The Catholic Intellectual Tradition

Daniel Wasserman-Soler, Executive Director of the Lumen Christi Institute, sits down with Dan Hummel to discuss the Catholic intellectual tradition and how it engages with higher education both within and outside Catholic contexts. 

Learn about Daniel & The Lumen Christi Institute

Read Daniel's Book: Truth in Many Tongues: Religious Conversion and the Languages of the Early Spanish Empire

With Faith in Mind is produced at Upper House in Madison, Wisconsin and hosted by Director of University Engagement Dan Hummel and Executive Director John Terrill. Jesse Koopman is the Executive Producer. Upper House is an initiative of the Stephen & Laurel Brown Foundation.

Please reach out to us with comments or questions at podcast@slbrownfoundation.org. We'd love to hear from you. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Hello and welcome to With Faith in Mind. I'm Dan Hummel, today's host, and the Director of University Engagement at Upper House. This episode is part of our series on Christian education at the crossroads, and we're welcoming Dr. Daniel Wasserman Soler to the show. Hi, Danny. Hi, Dan. Well, uh excited to get to the conversation. Today we're exploring the pursuit of Christian education and formation at what I might be so bold as to call a sister effort from our Catholic brothers and sisters at the University of Chicago at a place called the Lumen Christi Institute. So a little more about Danny before we uh get into a conversation. Uh Daniel Wasserman Soler is the executive director of Lumen Christie, a position he's held since last year. He earned a PhD in history from the University of Virginia, specifically in the history of the Spanish Empire, and that's a topic on which he's published a book and numerous articles. And Danny was a history professor for 10 years before joining Lumen Christie, first at Oberlin College and then at Alma College, where he was a tenured associate professor, department chair, and director of the first year seminar program. So, Danny, excited to talk to you today about your work at Lumen Christie. Just had a couple uh sort of personal questions first. One is uh I think uh people often wonder uh why someone would transition from a faculty job to working at a place like Lumen Christie. Uh if you could just give us a sense of what drew you to to joining Lumen Christie uh just last year.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Sure. Thanks, Dan. Uh well, first just want to say thanks for inviting me. I'm I'm I'm happy to be with you here. I I get this question a lot, as you might imagine. And the answer is that it, the short answer is that it felt like a calling. I was very happy teaching uh full time. I taught medieval Renaissance history, some world history as well. And I I loved it. I found it very rewarding. And I did feel over the the 10 years that I was teaching full-time, a growing desire to serve the church in a more explicit way. Uh I believe as as as you all do at Upper House that one can serve God through through any uh vocation, through any through any uh area of life. But I I felt that I wanted to be part of a Catholic organization. And so when the opportunity at Lumen Christi became available, it was it seemed ideal to me in a number of ways. One, it is a Catholic organization, a Catholic academic organization serving a secular university campus, so I would be able to serve the church and also continue to be part of secular higher education, which I had found rewarding. And it was also, it's all the University of Chicago is also my alma mater, and I had a transformative experience there as an undergraduate. And my wife is from Chicago. So there were lots of things that came together. And uh giving up tenure was was hard, but but it felt like it was the right move for me and for my family.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

That's great. Well, thanks for sharing. Uh we have a colleague that just joined Upper House uh this year who did a similar move uh from an academic post. Uh he had a little more circuitous route, but ended up here at Upper House. And uh I think it goes a lot of the same uh uh sentiments that you just did, uh Danny. Um I can't uh the other personal thing I just wanted to touch on um is I can't pass uh you know, just acknowledging that there are two historians on the call here. Um I got my PhD here at UW in American religious history. And I know every everyone who gets a PhD in history has has sort of their own story of of why they would do such a thing. It's a it's a very uh it's a very long process, one that takes up usually a lot of your 20s and possibly some of your 30s as well. Um is there any particular uh you know reason you have a passion for history? Or is that something that you've had, you know, for me it's something that goes pretty deep back. I I don't know what else I would have done, honestly. I uh was interested in history from a young age. But um, yeah, what what drew you to history uh as a field to spend a lot of time thinking in and learning in?

SPEAKER_00 4:24

So I when I was in college, I was very undecided when I began and was thinking about all sorts of things, public policy, secondary school education, uh among others, uh government work. And I landed in history, I think for a similar reason, why a lot of folks do. I just had some amazing professors and found myself hooked. The anecdote that I remember most clearly as to how this happened, I was sitting in a Western Civ course at UChicago, and it was a sort of class that starts with ancient Greece, goes to 20th century Europe, and we had read a little bit of Plato, Plato's Apology, at the beginning of the academic year. And somewhere around the middle, we read Machiavelli's prints. And I can't remember the exact words, but Machiavelli says something at the beginning of the prints along the lines of, well, you know, there have been a lot of people that have thought about the ideal government, but we're not concerned with ideals here, we're concerned with reality. And I thought, wow, he's, you know, he's just putting the smack down on Plato. And I thought, that's really fascinating. You know, Machiavelli's writing around 1500, Plato was writing around, you know, almost 2,000 years earlier. And that idea of that people who lived centuries apart could be part of an ongoing conversation was really meaningful to me and still is. That I think of history not so much as the bad stuff in the past that you can avoid. I mean, it is that, but also that that that studying history gives us, makes us part of a conversation that we can learn from.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

That's great. Well, thank you for that. That uh I often talk in similar terms about the the long conversation. Um uh and we always think we're coming up with new thoughts here in the in the 20th and 21st century, and nothing, nothing's really that new. Uh to echo a biblical writer as well, I guess, on that. Um okay, well, great. Well, let's jump into talking about Lumen Christi, uh, which serves the University of Chicago campus. Um, yeah, for the uninitiated, how do you describe Lumen Christie and and the programming and and offerings that you have there?

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Sure, Dan. Our our mission is to engage the secular university and more broadly the secular culture through um in a dialogue with the Catholic intellectual tradition. Someone pointed out to me recently that it's it's ironic that this is our mission because universities, as you know, came very much out of in Europe a Catholic culture. So uh we find ourselves at this at this interesting point in history in which we're trying to uh reinsert the Catholic intellectual tradition into the secular university. That that's one way of describing it. I think more broadly, a way that I describe it that I imagine might resonate with with the folks at Upper House is that we're we we want folks to know that Christianity is a thinking religion, uh, that at its best, Christianity is a religion that fosters inquiry and and encourages questioning.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

When you uh when you think about Lemon Christi, is it uh something that obviously has a very local ministry focused on a particular uh community? Um is it part of a broader network or movement of the same things? For Upper House, we're part of the consortium of Christian Study Centers, which is a loose organization that spans uh you know 30 or 40 uh study centers at universities. How does Lumen Christie see itself in a broader network?

SPEAKER_00 8:13

Right. We've there's been an informal network for some time that's just been formalized recently within the last year. So the my colleagues started before I before I jumped on board at Lumen Christie, my colleagues started what we're calling the Inluminae Network, so in the light. And it's an organization, a consortium of currently six institutes of Catholic thought, all of which are located at secular universities. So Lumen Christie was the earliest one established in 1997. And then there was the St. Anselm Institute at University of Virginia, and there are also newer institutes of Catholic thought at University of Pennsylvania, at Cornell, at Harvard, and at University of Southern California. And we have some even newer institutes that are joining us soon. So one at University of Michigan probably may be joining us, and another at Duke. And there are a couple of institutes that have been around a little longer at small colleges, at Williams College and at Hope College that may be joining us soon. All of them were started by people who either were students at UChicago and participated in Lumen Christie's programs and said, I want to do something like this when I uh when I teach, uh, or people who were invited earlier to speak at Lumen Christie or interacted in some way with the programs and decided this is something that I'd like to do elsewhere.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Very interesting. So a lot of grassroots work uh sort of emerging right now. At Lumen Christie, do you see yourselves, how do you think of uh who exactly you're serving? Are you are you serving sort of the entire uh University of Chicago community, which would maybe even include community members, people who aren't maybe necessarily affiliated with the university? Are you focused in on students? Sort of what's what's your um particular understanding of who you're trying to serve?

SPEAKER_00 10:13

It's a great question, and it's it's something that's a little bit up for debate. So I same here, by the way. Uh I would say that our our primary mission is serving the university community, so students, staff, faculty. But we have our our pro many of our programs are open to the broader community in Hyde Park. So that could be there are plenty of people that have not had a formal affiliation with the university, but are welcome to come to our programs. And we have some programs that are specifically student run, but then many that are open. Over the last 25 years, the institute has also developed a range of programs for Catholics in the Chicago, in Chicagoland. So there's that part of our programming. So we have our what we call our university program, we have what we call our cultural forum, which is Chicagoland beyond the university. And then we have a set of national programs. So every summer we have week-long residential seminars, in which there's 10 this year. And they're held in different locations across the U.S. And there's one in Rome and one in Oxford. And we fly students to the location, they have reading on a particular topic within the Catholic intellectual tradition, and then they have discussion for several hours a day, and also opportunities to build friendships during those programs. And with the pandemic, like lots of folks uh in higher ed, our programming went online. So there's started to be a bit more of a national audience for some of our programs. But so the the question, as you can see, is a live one of is it just U of C or is it is it something broader?

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Yeah. Oh, that that's that's so similar to how we we are sort of addressing or or trying to think through things at Upper House, particularly as you mentioned with the pandemic and moving online and suddenly having an audience, uh a community that's uh at least across the country, if not wider, and then wondering, you know, if if we just sort of return to what we did before COVID, we'd lose all those people because we did everything in person and not online. And um, yeah, hard decisions that have to be made and and uh you know, returning to the mission and understanding exactly what fits in and what doesn't. Uh that's I guess uh some of the work, um, some of the work at these centers. Um uh you've mentioned a few times uh the community there at in Hyde Park. Uh, you know, University of Chicago is an elite university with a distinguished history, and I'm wondering what the religious ecosystem around University of Chicago is like. Um I I can sort of respond with some of my thoughts here at at uh in Madison, but uh yeah, how would you describe sort of the broader religious ecosystem that you're a part of?

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Sure. And I'd love to hear more about how it is in Madison. I'm curious. So having just been there once when I was in college briefly, uh I'll answer by saying a little bit about my own experience at UChicago as an undergrad, aware that my experience is slightly dated now since it was 20 years ago. But my sense from the students that I've met, uh the current students that I've met, is that it's it's still similar. Uh so uh I started at UChicago as as an 18-year-old, and I was a practicing Catholic, had no intention of leaving the church, and but I was completely clueless that there was an intellectual tradition in Christianity. This was just complete news to me. You know, uh I said my prayers uh and I went to church and I went on retreats. But I didn't know that there was a philosophical tradition, an economic tradition, a political tradition, you know, all these traditions of thinking in all of these fields and the sciences and the arts. And so I came to UChicago and Lumen Christie at the time was a smaller organization. It was housed within the Catholic Chaplaincy on campus. We still have a close relationship with them. And at the Catholic Chaplaincy and through Lumen Christie, I started meeting Catholic nerds for lack of a better word. So uh folks who cited Thomas Aquinas and Papal Encyclicals and C.S. Lewis, you know, and of course I know Lewis is not, but we love to claim him, but I know everyone wants to claim him. Uh but citing intellectual giants in regular conversation, as though it was the were the most normal thing in the world. And I thought, okay, well, this is I've never met Catholics or Christians, you know, like this. This is interesting. And at the same time as I was having that experience at Calvert House, that's the name of the Catholic chaplaincy, and through Lumen Christie, I I was taking core courses at UChicago. Uh UChicago has a I would say a distinctive curriculum compared to most of its peers. It's not a list of courses that everyone needs to take, but it's a more, it's different from a set of distributive requirements and say take a history class, take a poly sci class, take a bio class. There's a more, there's a set of of specific courses that are designed for a core curriculum. And many of them emphasize, historically have emphasized Western civilization. It's broader now, but I think it's it's still the case that there's a lot of Western Civ in the core at UChicago. And so for me, I was learning about the Catholic intellectual tradition not just in my Catholic life, but also in the classroom through taking Western Civ courses. And that was illuminating to me. And I think that my sense is that a lot of our students have similar experiences, that although it's a secular university, and and there is some of the hostility you might hear about in the media, but I think there's also a surprising amount of openness to religion at UChicago.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Yeah, that uh I was actually just there uh last year for a conference, uh, an academic conference, and I was struck by even the architecture. There's a lot of uh, you know, there's a major chapel. I forget the exact name of it. Maybe it's the Rockefeller Chapel or something. You got it, Rockefeller, yeah. Yeah, I mean, just a massive uh you know Gothic type um uh chapel. And then um I I noticed that there were a number of houses along one of the you know edges of campus. Many of them seem to have religious uh you know names to them. The Chabad house was there and and other things too. So um that that's a lot of the but without the major chapel, uh, UW has actually a very similar um we're we're right on the edge of campus. It has a similar layout in the sense that a lot of the religious organizations just sort of ring the campus. So right on the edge of of whatever campus property there is, there's churches, we have some historic churches. We actually have a very large uh Catholic student church uh called St. Paul's that's just across the street from us. I can uh you know see their steeple uh just over there that's very vibrant and is right on sort of the main uh walkway. Um I think probably the one of the big differences is that UW is a public university, and so there's there's very little attention to religion in any official way by the university. There's no chaplain, nothing like that. Um but there is a deep uh history of um this sort of proximity geographically. And then of course, uh just like places like University of Chicago, many students come with religious backgrounds and um are looking for either a community to connect to or are enlivened to their faith while they're here on campus. And so they need um, you know, different churches and and other things. So um I think it's pretty similar, but um it is interesting. I it's certainly a pluralistic environment where uh there is no default uh religion um on campus. Uh that's different. I mean, historically it was very Protestant uh culture, if not uh officially very much influenced by that. I actually was just talking to a faculty member last week and learned that up until the early 2000s, uh faculty here at UW got Good Friday a half day, um, which is just you know a little nod to a sort of uh religious calendar. Um they they they turned that into a floating half day uh in the early 2000s, so now you can take it whenever you want. Uh but uh there's that sort of legacy of a sort of uh Protestant um culture. Um uh but uh I think in in terms of who's trying to serve the community and uh and particularly the university community, it probably looks pretty similar to the University of Chicago in that way. Uh, it sounds very simple. Yeah, well that thanks, Danny, for sharing uh about uh your situation. Um what at Upper House here we focus on uh one of the main things we talk about is is equipping students in particular to see the things they're learning at UW and the vocations they've chosen. So if they're choosing to be an engineer or a biologist or a historian, well, if they're choosing to be a historian, I I really want them to think uh seriously about that before actually jumping all the way into that. But um, whatever it is, we see all of that as sort of working, that that's kingdom work, that's work that's God call God has called them to. Um and I'm wondering if you think about it, you probably maybe use different terminology than than kingdom work or something like that, but how do you think about that and and sort of how do you try to get students at University of Chicago to think about their work at the university as part of uh their calling as um as Christians?

SPEAKER_00 20:03

It's something I'll give a quick example as to how how we're doing that. So one of the new initiatives that we have this year, less than a year old, is we have just started a uh a residence for for graduate students at the university. And it's this one, the residence we started is for grad men, male graduate students, hoping to do start one for women uh in the near future. In that in that uh in that community, we have uh a chaplain and he runs uh once a quarter what he calls an integration seminar, in which he invites a Catholic professional to the house, and uh over a meal they have um a discussion with the Catholic graduate students about the integration of faith and work. So it's something that's that's also very important uh to us. I I think that I would say that in addition to valuing what what you mentioned, Dan, about seeing a range of secular vocations as a way to serve God, that probably what Lumen Christi has emphasized more over the last 25 years that it's been around uh has been that just the the other direction of that equation, so that uh how one's faith can can inform, how one's how the the intellectual tradition of the church can inform the the various parts of our of our lives in the world. So how can the church's how can the church's tradition in thinking about the market economy, or the church's tradition and thinking about immigration, or the church's tradition? And thinking about the body. How can these inform the way that we think about our lives? So similar, but maybe I would say emphasizing the other direction a little bit more, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you you've mentioned a few times the Catholic intellectual tradition as sort of the frame, the body of work that you're drawing on. For those of us who um aren't familiar with with that, uh can you I know I know that's a very uh massive um uh tradition, but um yeah, so maybe some of the names and and just some of the ways you think about uh that tradition.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

Sure. Sure. Uh we to your point, Dan, yes, the the the breadth becomes overwhelming at a certain point. So the some of the names that would be that that we that we encounter regularly with you all, of course, Augustine, um Thomas Aquinas are two of the big ones, John Henry Newman, um as well. Uh we have seminars, our summer seminars regularly touch on the writings of these uh distinguished thinkers, but it's also much broader. So it's really any way in which the in which Catholicism intersects with one of the academic disciplines offered at the university. And so we also have have had a number of programs over the years, summer seminars, academic conferences, lectures that have intersected with what's called Catholic social teaching. And I have to admit that being a historian of the early modern period, my knowledge kind of ends around 1700. So Catholic social teaching is something more recent, uh, starting in the mid to late 19th century, uh, uh a set of papal encyclicals, so papal pronouncements on specific uh issues in the world. And so taking those papal encyclicals and applying them to thinking about things like the market economy. Uh, how does Catholic teaching apply when one thinks of practical things like the economy, like immigration, uh, and so on.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

And these are um, as I understand it, uh cashless social teaching, as you mentioned, is sort of 19th century, 20th century. So really, really addressing the types of issues that we are still confronting uh today in a way that you know that there's there's a lot of value in reading, you know, medieval papal encyclicals and others, but that's a a largely different uh society, different structure, different economy, and uh other things. So a lot of the Catholic social teachings, as I understand it, really inform a lot of the ways that Catholics sort of live out their their commitments uh in the world today. Um and maybe and maybe just to uh get your thoughts on this too, as I understand it, Catholic social teaching also doesn't fit neatly within a left-right political spectrum that we have in American politics, that it sort of lands in its own uh own coordinate system uh that people can sort of pull things from if they're if they're looking for it, but sort of has its own orientation that's largely around church tradition as opposed to our sort of uh polarization uh or or or polls. I don't even want to get into polarization, but the polls of our politics today. Is that is that how you describe it?

SPEAKER_00 25:20

You put it really well, Dan. It makes going to the to election days kind of maddening. So, you know. Uh so we we believe along with our our our Christian with many of our Christian brothers and sisters that that uh we we have a duty to to uh to serve the the the poor and the marginalized and how does one interpret that? You know, so if you think about poor and marginalized and perhaps its most obvious meaning, uh maybe then you tend toward voting for the Democratic Party. Um but if you think about marginalized in in a broader sense, and say thinking about uh an unborn child, then well, it makes things more complicated. So there's it's it's you put it really well, that it doesn't it doesn't clearly flow into to one political party or another. In one sense it's frustrating, but in another, it's also I think refreshing in that it's a reminder that the church is is in the world, but but not of the world. And so it can't be represented by by by worldly parties.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

Well, yeah, and and it's also in the world in another sense, which is it's it's a global tradition. It's a tradition that isn't only rooted in American uh concerns. And so some of the frustration is more on the maybe the uh American side than the Catholic side, in the sense that uh we have a particular arrangement of politics here that uh leads to um these binary choices in a way that other parts of the world that's not exactly the same uh political makeup. Um well, just want to highlight that this is one of the ways you know, this series is on Christian education and uh the ways that that that um places like Lumen Christie, you know, sort of advance, and they're certainly not the only ones, but this particular Catholic uh social teaching is one of the ways a lot of Christians actually get education, uh or are educated around um how Christian faith intersects uh with uh the rest of their life. So um it may not be in this sort of formal uh curriculum, like at a at the University of Chicago, uh, but there are these other broader ways that Christian education is happening. We have that here at Upper House too, where um uh you know, we're trying to channel certain traditions, uh Christian traditions as well, um, in ways that hopefully you know educate not just students and faculty, though we hope that happens, but also the broader uh community. Um one thing I wanted to uh just continue on this um focus on uh sort of how how do you uh enact your mission uh with your uh with students in particular, are there any particular issues that come up for students at University of Chicago that you're serving around this integration question? So I think one, and this partly comes out for us because of because we largely serve Protestants and uh and evangelicals even, uh though I don't know how many students would actually uh you know call themselves that, but uh students who come out of Christian traditions that um really don't uh really have stark divisions between secular and sacred work, for example. So they uh and and sacred work might be being a pastor or a missionary or something that's very obviously um connected to a religious organization. Um and seeing that that in many ways is the meaningful work, if you if you want to be sort of a pious, devout Christian, you would go into one of those fields. And for the rest of us, um, you know, it's about sort of doing it's about basically supporting those people through financial resources or something like that. And we're trying to get students to think, well, you know, there is a role for that, but actually God's called people to be engineers or biologists as well. And we want we want Christians to be in those spheres and to uh sort of be participating in the conversations that are happening um in government, uh in in industry and elsewhere. So that's one of the big challenges that we face with students is trying to get them to see a more holistic understanding of um what's God call what God has called people to do in the world. Um are there topics like that that you you know, sort of perennial topics that you that you confront with students at Lumen Christie?

SPEAKER_00 29:42

Yeah, that's a great question. One that has come up uh frequently in in my time at Lumen Christie thus far, and that was an issue uh for Christian students that I knew in my my previous job was a feeling as though well if if everyone else knew what I think uh they I'd I I'd be ostracized. So a sort of a feeling that as as a devout Christian, that speaking one's speaking about one's beliefs openly on campus uh is not welcome or might lead to social problems. So so that's one issue that I think both I've seen both with students and faculty that I've experienced myself, at least a perceived fear. I I started to get over that a little bit as I as I taught more, and I I think I started to realize that the it wasn't just a question of well others are hostile to Christianity. I think it was also while while there while there very well may be some of that, I think part of it is also, you know, my perception, you know, that I I I'm afraid to speak openly about this. So that's that's I think that's that's a big challenge uh is thinking about well, how is it that we can as as Christians be be open about what we what we believe in in ways that that demonstrate that we also are rational and we don't just operate on blind faith, uh but that we we really have have thought about uh our our positions and and that we're also respectful of others' positions. And that one can one can speak about what one believes without having to engage in kind of proselyteism in which one is trying to convert you that doesn't need to be the case. I can share and and we can be open about what we think.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

More of a dialogue uh uh in the in the true sense of the term of two you know two engagements, uh two sides engaging. Um yeah, that that rings uh that that's very familiar as well. Um I think a lot of students uh at a place like UW come in um knowing uh getting pretty clear signals early on in their time at UW that it's sort of publicly voicing uh faith, uh particularly faith, it Christian faith, um, but but even for non-Christian uh religious people, that that's that's not the default mode of reasoning or of in or of arguing. And so um understanding sort of how to I I wonder sometimes, uh I know often it it is portrayed as sort of a faculty or hostile to religious students, and I'm sure that's the case. In fact, I've I've felt that in my own life, but it's often the peer, the peer pressure, the sense that you're outing yourself as religious among your peers, among your you know, your friends, people who are gonna judge you, people that you have to be around a lot more than faculty, actually, um for for your time at college. And so I wonder as that as as the demographic religious demographics have changed and sort of the culture around religion at you on university campuses has changed, that that's gotten tougher for a lot of students. Um and they um uh sometimes they just need community and sort of the bolstering of being around some Christians sometimes that that helps that. But um I also wonder when as that's something you you're doing uh at Lumen Christie, are there particular things you tell students to um any tactics or or strategies that really uh seem to seem to help them?

SPEAKER_00 33:36

Well, if I may, Dan, one one comment you just made, if I could follow up on that, I think that's the question and maybe in a circuitous way. I'll try to not not be too too circuitous. I you mentioned that uh that there's experiencing faculty, you know, hostility from professors, but perhaps that the hostility is even more so with um students. And I I would say that with faculty or and or with peers, that one of the things that seems to me is perhaps the the greatest challenge, even more than the uh the hostility, which from my experience is sort of time to time, you know. Uh the the thing to me that seems constant is that there's generally an absence of religion in the public, in public on college campuses. So I'll just give a couple of examples. You know, when I had students who were gonna come to campus at Alma College, where I taught for almost 10 years, and help with orientation, they had orientation training on Sundays. Like, okay. So there's just uh there's just not a recognition that, you know, um that might be when someone's going to church, you know, for example. And so so there's just it, but it's not, it's not explicit hostility. It's just lots of people have grown up in a secular culture and they don't even think about it, you know. Why not do something on Sunday? Uh so I think there are things like that. The other example I was going to give was I've talked with a number of peers when I was teaching and now um as at Lumen Christi faculty who express a hesitance to bring their religious beliefs into the classroom. I think there's a perception that you'll be perceived as somehow less academic if you talk about religion. Uh, even if you're talking about something like the city of God, you know, Augustine, they're like, well, let's focus on the political theory rather than, you know, it's it's hard to talk about Augustine without talking about Christianity. But but I think that there is a perception that uh there or there there's there's there often are cases in which there's a that Christianity is unintentionally or sometimes intentionally silenced. Uh that it's not necessarily hostility, but that it's just it's just not there. You don't encounter it. And so without realizing it, you become secularized. And and so I think that what we want to do as far as a strategy is is demonstrate that the the church's tradition is is relevant and in all aspects of your life. It's it's not just this thing that you do on Sunday, but it's relevant to how you think about your money. It's relevant to how you think about marriage, uh, and and so on.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

Yeah. Well, thanks for that. That that makes a lot of sense. And um I think you're right. I think there's a silence is is as uh as relevant as any overt hostility um to religion on college campuses. Um you've you've mentioned faculty uh recently a few times. I wondered, this is something I think about here at Upper House. How do you see uh scholarship and particularly scholarship produced by the faculty that you're trying to serve as related to uh what you're trying to do? So, and particularly the formation uh of Christians. Do you see an obvious connection there? Or um yeah, how do you try to engage faculty on the research they're doing on the on the scholarship that they're writing?

SPEAKER_00 37:16

So there's there's a number of ways. And you know, one has been that we we think of ourselves as an institute that offers programming that is at the highest level of rigor. So, you know, it's not sort of uh any less rigorous because it's about Catholic topics. So one of the things that's been central to our mission has been that we are academically rigorous and we are Catholic. And the two do not contradict each other. In fact, they they can enrich each other. And so we our hope is that this is something that comes through in when when we have lectures and when we have seminars. And I think it for some people it's more natural than others. And actually, we had a we had a wonderful speaker, um Protestant actually, uh Warren Smith from Duke University, come speak recently. And I thought he just beautifully embodied that idea that I am a Christian and I am a scholar. And it just came through in his in his work as he spoke, as he gave a lecture and also led a discussion with students. So that's something that I've been starting to make a practice of reaching out to folks that we, scholars we've invited to speak on campus and to say, you know, look, this is something that we that we want to share with our students, that that you you can be a Catholic scholar, a Christian scholar, that the two are not contradictory. And you you should feel we want you to feel free to speak both in your field and as a Catholic, and that you don't need to bracket the two off when you're when you're here at the institute. And and I think that this is something that not just Lumen Christie, but Christian study centers, I think it's something that we have to offer that is more difficult at the university. That you can have a conversation, say, about my area is 16th century Spain. And so I've studied people who had visions, you know? And so you can have a conversation about a woman who had a vision, Teresa of Avala. And you don't just need to have an academic conversation about it. You can also say, well, is it true? Did it actually happen? Uh is it good? Uh is it beautiful? You know, so you can you can engage in it on a variety of levels, and we want folks to feel free to do that.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Yeah, that's such a hard uh uh norm to break, I guess, for a lot of uh faculty, right? So I think a lot of faculty who are often trained at very good institutions, but are also ones that are quite secular. Um even if they're Christian, their formation, their scholarly formation happens in pretty secular uh settings. But um my observation, and I you know, I I went through the program here at UW Madison, so I had a lot of the same experiences, is there's just uh there's almost like a dualism that develops in your in your intellect where you sort of have the uh and it's not like one is less rigorous than the other, but there's just sort of the the academic intellect and then the religious intellect. And um, I think often the trouble is that for Christian faculty, the academic intellect is is way more developed than the Christian one in some like you, you know, the the you're learning deeply in a particular field, and yet your understanding of theology or of the intellectual tradition of your uh faith is not necessarily being deepened as quickly, as as deep as as you are in your field. And so that creates this weird dissonance um and dualism that means um I think that is one of the opportunities for places um like the places where both of us work that can actually call out and try to create the practice of doing that type of um integration or re- reintegration of these two uh these two intellects. And um also in a way, I I know faculty here, um, just like with students, uh, there is a question about um repercussions for doing that in a public setting. Um what what will my colleagues think of me uh if they know that I'm uh that I'm actually contemplating the you know the reality of these visions in the 16th century, right? That that I'm not just treating them as uh a sort of uh traditional historian would, but I'm actually contemplating the truth of them in a sort of metaphysical sense. And I know that can be pretty uh challenging as well. So um uh that's great. That I'm really glad you're you're doing that work there. Um I I did want to just uh we just have a couple questions uh left. Uh one of them is thinking about um because most of the people we've talked to on this series have been coming out of the Protestant higher education world, um, particularly the evangelical higher education world, uh places like Wheaton College and others. Um I wanted to get a sense uh from you. We we've talked about sort of this crisis in Christian education a number of times, that there's a number of Christian colleges and seminaries that are shrinking or closing, uh enrollment is declining. Just wanted to get a sense from a someone in an adjacent uh uh industry, I guess, or or field of Catholic higher education and Catholic education. Is there a similar sense of crisis? Is there a sense that there's massive changes um on the horizon? Um, or or is there some other way of talking about that? And and just the one data point that I know of just from reading the news is um Marymount University in uh Arlington, Virginia, which is a Catholic school there, recently talk they they were in the news because they were eliminating a lot of majors, um, some of them seemingly quite crucial to being a liberal arts university, um, uh, because of declining enrollment. So that was just like one data point where from the outside it's like, oh, that that looks a lot like an evangelical uh Christian college uh doing the same thing. But just wonder from your perspective, how how are people in the sort of the Catholic uh education world thinking about higher education more broadly right now?

SPEAKER_00 43:20

Oh, before I say anything uh about just my own experience, I'll mention that I just saw in my email today that my one of my personal heroes is a fellow named Bishop Robert Barron. He's got a big following on YouTube, and he has a show called The Word on Fire Show, and he's gonna be talking about precisely this issue about why we need the liberal arts. I think it's coming out soon, the next few days. Uh so folks, I'm sure, uh, might be interested in hearing what he has to say about it. I I certainly will be tuning in. I as far as how you know how Catholics are thinking about the these things. As a historian, one knows that there's it seems to be you know one one crisis to another, right? There's there's always some some kind of challenge you know that we're facing uh as a society. And and right now we're thinking about I think not just in Catholic higher ed, but clearly in in in Christian higher ed and in higher ed in general, the challenge of that the liberal arts face. And and there's there's a couple of approaches that that come to mind for me as far as how one might think about that um that situation. So you know one is to say you know well if if we lose the liberal arts that we we sort of lose the the link with with with the church, you know, that and and there's something to that that you know that's the liberal arts studying theology, philosophy, history, literature, that that's a real place where we encounter the the Christian intellectual tradition in a substantive way. And and there's there's also I think part of the tradition in Catholic higher ed there's been a substantial pre-professional tradition as well. Lots of Catholic schools that for a long time have focused on pre-professional programs and in nursing and business. And and I think that there's I know I had a tendency for a long time to say well no a real education is a liberal arts education. And and you know that's that's closed minded of me. And and I think that it's my my point of view has changed now. And while I while I still think that the liberal arts we can't let the liberal arts go away it's it's important to think about well how can we reflect on the intersective arts and the professional traditions and that that's a productive way of moving forward. Not to lose either one I don't think that the liberal arts should be reduced to say business ethics or medical ethics that that those are good things to study. But I think there's there's value in in just thinking about how one can be a Catholic and a businessman or you know a Christian and a lawyer you know that and that those two things can inform one another.

SPEAKER_01 46:28

Do you see your perspective on that? I know University of Chicago is known as a place that um you know is it sees itself as defending the liberal arts in a way you mentioned the sort of unique curriculum do you see that is that sort of part of what's developed what's uh contributed to your development of of thinking about this is that particular University of Chicago tradition of education? Or is this something I guess I'm wondering is this a broader Catholic view or is it one that's unique to University of Chicago based Catholics?

SPEAKER_00 47:02

I would say and I mean speaking from my own experience I I would say it's both. I think one thing that was very powerful for me was going to a place studying at a place like UChicago where there wasn't an engineering major when I was an undergrad. There wasn't a business major there there wasn't a nursing major and and people still managed to go into healthcare and and business and with with the broad training that they had in a liberal arts field. Now it's it's complicated because there's also students that come out of UChicago also had the benefit of going to an elite university and you might say that it's they have uh an easier transition into a professional job because they they have that name recognition. But it certainly was part of my my formation that you can study anything uh and as an undergraduate and that is is great preparation just for for being a human being and and I think it's also it's also Catholic and I would say more broadly Christian but it goes back to the Greeks right that that you know Aristotle said that you know we we delight in in reason and so there's there's something about I think you know higher ed has a it's become our mission in a way we've made it our mission to prepare people for careers. I think that the mission of higher ed should be preparing people for life you know more broadly and that that can include your your career training but if it's only career training then we we're losing something.

SPEAKER_01 48:47

It has to be we're called not just to our jobs those are important and those give us dignity I think we're called to something we're called to something bigger and and higher ed should have a part in that yes uh very interesting reflections um I think of an earlier era of higher ed probably for I know they did framed a lot of this in you know citizenship was the broader category with good citizens. I think that's sort of fallen out of favor too that's not really how a lot of universities talk about it but there has been a I guess just to wrap up the reflections here a a pr a thinning out of of what higher education is is the purpose of it is and um I know here at UW we have a uh something called the Wisconsin idea which is about um serving the state as being a big part of what the university is doing and training people to do. And that's gotten political in in in recent decades um as uh people have you know wondered how narrow how how to focus UW's resources um and whether the Wisconsin idea should be you know more about um uh technical training or it should be more about sort of liberal arts and and other things. But um that's just one case but uh I think uh I think the broader observation is that um that's one thing I think study centers can do on these campuses is try to call the campus itself to often what are in their own mission statements, because many of those were written long ago, that there is a very capacious view of what education is for and what it's preparing students for. And it's it's not just careers as you said, it's for full life being good people, um, preparing people for life um in and a lot of that life won't be spent at work. It'll be spent doing other things as well. Indeed. Yeah okay so Danny one last question I I was looking around your website and I noticed a couple places where there was this phrase that I was just interested in hearing uh what what uh Lum and Christie means by it, which is uh the evangelization of culture. Uh I think there were a couple different uh programs that talked about that being uh part of what what it was doing. And um I wondered if uh I think I know what um evangelization means on its own and what culture means on its own, but I wondered what they meant together and um uh yeah yeah just just what what you meant by that and and how uh how Lumen Christie is is aiming for the evangelization of culture.

SPEAKER_00 51:12

I I think it has I would say it has something to do with integration of of faith with the rest of our lives and I'll speak again from my own experience the one of the great revelations I had as an undergrad who was able to interact with Lumen Christie programs and and other Catholic programming on campus was that the church had this amazingly broad tradition that could teach me things that were not just relevant to my strictly religious beliefs, whatever that that meant, but that could inform how I voted, could help me to be a more informed citizen, could help me to think about uh raising a family, uh could help me think about the relationship between faith and and work and sexuality, all sorts of things. And that like I said was completely unknown to me. And so we we we hope that the students and faculty and community members that pass through our programs will will get a glimpse of this that that the church can evangelize the culture the church has a rich tradition that can be brought to bear on thinking about all aspects of our lives.

SPEAKER_01 52:29

Great well that just to echo for the last time that resonates a lot we talk about bringing the gospel to bear on the the campus and the community of UW Madison. So very similar thinking there. Danny it's been a pleasure to to learn from you and to talk about your uh your organization and your work down in Chicago. Thanks for joining us on the podcast. Thank you so much I appreciate you inviting me. It's been funks for joining us if you've enjoyed today's podcast be sure to subscribe and give us a rating on your favorite podcast app. Also be sure to check out our upcoming events on upperhouse.org and our other podcast, Upwards, where we dig deeper into the topics our in house guests are passionate about. With Faith in mind is supported by the Stephen and Laura Brown Foundation. It is produced at Upper House in Madison, Wisconsin, hosted by Dan Hummel and John Turtle. Our executive producer and editor is Jesse Kootman please follow us on social media with the handle at upperhouse UW