Speakers at scholar lecture events on many college campuses often are greeted by a sea of empty seats. Not so at Roberts Wesleyan College in 1976. Chapel attendance was mandatory four days each week, so guest scholar Arthur Holmes got to play to a packed house each day.
Then again, packed doesn’t necessarily equal enthusiastic. Holmes was introduced as a philosophy professor from a rival college. Two strikes against him.
The dean introducing him also mentioned that he was a Presbyterian. Third strike. This bastion of hearts-strangely-warmed Wesleyans had honed their anti-Calvinism argumentation skills. We religion-and-philosophy majors specialized in crafting such debates. We listened with polite skepticism, at least at the beginning.
Soon we were captivated. His delivery was engaging. His scholarship was impressive. His message was stunning in a C.S. Lewis sort of way.
The theme for the series of lectures would be translated into a book published a year later (Eerdmans, 1977). The title: All Truth is God’s Truth. For me, a soon-to-graduate senior, it crystallized and summarized my whole college experience. My courses in science, fine arts, literature, human behavior, and the like all came together around a unifying, integrating, Christian worldview.
Thirty-one years later, those lectures still prod me to encourage high school students to consider attending a church-related, liberal arts college in the hope that those students will form an integrated Christian worldview as well.
Students who take a different path miss out on the educational experience being offered in the church-related, liberal arts colleges.
Such colleges offer community. In such an environment, you can’t hide. The anonymity of huge universities too often leaves some students suffering in lonely isolation. In the small college you know and get known.
Smaller faculties lead such schools. That means that the physics prof is likely to befriend the literature prof, and they both may coach the tennis team. In the process they get to compare notes on the new ideas emerging in their fields. They may even develop an interdisciplinary class on the impact of the theory of relativity on recent fiction writing.
Such schools encourage students to formulate integrated worldviews. They discover that the way they relate to one another is as important as the intellectual aptitudes they accumulate. They learn to consider topics via both hemispheres of the brain. They wrestle with their professors the ethical implications of medical research and the historic roots of church-state relationships. They get to consider the psychological implications of their theology and the religious influences on modern art.
They even get to learn how to argue the merits of Calvinist thinking — like those whose effective reasoning helped me in my post-college years to “see the light.” Yes, my Wesleyan-shaped reasoning skills ultimately helped me to embrace Reformed theology.
Church-related liberal arts colleges teach students to think broadly and deeply, intuitively and analytically, creatively and compassionately.
For all of these reasons we have prepared a humdinger of an Outlook. Three college presidents/ provosts put their worlds on display. Two recent graduates — the winner and runner-up for the first Presbyterian Outlook Church-College Partnership Award — present their winning essays regarding the value of their educations at PC(USA)-related colleges. Five presbyteries report on partnering to strengthen their commitment to campus ministry. We bring news briefs from a host of our partner colleges, plus many ads that invite you to investigate those schools further.
The Outlook is sending copies of this issue to several hundred youth directors in PC(USA) churches with the encouragement that they, along with all our regular subscribers, join us in encouraging high school students — including your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews — to consider attending a church-related, liberal arts college. Call our office to purchase more copies.
In the 20th century our churches and colleges drifted apart. But this new century has brought a new spirit of partnership between campuses and congregations. We offer this edition of the Outlook to help strengthen those ties that bind us together. We offer this as a way to help all of our students discover the simple, profound reality that all truth is, indeed, God’s truth, no matter where it is found.
