Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Cautionary Ideas for the Academic Year III

With the start of the new academic year this week at Sydney University, hebel will be publishing some quotes over the coming days about the current state of academia and the place of Christians within it. Here's a quote which I'd like to know i. whether or not you agree with it, and ii. if so, how you might solve the problem.
“We need to acknowledge that conservative evangelical Christians, as a cultural group, often have difficulty assimilating to the culture of secular colleges and universities. Such difficulties are faced by many groups… It seems to me, however, that conservative evangelical Christians represent a special case in this regard. In the other cases, we are dealing with people who have historically been excluded from academe and are therefore simply unfamiliar with its culture and expectations – a relatively straightforward problem to solve… In the case of conservative evangelical Christianity, however, we are dealing with a group whose leaders have encouraged its members to define themselves over against the secular world and particularly secular academe.” - Adam Kotsko 'Christians in Academe: a Reply' 2010
h/t Caitlin

2 comments:

Tom Barrett said...

less true in Aus/UK CofE world than in the states?

Matthew Moffitt said...

I think so. By conservative evangelical Christian he probably means fundamentalists. It's all part of the American angst of having confessional and non-confessional tertiary institutions.