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Guest Interview
Duane Litfin Seventh President, Wheaton College Benjamin K. Forrest Professor of Christian Education and Associate Dean College of Arts & Sciences, Liberty University
CHRIST-EXALTING CHRISTIAN EDUCATION: AN INTERVIEW WITH DUANE LITFIN Recently, Duane Litfin took some time to have a conversation with the managing editor of “Faith and the Academy.” Litfin holds doctorates from Purdue University (Rhetorical Studies) and Oxford University (New Testament). After two decades as a professor and pastor, Dr. Litfin served for seventeen years as the president of one of America’s leading institutions of Christian higher education, Wheaton College. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including Conceiving the Christian College (Eerdmans) and Paul’s Theology of Preaching (IVP Academic).
Forrest: Are there any pictures that you think help us to rightfully imagine or understand faith integration?
Liftin: First, think of the academic silos that typically
characterize modern higher education. These silos represent the opposite of any type of integration, much less a Christian version. Our modern universities are not integrated, because there is nothing — and certainly not anything theological (aka Newman) — to provide them any unity. These institutions are multiversities with no unifying vision; they are not, and cannot be, uni-versities. For Christians, a better (if also imprecise) image may be that of a pie, cut into multiple slices. The pie represents the entire curriculum and the slices represent the various disciplines. In an integrated Christian model, where in this pie does Christian truth fit? If secularists assume it doesn’t belong there at all, what is a Christian response? One response might be that in a Christian school theological truth plays a legitimate role as one of the slices of the curricular pie. Along with all the standard secular disciplines, Christian institutions also make available some sacred (Bible, theology) education. This is what makes the education Christian.
This book is designed to help those who are interested in Christian higher education explore anew the unique features, opportunities, and contemporary challenges of one distinct type of educational institution -- the Christian college. What distinguishes Conceiving the Christian College from the many other books on this subject is its incisive discussion of a set of crucial ideas widely misunderstood or underappreciated in the world of Christian higher education. Having served as president of one of the nation's foremost Christian colleges, Duane Litfin is well positioned to address pressing questions regarding faith-based education. What is unique about Christian colleges? What is required to sustain them? How do they maintain their bearing in the tumultuous intellectual seas of the twenty-first century? Litfin's themes are large, but they are meant to refocus the conceptual challenges to Christian education in ways that will strengthen both the academic environment of today's Christian colleges and their impact on culture at large.
Litfin, Duane. Conceiving the Christin College. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004. $32.00.