8;

and his 1982 convocation address at Wheaton College, "The

Mission of the Christian College at the End of the Twentieth

Century," Reformed Journal 33, 6 (June 1983): 14-8.

61A helpful discussion of academic freedom in the

context of biblical fidelity is found in Frank Anthony

Spina, "Revelation, Reformation, Re-Creation: Canon and the

Theological Foundation of the Christian University,"

Christian Scholar's Review XVIII, 4 (June 1989): 315-32.









































39

---

quote:

---

The REALLY cool article from that issue of Faculty Dialog was by a Dean at NWC, IA, who showed what the various challenges facing various generations of Christian Liberal Arts Colleges were. You are two generations behind.

---

I thought you went to Bethel with my father? Does that make you one generation behind?

Dude, my views stem from my interaction with aspects of Judaism; that makes you oodles and oodles of generations behind... .
(Please forgive me anyone of Jewish origin that was offended by that remark.)

dlw

Prayer from Kenya

From the Cowardice that dare not face new truth,
From the Laziness that is contented with half-truth,
From the Arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
Lord Deliver Me.

quote:

---

NO.

Since you are lost as to what I was saying, I'll try again. You seem to follow the goals that the generation of my father (post WW2) had, which was to assimilate some of the competitions position -- which would be modernism. The generation before that delved into subjects previously unattended to. My generation's trumpet call is to "re-formulate" all starting from a reevaluated core of what God has given us. (I'm doing a poor job writing.) Courage to push ahead WITHOUT the comfort and crutch of paradigms borrowed from Modernism.

You are a generation behind me.

---

quote:

---

You mischaracterize my viewpoints as those of modernism. My view of the world is quite different from that which is predominant today or back in my grandfather's day.

---

quote:

---

quote:

---

You mischaracterize my viewpoints as those of modernism. My view of the world is quite different from that which is predominant today or back in my grandfather's day.

---

I'm not speicifically comparing your views to Modernist. I don't think that they are. They are a sort of neo-liberalism. But that isn't the point either. The point is that one generation undertook a particular task, the next another task. The leadership of the CCCUoffered leadership in the form of calling for courage to strip back modernism and begin fresh if necessary. In THAT context, I see you as needing more weeding. Such gardening is frightening, hurts, etc., but is worth it.


(I know that song too -- learned it in Tom Correll's class.)

---

quote:

---

quote:

---

You mischaracterize my viewpoints as those of modernism. My view of the world is quite different from that which is predominant today or back in my grandfather's day.

---

I'm not speicifically comparing your views to Modernist. I don't think that they are. They are a sort of neo-liberalism. But that isn't the point either. The point is that one generation undertook a particular task, the next another task. The leadership of the CCCUoffered leadership in the form of calling for courage to strip back modernism and begin fresh if necessary. In THAT context, I see you as needing more weeding. Such gardening is frightening, hurts, etc., but is worth it.


(I know that song too -- learned it in Tom Correll's class.)

---