Restoring the Soul of the University: Unifying Christian Higher Education in a Fragmented Age

by Nathan F. Alleman; Perry L. Glanzer; Todd C. Ream

Publisher:

IVP

, 2017

Overview

Christianity Today’s 2018 Book of the Year Award of Merit - Politics/Public Life

Has the American university gained the whole world but lost its soul?

In terms of money, prestige, power, and freedom, American universities appear to have gained the academic world. But at what cost? We live in the age of the fragmented multiversity that has no unifying soul or mission. The multiversity in a post-Christian culture is characterized instead by curricular division, the professionalization of the disciplines, the expansion of administration, the loss of community, and the idolization of athletics.

The situation is not hopeless. According to Perry L. Glanzer, Nathan F. Alleman, and Todd C. Ream, Christian universities can recover their soul―but to do so will require reimagining excellence in a time of exile, placing the liberating arts before the liberal arts, and focusing on the worship, love, and knowledge of God as central to the university.

Restoring the Soul of the University is a pioneering work that charts the history of the university and casts an inspiring vision for the future of higher education.

Key Features

• Shows the multiversity in a post-Christian culture is characterized instead by curricular division.
• Requires reimagining excellence in a time of exile.
• Casts an inspiring vision for the future of higher education.

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Can the Soul of the University Be Saved?

Part I: Building the University
1. Creating the Original Blueprint of a University
2. A Cracked Pinnacle and Shifting Foundation: Attempting to Repair the University (1517–1800)
3. The State Takes Over the Academic Palace in Europe (1750–1870)
4. The American Idea of the University: Freedom Within the Bounds of Science (1825–1900)
5. Fracturing the Soul: The Creation of the American Multiversity (1869–1969)

Part II: The Fragmentation of the Multiversity
6. The Fragmented Soul of the Professor
7. Falling to Pieces: Declaring Independence from Curricular Coherence
8. Fragmenting Students: The Curricular/Cocurricular Division
9. Chief Fragmentation Officer: The Advent of the Professional Administrator
10. The Multiversity’s Religion: The Unifying and Fragmenting Force of Athletics
11. The Consequences of Multiversities with Fragmented Souls: Online and For-Profit Higher Education

Part III: Restoring the Soul of the University
12. When Theology Serves the Soul of the University
13. Reimagining the Academic Vocation
14. Reimagining the Academic Disciplines
15. Reimagining the Cocurricular: Transforming the Bubble to a Greenhouse
16. Reimagining Academic Leadership

Epilogue: Can a University with a Singular Soul Exist?
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Author Index
Subject Index

Praise for Restoring the Soul of the University: Unifying Christian Higher Education in a Fragmented Age

This work calls all of us to recover a commitment to the ‘higher’ work in higher education. Reviewing the rich tapestry of university life over the centuries, the authors remind us of the ways that colleges and universities have contributed to human flourishing in big and small ways while also suggesting a hopeful way forward. This is a joy to read!

-D. Michael Lindsay, president, Gordon College

All universities search for a soul, for some unifying vision of identity and mission. So say the authors of this remarkable book, and they comb through the history of universities in the West to show what kinds of souls they have—whether a heart for God’s way and will in the world, for unifying and building a national culture, or for creating more personal wealth and prowess. And they show what a fragmented sprawl of competing visions and ambitions contemporary American universities have become. Can their souls be saved? Only if, the authors insist, they recover a pervasively theological vision, drawing on the only reality that can comprehend all that there is: God. Then they suggest ways in which theology might reintegrate university life. What a grand, sweeping book. I have been trying for forty years to learn how to be a Christian higher educator and to make higher education Christians, and this book humbles me with its breadth of knowledge and depth of wisdom. It should be required reading for this field, especially for those called to lead in it."

-Joel Carpenter, Calvin College

Restoring the Soul of the University makes it clear that the Christian failure to sustain universities in service to God was the result of the failure of Christians to think through their most basic convictions. But this is not a negative book. It is an insightful and historically illuminating account of how the university became fragmented, institutionally and in the souls of those who teach and study in the university setting. An imaginative theological proposal is developed that is a practical and hopeful alternative for restoring the soul of the university.

-Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Emeritus Professor of Divinity and Law, Duke University

Product Details

• Title: Restoring the Soul of the University: Unifying Christian Higher Education in a Fragmented Age
• Authors: Nathan F. Alleman, Perry L. Glanzer, Todd C. Ream
• Publisher: IVP
• Print Publication Date: 2017
• Logos Release Date: 2018
• Pages: 388
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: Christian education; Christian universities and colleges; Education, Higher Aims and objectives; Education, Higher Moral and ethical aspects
• ISBNs: 9780830891634, 9780830851614, 0830891633, 0830851615
• Resource ID: LLS:9780830891634
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-12-19T19:22:52Z