Secular Universities: Balancing Faith and Profession as a Professor

How can a Christian professor integrate his faith and his discipline and also flourish at a major public university? Sharing his experience, David Weerts, professor of education at the University of Minnesota, discusses the ways a robust understanding of faith and learning can fortify teaching, research, and service in a public institution that seeks to serve the common good—with host Dan Hummel.

Learn about David Weerts & The University of Minnesota

Read David's Book: State Governments and Research Universities: A Framework for a Renewed Partnership

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.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

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. David Wirtz to the show. Hi, David. Hello, thanks for having me. Yes, it's great to be with you here in person at Upper House. The topic on this episode is Christian education within public and secular universities. Universities like UW Madison, where Upper House is located, and universities like the University of Minnesota, where David is on the faculty. So we're gonna get right into the discussion, but first a little more about David. David works as a professor in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. He's also had leadership roles in the Office for Public Engagement and the Center for Integrative Leadership. He received his master's and PhD in education from UW Madison, so that's uh good to know and very proud of that. And before that, his BA from UW Eau Claire. So you are a full UW UW system product. That's right. Through and through. Are you from uh Wisconsin?

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Yeah, actually uh grew up kind of around Green Bay by Luxembourg area and then moved to Eau Claire and lived different places around the state. So uh a lot of loyalty still. I'm even though I'm in Minnesota, I'm raising kids that are all Packer fans, uh, much to my wife's shagrin here.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

But yeah, that's tough. That's tough in the Twin Cities, I'm sure. All right, and finally, uh David's published dozens of refereed articles and chapters in his field. One that I read recently was on the history of UW Madison, actually, which David's written a lot about, uh, and something we call the Wisconsin Idea, which is the sort of public service mission of the university. So we really appreciate uh David using University of Minnesota resources to write about University of Wisconsin. That's very much appreciated here. Um before jumping in, I wondered if you could just let our audience know what how you developed an interest in education as your field of study.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Well, I think it had a lot to do during my time at Eau Claire. I was really involved as a student and student leader and a resident assistant in all of these kind of areas. And I found out that, boy, you know, I could become uh, you know, somebody who does this kind of thing for a living to work in higher education. So uh not long out of um college, I was able to secure a national student affairs internship. And I moved down to Florida. I was at Florida Atlantic University and was working in the housing and residence life area, which if you ever know about that field, it's uh it's something you want to do maybe only a couple of years. Um, and every job you have to have after that is the easiest job you've ever had because it's a very uh challenging working with students on the floor and all of this kind of work. But I wanted to continue to think about um ideas around the larger purpose of higher education, because even at that time, several years ago, um kind of seeing how some of the hollowness of what was happening in higher education and thinking about my own work and what could I do in the field. And so I really got connected around ideas of public engagement in higher education and how we're more productively engaged with society, big problems and issues that we can work together. So that's kind of what got me started on the front end.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Yeah, very fascinating. Well, uh, we'll jump in here. I mean, you've uh mentioned field of education and you're a university professor. What is the daily, weekly rhythms of a university professor at a place like University of Minnesota?

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Yeah, so uh if I give a coherent view to this, please send my mom the podcast because she asks about this almost on a weekly basis. She says, What should I tell my you know friends in the neighborhood? I'm not really sure what you do. So I think it would be it's really around three buckets of work that we do. Uh, and part of this has to do with being at a research university versus maybe other kinds of maybe a small private college or whatever it might be. Um, and and the first buck is really around the teaching and advising work. Um, and so especially at the uh research university level, uh, we do a lot of advising for PhD students, which is pretty intensive around getting them through their dissertations. Um, so it's working with them in the field around how are you doing uh you know, meaningful research that's uh well constructed methodologically and conceptually. So there's a lot of that. Um it's funny, even around the teaching question. So there's a lot of questions about uh quote unquote workload for faculty. Right. And it's funny, I think about so my dad was a uh a pastor for for many years. And when I got my first faculty job in Florida, he said, Well, how many uh courses a day do you teach? And I said, Well, you know, it's a research university, so I actually only teach two courses a week. And he's like, two courses a day, boy, that's the deal of the century. And I said to him, Well, I got you beat because you know you only teach one day a week on Sundays, right? So we had, you know, kind of a laugh about it. But as a pastor's kid, you know, I knew how hard my dad worked. Um, but there is sort of that thing where there's all these other things that you're doing outside of teaching. So a couple of the other areas uh is you're expected to have an active research agenda. So things that you're developing over time, you're connecting to uh your various disciplinary uh frameworks for the work we do in education to help improve education, leadership, and these various areas. Um, so you might have in a given week a various stage of uh publication or conference papers that you're working on. Maybe you're starting a new project with a grad student, or you're editing something that's going to proof for a journal. I might be writing a grant uh for some project, uh, working with graduate assistants in those kind of areas. So there's this kind of continuing on a field of research. And then hopefully you have chances to give talks and sometimes consultations around the country or internationally, because you start to gain a reputation around to be able to support. So that those are two areas. And then the last one is really around this notion of service, which is can be kind of a nebulous kind of thing. But at the field level, that's more around uh so for example, I serve on a couple of editorial boards uh in my field. So in that particular case, um, I will get a few manuscripts, you know, maybe a month that will say, hey, uh, we need your anonymous review on this. So then I contribute to whether those should be uh published and give revisions or whatever it might be. Also involve with annual planning committees, things like that for annual meetings. I might do something at the university level, like supporting, you know, an advisory board for the dean of the graduate school on graduate school outcomes. And then we're doing admissions for students, who who's getting the uh the fellowships. So there's a lot of kind of internal thing that there's faculty governance. Um it's a range of kinds of things that you're doing, which is why it's sometimes hard to explain to my mom and uh in the in her apartment area.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

So yeah, and it's there, there's different rhythms, right, to all those different things. So some of them are very semester focused, and then other things like research would be happening on its own rhythm. Um, you know, one thing that strikes me as you describe that is uh there might be a stereotype out there that a professor uh is is very solitary in their work or somehow sits in their office a lot. And a lot of the stuff you describe is either working with other people or being in the classroom. Um and that might be different depending on your field. I guess there's some fields where there might be a little more solitary time. But um would you say that? Would you say you're pretty you're pretty much talking to people most of your day, all day?

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of that. And I I think what's challenging is um it's funny because when I was a graduate student here at Wisconsin, I I remember having the gift of solitude. Right. Yes. Where and part of it is I didn't have, you know, wasn't married with three kids at the time. So there's that element of it too. But I think you almost, in some cases, really have to protect that time to be able to think and write and process and read, frankly, uh, because I think the days are really busy, you have a lot of obligations, uh, you want to really serve your students well. So they have deadlines for their own exams or dissertation deadlines. So there's there's a lot in the queue. Um so I think it's protecting that is something we try to do.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

Yeah, I I remember receiving similar advice when I uh was writing my dissertation that I actually was fortunate enough to have a postdoctoral fellowship that was only research. So basically, it's hard to imagine this, but getting paid for basically unstructured weeks where you just fill it up. Being told that this is this is the high point of your life as a writer and researcher. Um and I didn't actually, you know, I'm I'm here at Upper House, not at a faculty position, but um can definitely affirm that some years out that those are amazing years of of productivity and um yeah, a lot of getting further work done than your dissertation is trying to find out ways to carve out little chunks of time to sort of relive that amazing dissertation process in some ways. Yeah, for sure. Well, thanks for sharing on what a week looks like. Uh want to jump into talking about being a professor at a public university uh and what we'll focus on University of Minnesota here and how religion is expressed in different parts of the institution. So I thought we could start um well well, first of all, David, tell us a bit about your faith and sort of where you're coming from in terms of thinking about um faith and your profession as a professor.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Yeah, well, I would say this in terms of my own uh faith. I you know would be uh associated with a broad Christian tradition, yeah, kind of more evangelical. Um and so thinking about um when I came into the uh profession, you know, there's a there's a lot of discussion and question around, you know, what is the role of a faculty member in these spaces? Um and I think, you know, part of it is we talk about um affiliated with this Anselm House at Minnesota where faculty are living divided lives in the sense, and students are as well, where you feel like you're trained out of a certain disciplinary tradition that is separated from your Christian faith and your, you know, commitment to Christ and what he's done for us and you know, really through the gospel. And I think, you know, how how do you bring those things together in a coherent way? And I think um from the beginning it was thinking about, you know, how do you serve students well, potentially have opportunities to speak with them, uh, you know, about your faith. And so I've I've had that as kind of a foundational understanding about how we think about engaging potentially with students. But I think what I've been excited about the last few years is thinking about that um that all knowledge is held together by Christ. So that our our disciplines themselves, if you if you believe that Christ holds it all together, um, how do we think about Christian thought as the best of our disciplines? So uh thanks to resources like Anselm House and the Christian Study Center movement, I've been able to bring in uh into dialogue within my own profession in the classroom and even some writing I've done to think about faith-informed understandings of this. I mean, maybe a quick question or a quick example of this would be I teach um uh in the higher education area where we talk about um student affairs and student life and higher education. And I think, you know, I've been able through some of that literature thinking about is to introduce to students to this notion of, you know, what does it mean to be human? So if we're moving toward a like a flourishing life of what, you know, what does it mean to live a good life and build a good society? I think the frameworks that I was educated in are are incoherent with how we would as believers believe uh what Christ did for us and why we're here to seek the flourishing of others. So I'm able to kind of bring in those perspectives um through kind of broad ontological views around, you know, human anthropology and these kind of things. So you kind of bring this in to ask questions for that people can ask questions in these spaces. And that's new for me, and that's around the integration of faith and knowledge with all of life with my discipline.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Yeah, and that that makes a lot of sense. And we'll get to some of the maybe uh specific uh uh spaces where that can happen. I did want to bring up um just get your thoughts on the identity of a place like University of Minnesota as a public institution, a public uh higher education institution. Um so these integration questions might look different if you were at a Christian college or somewhere that was explicitly um uh religious. What what does it mean to you that University of Minnesota is a public institution?

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Yeah, I mean I I think um it's interesting because um one of I have uh a part-time or a quarter time appointment and what's called the Office for Public Engagement. And it relates to my own research, but in that role, it's around how do you bring the resources and knowledge of community in partnership with resources and knowledge with the university in ways that serve the common good. Basically what our office does. Um But I think um what what I try to do then is say, well, what counts as kind of knowledge, right? So what I try to bring in in that case is to say, well, we have a lot of ideas about what secular knowledge is. I think our public institutions are increasingly in tune to like indigenous knowledge, um, other ways of knowing, uh, across various, you know, ways of thinking in society. Um but I think in that sense, I've had a chance, we did a webinar, um, and you're always kind of careful about this, but bringing in kind of more of a faith perspective around how do people with that kind of view of community contribute in in interesting and important ways to the public good of the public university. And so I think it's reminding people around that these um have important contribu uh contributions, although they can be intentioned, um, and trying to bring those together in that way.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

Yeah, that's interesting. Well, let's let's think about particularly um the classroom to start. Um how do you think about uh your faith intersecting with being a teacher in the classroom?

SPEAKER_01 14:33

So I think the best the route that I've kind of thought about this um is I think two things. One is nothing speaks louder than if you're somebody who does your best to show love and care and great support for your students. Um and so if if people have that view of you and they they know that you're there for them and you have their back and you're gonna help them through some really tough times as a graduate student, I think that's the first lens of like to love others and see like could you live a Christian example through that? And I think if hopefully, you know, building on that way of you know living in the world or in the academe, I think it's uh bringing other perspectives that people are hungry for, but haven't really thought through. Um so like in a teaching environment, um, I teach this organizations class. Um, but in the organizations class, you know, you can look at it through a number of different ways. There's like an ecological view, there's cultural, there's, you know, uh sort of mechanical view. But I also bring in um like a more of a like a teleological view around what it means uh around purpose and meaning for people who are in organizations. And this brings in kind of more Aristotelian views around virtue formation, and so like what traditions help us understand about how people uh uh live in community and organizations for the good. And so then I bring in, you know, sometimes of, well, you know, there's some great thinkers who have thought about this kind of thing. Right. So it's through those things that people are somewhat maybe surprised because they haven't heard about it, and they're like, Oh, yeah. So it's kind of about love and those things, like what leads you to that? So those kind of things create opportunities. And every once in a while, like a Catholic student will say, Oh, yeah, I learned that in Catholic school. Well, tell me about that. Right, right. And so there's ways to kind of, and so I feel like those are ways in the classroom that can work.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Yeah, and has have you uh had that same approach? Is that something you learned or something you sort of have uh developed over time? Um, or or did you sort of come in uh I I can imagine that's a certain style of teaching that even for a sort of someone who's not a Christian or not bringing a faith tradition, is sort of the here are the different views on a given topic. Um yeah, is that something you sort of developed uh over time or or came into teaching with?

SPEAKER_01 17:03

I think I developed over time really again through the resources of working with Anselm House of the set of readings I had that I'm like, oh, I could actually use this in my class. Um you know, I especially I especially think that the most prominent place to be uh have these dialogues now is to think about this alongside of critical theory kind of work, which now is all over the news, of course, where 13 states or whatever it is are thinking to ban this. Um but so we juxtapose like what are the underpinnings of more of this kind of like uh good society tradition versus like maybe equitable around, you know, maybe more progressive thought and and helping people understand what's underneath and then have a discussion about it. But I think it was really through some of my work with Anselm House that I was able to have a coherent set of thinking, yeah, thoughts about it.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Yeah, yeah. What what other places in your work as a professor? I'm actually thinking of the buckets that you gave us around teaching and mentoring, research and service, um, where you think about sort of your Christian identity playing a role. So maybe uh moving into either the research or the the service parts. Do you have any sort of insight for us on how that works? Yeah, maybe a couple things on the research front.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

So uh one project I I did a couple years ago, and it related actually to some Wisconsin idea stuff, is um it's interesting because there's all this dialogue in the field about we need to renew the covenant between society and higher education. And so people kind of throw that out there, especially presidents, you know. It sounds good to say that, right? Who would who would be against that, right? Right. But what then I did is went to like, well, what does it mean? What is a covenantal view of this? And how does that maybe differ from how we're actually acting, which is more contractual? So then I actually looked at some of those, you know, the Old Testament and even, you know, this rabbi Jonathan Sachs, where he's got um this great stuff around um, you know, being in partnership or in community and relationship, even when things go bad. Right. And what that means versus a contract where you can sever the relationship. So I've kind of used some historical things to say uh, you know, this notion of from from covenant to contract, how do we rebuild this? And what kind of an institution do we have to build to actually live covenantally?

SPEAKER_00 19:28

So that's one example. So right there you're you're highlighting, I think uh many people might associate covenant uh with religion, but it's sort of it it's roots in the old the biblical sort of story and the Hebrew Bible. Um but people are using that word in a pretty laxadaisical way. Maybe they do mean contrary. I don't know what they you'd be better to know what they actually mean by that. But so you sort of infusing that word and that concept with its original meaning, is that sort of what I'm hearing you're saying? And then asking what the implications of that would be.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

I think that's right. So it's kind of like to establish what it what does that mean? Because again, sometimes these things are kind of lines that people use in speeches. And so it's like, okay, if we're gonna do that, what what does it actually kind of mean? Right. Um so those are in one example. I mean, one other example, if we have time to kind of think about this too, is um so one of the big areas of research I've done with a colleague at the University of Maryland over the last couple of years is we're looking at um what's the impact of college on civic engagement later in life. And usually the literature is big on this around, well, you know, it leads to more voting or volunteerism and these kind of things. Um, but the other thing that we're kind of drawing on that is new, and we just presented this paper in Chicago uh last weekend. Um, and this is to say um what's the impact of college on thinking about uh civic virtues around humility in public discourse and tolerance for political disagreement. So we draw on there's this great book, this uh John Inazu who's got this book called Confident Pluralism. And two of these things are around these concepts. So our work has been to kind of validate these constructs in a large-scale database to say what are the items related to that and what are the uh you know attributes of college that actually may lead people to this or actually meet lead them to be not humble or intolerant. So we're trying to explore and we've very much situate this within like enlightenment and Christian tradition. And in fact, when I presented this last week, it's sort of expected that you you say like where you're coming from. So I was very open about this. And people surprisingly were very receptive because they're I think people are coming to the point where we some of this is unsustainable of where our society is going. And to think about well, how do we create college experiences that produce a society of the kind that we can live together across process. Profound moral disagreement.

unknown 22:01

Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

So those that's another thing. That's fascinating. And it reminds me of a quote that I was just using at an event at Upper House recently from Parker Palmer, the writer on teaching and so many other things. But he talked, he had he just has a quote. This is from a book a few years ago, where he talks about universities and colleges being key sites where people actually work together civilly and model what the rest of society should be doing. And I like what you're you're saying is is sort of is empirically validating or invalidating that. And not just as sites where people do that maybe in the moment, but that those institutions are producing people who would do that for the rest of their lives, or at least into the adulthood. Right. Yeah, that's really fascinating. That's that's really fascinating to think about that. And I think a lot of people that are around universities, we um we want to buy into that. We want to say what we're doing here isn't just um imparting knowledge, uh, but we're actually imparting a set of virtues that'll you know allow students to become uh you know tolerant people and people who want to engage with others. Right. Um, but but of course that's that's all um aspirational until you get the data behind it to actually understand if that's what's going on afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

Yeah, and I think to have people see that, you know, move forward and then how college in some cases actually foreclose these opportunities, which we're kind of seeing. I think the the tricky thing about this, and this is kind of a broader question because that very much comes out of a Western kind of way of thinking where, you know, a critique of this that we've had is well, that's a luxury for kind of white people to think about as a, you know, for to be tolerant and humble. And so there's I think I would get pushback from some of my critical theory colleagues in my department. Um, who so that's something that we have to engage as well to say, so how do we think of this in contrast to other, you know, groups that are offering a very different way to think about what humility and tolerance ultimately means? Is it is it keep keep keeping people down to do that? So it's very complicated, actually.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Right. And do you think that's a great um that's a great perspective shift there? And I can totally get the critique that being something like tolerant and patient and humble is very nice when you're privileged. Um is there do you see a a sort of Christian engagement on that front as well? Like is there a Christian response? You don't have to lay out the whole response to us here, but um, do you find your faith sort of being able to engage on that level as well? Sort of here are the virtues and also here's the way to think through some of the critiques?

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Yeah, a little bit. Um, and I again, you know, one resource that I love that was a really helpful one. Um so Christian Smith, who's sociologist at Notre Dame, he wrote this really great book that was really helpful for me. I think it was called something like To Flourish or Destruct. And it's a personalist view of I think it's got some long name around uh destruction, good and evil or something. But what it what it really laid out is um how these questions around what we're looking at, the virtues, are actually the ones that lead to what he would talk about ultimate human goods, that you know, people, even from the critical perspective, would personally resonate with. Right. Um, that they they see that their ultimate human end are toward these things around love for other, you know, their children, you know, the way they talk about happiness, all of these kind of things. And so I think what I lead is like if you're open to the idea of this critical realism, it it switches in our minds about uh how we understand what the purpose of a human is. And so if we believe the purpose of human is for this flourishing, these are the set of habits and uh minds and practices that will lead to a flourishing life.

SPEAKER_02 25:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

So I think it's situating it that way. Very interesting. Well, thanks for going down that uh cover with me. So um you mentioned before uh the idea of sort of divided cells by at least some Christians on a public university, that there's sort of the the faith part and maybe the church part and then the the field and research and university part. I want to uh ask a little, not to validate that, but just to uh get us into the next uh topic, ask a little about how you've been received as a professor in the church world or in your personal uh uh church world at least. Um yeah, what do what do people think of when they think maybe it's like your mom and they just don't know exactly what you're doing. But um I've I know from talking to faculty here that uh some of them feel very welcome. Others, uh particularly if they're researching something that is controversial in the church, right? Um, a field like um environmental science or something else, they feel pretty alienated from a lot of their fellow Christians. But yeah, what's your experience been like?

SPEAKER_01 26:45

Yeah, it's funny. Uh so I'm trying to remember this. Um there was somebody years ago who wrote the speech, but he talked about that the Christian professor in this odd spot where you're viewed uh with suspicion by both the church and the university. Right. And so I think we see some of that. Um one story that comes to mind, which always kind of makes me laugh, is so my daughter plays soccer, and um she was at one of these matches, and you know, we you get to know the parents and grandparents, and so there was an opposing team there, you know, nice people who were all watching our kids. And so this grandfather came over very friendly, and he started talking to me. And um, you know, I could tell that he, you know, was kind of more conservative and thought, and then he kind of revealed he's Christian. And then, you know, I said I was well. Then he said, Well, what do you do? I said, Well, I'm a professor at the University of Minnesota. And then he kind of had to step back for a second, or he was like, Oh, and so he we were talking through, but it was a really, you know, interesting, you know, conversation and all of that. And we talked about actually some of these things, what we're talking about right now. And I thought it was kind of hilarious at the end. He's like, Well, you know, you seem okay, but I'd never send my kids to that crazy place of yours, you know. So there was a there was a little bit, you know, kind of that. Um, and there is a little bit of that. I I think in general, like my church community has been supportive. Um, in fact, what's really cool is there's actually somewhat more of a formal relationship with my church community now and the work at the university. So um it's fun to kind of see those kind of groups uh coming together. Um, but I think, you know, I've been in spaces where, you know, I've I've had um, you know, ask some questions about, especially as our kids are thinking about college and going to a place like Wisconsin or uh Minnesota, where I've had people really push back and say, well, why in the world would you ever send your kids to a place like that? And so I think I navigate that as a faculty member and then as a dad as well. Um but I think there's a you know, there's confusion about what we do because part of it has to do with people are skeptical about the university. You see a Gallup poll showing that confidence in universities are is declining. There's question about the science, what science means, the scientific basis of this, you know, questions around COVID, there's things like that. And I think this uh diversity, equity, inclusion agenda, you know, people have concerns in different ways. So I I think there is uh um there's concern about that. And then uh unfortunately a lot of this has become around politics. Right. So people then might associate you with, you know, one group or another based on where you sit and what you're doing. So I it's become um, I think a little more tense over the years. And my fellow faculty members at the University of Minnesota, we've been talking about this, that we're all experiencing that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

Yeah, and uh I think it's the same here at UW and across across the country. Just thinking about, I know uh you and I have talked offline about particularly thinking about this case for why Christians should consider public universities as a place for education. I wonder if you could just in a in the short in a brief uh sense, give your pitch for why if if a Christian parent is listening uh who has a you know incoming college age student uh and they're considering Christian College X versus public university Y. Uh beyond the the economics uh of it, uh what what's the case in brief or why they should consider public university why?

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Yeah. Here's my one chance to plug the you know, no, I'm just kidding. No, so it's a really good question. And so one thing I always kind of tell parents and people too who are really concerned and you know, maybe about like the evilness of where we're at, but I always kind of re remind them about, you know, uh the verse in Ephesians that talk about, you know, our fight is not against flesh and blood, but uh against the spiritual force you know of darkness. And I think that is a really uh important perspective that has helped me. I've even walked into faculty members, you know, you know, meetings saying that to myself, okay, I know this meeting is gonna be crazy, but here, but I think, you know, there's a couple of things I would say about that. Um, especially I think about our Big Ten institutions. I um one of the things that's fascinating about being at these places I always think about is, you know, these are places where God's compassion and redemptive nature are on full display. And people are like, well, how can that be? And I've I've watched things that happen. So one of the places we take our kids is to it's called the Raptor Center at Minnesota. So this is a place where eagles, you know, get run over and they they take them and they and these students and faculty are working compassionately to restore the health and they're releasing them. It's about, you know, these eagles going. It's a very redemptive story of these. And there's other great ones too, in terms of students going on to support Ukrainian refugees, and we have other um really good stories. So you see kind of God's heart in that. But what I would say is that um it's a place where there are counterfeit gods that reign supreme here at these pup public institutions, where unless you get plugged into a place, um, that can kind of run away from you. Um and so I think I in that's a case I feel like I'm referencing some of these very influential books for me, but one uh is it's called To Change the World by James Davison Hunter. Yeah. And this is very influential for me, one of the first books I read in this area. But he talks about this notion of faithful presence. Um, and that to me was my kind of aha moment around, oh, so this is why we are in these very difficult places. Because the kind of the punchline of his book is that change in society happens at the periphery of these leading kind of institutions. So it's government, it's academic, it's media, it's corporation. And that's kind of where so my pitch is to say that um if we care about redeeming society and we believe that that's what Christ has called us to do, is we need we need to be in hard places where we can make a difference. Um, and so uh it it's it can be a tough place, but these are also places with, in many cases, very uh strong Christian presence that might not be out in front on the website. Um, but you can get plugged in. And I think about our students that are amazing. You know, these students who are doing uh plant yield research and they're writing stories about like a theology of, you know, a plant production. And I go to these things, I'm like, wow. And and these folks are going to be leaders at like Monsanto, you know, all these big companies like Cargill, because they're they're all in that space. And I'm like, wow, that's the kind of folks it's an exciting adventure to live God's story at these places. So anyway, that's my kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 33:47

Yeah, that thank you. Yeah, Hunter's a huge influence in that that book to change the world is a huge influence on how we think about what we're doing here. And what I hear you saying in part is that uh, you know, you talked about getting for these students, they to really make the most of any college experience is to get really connected with a Christian community at the local level. I think that goes for students at Christian colleges as well. I think there's a maybe an assumption that if you go to a Christian college, you're just gonna act better or something because you're around more Christians and um and that's not necessarily the case. So I think a lot of this is wherever you go, if you're thinking of uh being a student at any college or university, is to be intentional about cultivating uh a a life that is integrated uh and that you have a vibrant religious community around you. And that can take you far almost anywhere. Uh and there might be particular challenges of being at a Big Ten school versus a uh Christian college uh or something, but there are also some massive benefits, including you know, plant yield theology and stuff. That's you you need certain uh departments and resources to even have a lot of these amazing uh sort of scientific fields up and running. And I know a place like UW, we really cherish sort of the vast amount of scientific research that is done in a place like this that frankly just most universities in the country can't do because of the intense amount of resources you have to have as well. So I would say that too is there's so many fields of study that you're gonna want to go to a major public university or one of the elite private universities to do that research. Um I'm a I'm a humble historian. You can do that. There's good reasons, there's good historians all over the place, but we don't uh historians don't tend to require massive uh labs and other things to get off the ground. But um yeah, thanks for talking through that. That's that's very interesting. I wonder if you have uh just a take on um education in the church. So this can be pretty broad, but um yeah, w when you think about the American church, and we're all we all sit in particular perspectives in that, but uh from your from your vantage point, what do you think is needed in the church in terms of uh education? And you can think about that on any level you want, but um, what do you think is lacking and and what do you think uh Christians should be thinking about more? So when you think about education in the church, so what around um in terms of what they would need to know about is there anything in particular that you're or No, I I I think um you know in in this series we're thinking really broadly about it. So everything from you know Sunday school and children's education to you know theological formation to uh knowledge about the world, um, to to sort of be a functioning good Christian in today's society. I think it's across the board.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

Yeah, I I think one thing that I've thought a lot uh about is uh just having a really um thought-through approach around um a Christian life in the public square kind of thing. I think increasingly one of the challenging things, and this relates to politics, is how do we live this notion of Christian presence in a society that's increasingly divided. And you know, people have very strong views around around this. There's, you know, I think about the Hunter's book, you know, the purity from or fight against or accommodate to and all of these kind of things. And I think we have to really think through of as things change, how do we prepare, especially our kids, to enter in this um kind of new environment in even our kind of adult uh Bible classes we do. So one thing it was a couple of years ago, I was thinking about of you know, we were in a small group and I thought after that, oh, maybe I'll never get invited back after I made that comment. But but we were talking the kind of the idea was like, oh, you just have to make the gospel as simple as possible for people. And I, you know, I I can understand that kind of idea. Um, but I would say honestly, the more complicated you make it, it's you'll find out it's the last coherent view of the world standing among everything else. Um because I think this is what ends up happening sometime in the university is you, you know, you might give a quick pitch on something, but then when you understand, when people start talking through the big questions, and then they they come to a dead end where their own view of morality actually doesn't match of like what they're practicing, and then they're then they're stuck. And then you see these patterns lay out. And and so I think about in the church, if we're willing to engage in deep intellectual discussion around these things that our kids and adults can be really formed, kind of in that area. Um, and that requires, you know, people to take seriously like an academic life. And I think some people think, well, that's you know, it's maybe not our thing, or you know, purpose of higher ed is to get a job. But I I think that could go a long way. Um, and people are desperately hungry for this. Um, I mean, one another quick story if if I have a minute, that in terms of I think our moment right now in society, that you know, people kind of write off the college, you know, as a as a place and you know, we're to do this. But we're finding that um this is a moment where people are asking some very big questions around things, that they're seeing that the society as they've been talking about how to build it is actually imploding on itself. So, yeah, one story that um comes to mind of some really prominent people who are are thinking about this. I was a couple of years ago, maybe it was last year, I met with somebody who was at an event, it was Christian scholars and others, um, and he was telling me he was at a major academic conference. There's about 500 people there, can't remember the field. There was a panelist of three leading scholars in this field, and they were debating kind of the source of knowledge and the, you know, the realism of this and questions about truth going back and forth. So this colleague, this Christian uh person, uh faculty member, he uh was going back and forth. And then the panelist finally said to him, He said, Well, you're talking about truth here. What is truth? And this Christian faculty member uh he said, Well, I I I kind of froze for a second. I knew what to say, and I didn't, you know, I he said the only thing I knew what to say is what I knew true in my heart. And he said, in front of all the 500 people, he said, The truth is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And what was interesting after that, he said it was silent, right? And all these people in here, and there was a little nervous laughter. And after that, they went on for another half hour or whatever it was. Um, and then after the event, people started filing out of this big ballroom out of the hotel uh where this was held. And one of the panelists, who was one of the most prominent of the group, came up to him and he kind of whispered to him, You know what you said back there? I think you might be right. And we're seeing these kind of what I'm kind of calling nicodemus moments on campus where people are starting to be open. And this is one of the other reasons why I think it's it's a place to be around this. And the church, I think if we can come alongside and help people from these areas make sense of what the gospel is all about, it could there could really be some things we see from it.

SPEAKER_00 41:20

So that's interesting. Thanks for that story. I I wonder if one of the things um just to try to um put on their spin on what you're saying, is for a lot of the church, uh it might be they actually need to be educated about what education is or or what what higher education is at least, which is that it's not just a set of facts or um or body of knowledge, but it's a way of engaging with questions or at least creating questions, and then trying to answer them in certain ways that we call academic ways or or um or disciplinary ways. And that getting more Christians sort of interested in that as um what college is about. You mentioned briefly that uh and it's not just Christians who think this, but they college is really about producing uh getting a job at the end of of college, and really anything else you learn is beneficial, but maybe not maybe not the point. And maybe calling Christians to a and maybe it's an older way, I don't know, but a certain way of college that or university life that's about engaging with questions in a certain way that respects difference and um seeks after truth and and things like that. And that's um that's maybe what's missing for a lot of Christians, as well as understanding that that's really the point of college in a lot of ways. I totally agree.

SPEAKER_01 42:37

I think, you know, in bringing that perspective in, and I think the students who are uh experiencing that are having a great experience, you know, another thing I always have to bring up, like some of the uh challenges, but as we're moving toward a system where tuition is, you know, continuing to grow, and I think in parents' minds they're like, well, um, you know, I think about my undergraduate tuition was something like$900 a semester in the 90s. And so that so it's i it's something we push up against. Right. Um, because uh but then it's to think about, well, how when they're there couldn't they can they really take time uh to learn and then develop kind of these broader, you know, ideas no matter what their vocation is. Because whether they become, you know, an engineer or a teacher or artist, how does this formation help you think about your own vocation? Because I I think you're exactly right if if we can start to help people think through that and to make the most of their time there throughout.

SPEAKER_00 43:41

So right. Yeah. Well, thank you, David, for the conversation. Uh, we appreciate uh the work you're doing um over at University of Minnesota. Um I think to end, I just want to ask uh uh uh one more uh question uh around this uh sort of uh how education is proceeding. In the church. And we circled around it. Maybe get your sort of uh concise uh final statement on it, which is uh we talked about the parent who might be considering a Christian college versus a a public university. But uh ultimately, how should the church understand the public universities? What how should they relate to public universities? Um, given the tensions that exist between church world and university world, but also all of the opportunities that public universities offer? What would what's your sort of concise statement on how how the church should relate to the university?

SPEAKER_01 44:35

Um I mean, I I would I would say that they should be s seen as uh uh partners in toward the common good, if you think of this notion of common grace or whatever it is. But you know, one one kind of thing I think about always from uh Jeremiah is around the um you know, prosper in the city where I have placed you. Um and so even just you know, these college towns with these churches is to not, you know, enclave yourself and make, you know, that's the enemy across. But you know, from those verses in Jeremiah, it was really about, you know, because if if if you have blessing here, it will seek the blessing in the whole city, right? So I think moving toward um understanding, you know, less of an adversarial and kind of more redemptive space um to say, um, you know, how can we work together uh for the you know the common good? And that's a portal for people to have great conversations about well, what what motivates you for being involved in this kind of work? This gets to kind of these community knowledge things I was talking about. And so people can have a portal to under share uh to share about this. Um so I I think even though we're in this polarized world, um, that's a place to think about the church's own faithful presence in these places. So that's the way I would think about it.

SPEAKER_00 45:58

So, David, thanks for talking through how religion might be expressed in the classroom and in research and uh in service. Uh what about on the institutional level? How does a place like a public university express religion in that level?

SPEAKER_01 46:13

Yeah, so uh what I would say about is first of all, I would say that it's not expressed very much at the institution, um, and that there's very little engagement with religion in the secular university. Um but having said that, you know, academic departments, you know, department or programs in religious studies, I think they really treat this as the secular study of religion. So it's more of a cultural system versus a belief system and understanding kind of kind of that. A lot of comparative uh religion in that too, right? So comparing one system versus another. Right, right. And so um that's a big piece of it. I think the second I would say about that in courses that are not kind of in religious studies program, religion is talked about as more through a sociological lens. So things so it's talked about more in terms of of power in society and how religion is kind of expressed in that. So I think, you know, kind of two quick stories related to that is that Christianity is often associated with colonization, especially now within the past few years when there's kind of a tension around this. Um, so a quick story I have related to that is you've got to teach this higher education leadership and administration course. And somehow it came up, this was during the the COVID time. So we're on Zoom and it's it's kind of awkward anyway, and you can't really die. But uh somehow it came up that one of my students uh uh from Africa, um, he came over um and he had was learning about leadership and administration and higher education, but he also uh came over to get a divinity degree at uh Christian College locally uh in Minnesota. And I I saw on the chat all of this exploding with statements like uh colonization, white supremacy, this, that, and the other thing. And so I used the opportunity to have a kind of converse conversation about it. But I think this, you know, the students were kind of upset that he was, you know, evangelized and that, you know, he was doing this kind of thing. But then I was talking through about his motivation. And I said, well, one of the things he told me about is he said that they feel like their pandemic there is actually around corruption. That that was his those his words. And he said, the future of my country is about this. And he said, you know, the the Christian worldview offers the best kind of way about thinking a way out of this. So what was fascinating is the students kind of in that sense, when they learned about kind of what was happening in his country, had this difficulty of arguing again, you know, how could they argue against corruption, right? Right. Because in many cases they were obviously for against that, but they didn't see as Christianity was the place to do it. But however, they didn't have another way to think about it. So I think that's an example. A second one is um I think religion is talked about in more of like a rights-based workplace thing or accommodation versus actually belief systems. So an example of this is a few years ago, we were going to um we were looking at a big symposia for our department with alumni and students, um, and usually some topical thematic area. And one person brought up, I thought was a great idea, um, that the theme was gonna be Islam and the 21st century workforce to think about how we engage. And I thought, whoa, what a fascinating in my head immediately went to, oh, we're gonna all learn about like a theology of work from these, you know, folks who are very different from us. But what it was interesting. So we brought this idea back to the greater faculty, and it was really turned on its head to say, well, you know, what this really has to be about is around, you know, the power dynamics associated with the oppression of minoritized religious groups, around accommodation, you know, it so it kind of turned into things like making sure that everybody has a prayer mat and place to pray, which, you know, is important. We would agree with that. But it it wasn't around the substance of like underlying belief around what it means to work from Islamic. And those were the kind of things that I was hoping. And what's funny is our Muslim students would have loved to have talked about this.

SPEAKER_02 50:21

Right.

SPEAKER_01 50:22

Um, because I've had, you know, people come to class from even, you know, Baptist colleges, and the Muslim students are the ones asking all the questions. They're like, why aren't we talking more about this stuff? So I think you're seeing a real disconnect uh around that, but that's that's what we're seeing now kind of in our modern public institutions, at least.

SPEAKER_00 50:41

Yeah, that's interesting. And you can see how certain types of knowledge around religion are deemed sort of in the boundaries of public university education, and that others are sort of beyond the pale or something. And maybe theology or or any type of more metaphysical contemplation is seen um beyond the pale. Though there are a few intellectual historians, at least at a place like UW, that are interested in those things. But um I wondered just quickly on University Minnesota campus, at UW, we have vestiges of interesting, just interesting sort of religious public um statements. So there's a um a historic hall called South Hall that has a little plaque with a verse from John on it. Um, the truth shall set you free. And yeah, um, it's it's not contextualized necessarily, but it's it's there to show sort of something, I guess. Uh we have a we have a statue of the word Abraham in four different languages that is a vestige of an old interfaith center that no longer exists on campus. Um there's a bunch of other ones. Our our seal here at UW is an eye that says Illuminumen, which is God is light. And so um, you know, every official thing that UW has has a reference to God in it. And I'm just fascinated in sort of the history of that, sort of how those things either come into play or or fall away. Is there anything like that at University of Minnesota?

SPEAKER_01 52:02

You know, it's funny about that, and it and it's making me now embarrassed that I don't I've been there for all the long, and I know the Wisconsin history much better. So hopefully they don't revoke my tenure for that. Uh um, but you know, I don't think it is as strong. I think Minnesota came out of more of a secular, this Falwell and others who came out of um, in some cases, anti-the kind of Christian is my my understanding. So I don't know of I don't it's not certainly not as robust, especially when I connected to the origins of Wisconsin idea. Um, but it's interesting, you know, in the history books anyway, of seeing other institutions like UW that formed through the social gospel and other um, I don't think Minnesota is really discussed very much within that. Um I think Minnesota is more known for kind of a a broad like civic heritage and civic, you know, professionalism around kind of early, you know, 20th century, and you think about like the Hubert Humphrey kind of things, but it it feels more secularized of how people kind of it's deep story about what it's about. Um and it relates a little bit to you know the Scandinavian and kind of a lot of heritage. Um so I think in that sense, I should go back and read my Minnesota history about that.

SPEAKER_00 53:22

But okay very good. Thank you very much. So our our series title is called Christian Education at the Crossroads. And one of the ways to think about that is Christians are getting educated at public universities. And um I wonder, you know, thousands of them are, and I wonder um, you know, what you see the role of public universities being in educating Christians here in the in the near future.

SPEAKER_01 53:50

So I think one of the roles um is uh we're seeing a hunger of our students uh to ask the big questions in life. However, our public institutions are not doing a very good job at this. So what it's funny, you know, I mentioned these Christian study centers, our own Anselm House. If you want to have these big discussions about the big questions, you have to go off campus to Anselm House to talk about it. Um and what we're seeing is a real uh interesting um you know, time is that even you know, atheists are coming over for coffee to talk about as other folks. And so there's this kind of notion of intellectual hospitality. I just read to the Trinity Forum, does this kind of stuff, Sherry Harder? I think is but I think that's the space that we're in to say that Christians can offer that intellectual hospitality with bring the best of the Christian intellectual tradition into some of those spaces that will then give students and faculty an opportunity to have dialogue with people who really are hungry for thinking about these big questions. Um, so that's one thing I will say. The other the other piece, I think, looking at the future with the crossroads is if you look at the landscape of the broader, broader different sectors of higher education. So, you know, we I've been kind of talking a lot about the research universities because that's where I work, but you know, the private Christian colleges, these other kind of institutions. And, you know, some of our friends in the private Christian colleges, you know, I think are under a lot of stress around this and what it means for public policy and um you know where they will be. And I think institutions like ours, if we can come alongside and support and think about um how we think well together around these big questions, I think would be a really uh great place because they bring, you know, great resources in a lot of ways. Um, and then how we we can think about supporting them in this particular space. Um, because there's a lot of unknown about um, you know, it's the finances, demographics, but the politics, things are changing quickly. Um so I I think it's around um how do we stand together around this and think about our unique contributions that we can support of one another.

SPEAKER_00 56:10

And I think one thing that Christian uh colleges are just speaking here from Upper House's perspective, are light years ahead of us on in some ways, uh maybe not light years, maybe I'm overstating the distance, but uh is is this uh question of of sort of integration. Right. And uh for many of these colleges, that's the sort of bread and butter of what they do. In every field and every class, they're moving toward that question. And um, you know, I think we feel like our part of our mission is to try to do that as much as we can, but um, there's just something to learn from a community like a Christian college where that's sort of the center of of all they're doing. And so I think that's one thing that public universities, at least you know, Christian faculty and students in them, can take and try to implement in their own context, which is gonna look different. It's gonna look different than just importing a Christian college uh pedagogy or something. But there's definitely stuff to learn there. I totally agree in that integration piece.

SPEAKER_01 57:05

I mean, one thing I always envy is um we've got somebody in our our staff now who worked at a Christian college and he's got a PhD in physics and a divinity degree. And so, you know, these somebody with that background, I mean this full integration about of the disciplinary and the theological, and and he's got a you know, a pastoral background. And I think, you know, so for those of us who are in these departments and fields, you know, we're we're taking baby steps to understanding b uh of how to integrate this because we've been educated in a very secularized um environment out of naturalism and existentialism, whatever it is. Um so you're right. Uh these faculty at these colleges are really important. And um, you know, from time to time we get to interact with them, and it's a great blessing for us, too.

SPEAKER_00 57:57

Yeah, fascinating. I uh just the last thing on on this point. I think of um it's not just the sort of intellectual development. I mean, I got my PhD here at UW Madison, so I can speak from personal experience. It's not just that the sort of intellectual development is pretty secular. You're not um you know, grappling with theological texts alongside your historical texts. Um, but there's also a socialization of how you present yourself and how you present your research and even the questions you ask, that's very much not integrated. It's very much um compartmentalizing, at least this is what I did, sort of my faith commitments versus sort of what are my intellectual commitments or what are my uh uh questions I'm gonna ask in my research. So I think there too, just looking at faculty uh at leading Christian colleges that have managed to integrate those things on a research level as well. And uh, I think concepts like the common good, which we've been talking about, are ways to do that. But that's something too where I think I know I felt when I was finished with my PhD that I had a very good grasp of my field, and I had probably a middle school grasp of like any type of theology that I could put with that field. And so that that feels weird. It feels discordant, right? And uh sort of heightening as much as we can. You're we're never gonna be PhDs in or THDs in theology. But as i if you can make them more conversant, absolutely um that really uh really helps even in the public university setting. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 59:23

And that's so important. And that's the part I'm excited about continue work in this Christian study movement because you know, you're at this and part of it you have kind of an imposter syndrome. Well, I read three whole books on this topic, you know. So you're trying to, you know, how much is it a point where you feel like you can be conversant around these, but uh, you know, dip your toe in the water around helping people think through it. So that's why this movement has been so helpful for many of us with this Christian Studies Center movement. So yeah, great, great. Well, on that note, uh thanks, David, for the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 59:52

Great. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. Thanks 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 Laurel Brown Foundation. It is produced at Upper House in Madison, Wisconsin, hosted by Dan Hummel and John Terrell. Our executive producer and editor is Jesse Koopman. Please follow us on social media with the handle at Upper House UW.