photos by Scott Streble
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African AIDS clinics, in Fortune 500 boardrooms, and in obscure mission outposts. Something subtle and mysterious saturates a Bethel education. A transforming recipe of classroom study, modeling and mentoring, international study, outside-the-classroom experiences, and interpersonal dialogues produces multi-layered results: it nurtures sharp, inquisitive minds; develops mature, selfless character; fosters self-aware cultural maturity; and cultivates robust, storm-hardy faith. As a university, we do tenaciously safeguard the life of the mind against multiple temptations to compromise. We do aspire to academic excellence. Still, God created persons, not computers. God designed people who love, think, relate, work, and worship. This means faculty members are person developers, not just information dispensers. This requires unique faculty members. Why? Because we teach what we know, but we Fall 2009
reproduce who we are. Our vision is to become the university of choice for more and more learners who seek evangelical, whole-person, transformative education—to honor and serve the Lord by becoming everything God has for them cognitively, relationally, culturally, and spiritually.
Conceptual depth Our goal for college, adult, and seminary graduates is bigger than job training. An educated person is broadly aware of the world and deeply informed in her specialty. But beyond gaining information, educated persons hone conceptual skills. They develop skills in critical thinking, problem-solving, conceptual analysis, synthetic integration, and mature evaluation. They acquire intellectual virtues: they love truth, treat evidence
Phyllis Alsdurf: The very first editorial in Christianity Today magazine talked about evangelicals as this poor, despised group outside the cultural mainstream. They were subjected to prejudice, misunderstood. Does that apply to evangelicals today? Many people in mainstream culture today would say that [they are] the ones who are misunderstood, [not evangelicals]. [Secularists fear] evangelicals are this army, this force, so the dynamics have changed—the definition has changed. There are lots of ways to define it, but my point is that [the definition of evangelicalism is] a moving target and it’s changing. It’s a living entity in a sense—Christian faith should be! The evangelical movement is moving, and it’s difficult to put boundaries on it. But I do believe there is a center.
Voting Blocs Blurred It’s a fact that Hispanics—the United States’ largest minority group—are the fastest-growing population within evangelicalism. Although 68 percent of the Hispanic population is Roman Catholic, 15 percent of the nation’s nearly 15 million Hispanics identify themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians. It’s also a fact that Hispanics as a people group do not vote Republican. In the 2008 presidential
with integrity, remain open to new data, and willingly hear fair criticism. These go beyond preparation for a job: they sustain alums for a lifetime.
Personal strength We hope Bethel alums develop personal virtues. Moral choices coagulate into habits; habits, in turn, solidify into virtues. It’s right and good to pursue virtues like love, justice, humility, patience, courage, kindness, and joy. In addition, we hope graduates grow emotional intelligence. The soil of
election, Hispanics voted Democrat over Republican by a margin of more than two-to-one, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. So, although the media may portray otherwise, evangelicalism is theologically conservative, but this does not neatly parallel with political conservatism. There’s no question though that the term has found itself more and more in the speeches of political leaders and the headlines of political pieces… CA: We have a media image of evangelicals as being about theocracy [a nation ruled by God through priests], and we do have a few extreme conservative evangelicals. But I think there’s still a deep-rooted stance of personal liberty and individualism, even among those Falwell-type contemporary fundamentalists. So I’m not sure if I buy that kind of stereotype of evangelicals. Certainly we want morality legislated in some sense, but theocracy? Are we really going that far? Bernard Walker: While the fundamentalist end of the movement may embrace history—theological history—it in some sense ignores history on most other matters. So you look at, say, the civil rights movement in this country back in the 1950s, Christianity Today published very few articles about that particular issue, which was very pivotal in our country. So evangelicalism as a whole did not engage the world in terms of the historical issues of the black community. For Bible-believing, African-American Christians, there’s a tendency, for obvious reasons, to be more progressive socially and thus embrace the [political] liberalism of the Democratic Party; whereas with white evangelical churches, the tendency is
healthy relationships fertilizes emotional growth. A healthy educational community creates multiple pathways for students to experience emotionally mature relationships with caring persons who both support and challenge them. For students who lack healthy relational instincts and suffer from deeper struggles, we offer more direct assistance even though a university is not a therapist’s practice. Still, great education seeks whole-person transformation so that graduates become persons of strength.
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Phyllis Alsdurf is director of the Johnson Center for Journalism and Communication and an associate professor of English in the College of Arts & Sciences. Her dissertation research was on the role of Christianity Today magazine in the development of modern evangelicalism. Sharing worship with her young adult daughter, she attends Substance Church in Fridley, Minn.
Chris Armstrong teaches church history at Bethel Seminary. He has been managing editor of Christian History & Biography and continues to write for that publication as well as for Christianity Today, Leadership Journal, and www.christianhistory. net. His doctoral research focused on the 19th-century holiness movement. Armstrong attends Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minn., and has recently written a “group biography” titled Patron Saints for Postmoderns (IVP, 2009).
Bernard Walker teaches philosophy and ethics in the College of Adult & Professional Studies and Graduate School. His philosophical interest in the evangelical movement is aimed at separating “what is the work of the Spirit from the work of human tradition” through a process of dialogue among the movement’s diverse voices. His home congregation is Church of All Nations in St. Anthony, Minn.
I think, is a pretty good definition still today. David Neff, current editor of Christianity Today, asks whether we’re losing ground on conversionism, biblicism, crosscenteredness, because we’re so concerned with being in the culture for evangelistic purposes and dialogue purposes. Are we becoming increasingly of the culture? I think that’s a very important question.
“Our vision is to become the university of choice for more and more learners who seek evangelical, whole-person, transformative education.” Bethel University
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