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In The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, George Marsden argues convincingly that the "rules of the academic game" in American higher education should be changed to make room for perspectives explicitly informed by Christian theology and a Christian world-view. Just as there are places at the table for Marxist or feminist views, Marsden contends, so should there be places for Christian points of view. Judging from the heated reactions in The Chronicle of Higher Education and the New York Times to Marsden's earlier work on this topic, The Soul of the American University, this would indeed seem to be an "outrageous" idea. How it came to be viewed as "outrageous" and why Christian scholars themselves are either unwilling or unable to "come out of the closet" and think deeply and openly about the relevance of faith to their scholarship is the focus of The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship.
I read this book while vacationing in the High Sierras, surrounded by blue sky, clean air, and lots of tall trees. I read passages to my husband, Don, a committed Christian scholar, who began his career as a physicist, then became a social psychologist, and who has been teaching for over 20 years at the graduate level in the academic mainstream. What I discovered in our discussions is something I always suspected: that while our commitment to Christ is the same, the differences in our disciplines, the fact that he is a professor of management in a secular university and I am an English professor in a Christian university, causes us to think differently about this issue.
My husband's research right now is focused on organizational design theory in business, government, and the nonprofit sectors. What he is trying to do, as I understand it, is to critique economic theories of the firm that dominate the field and that do not take into account altruistic, religious, or spiritual motivations. Is this Christian scholarship? If by "Christian scholarship" we mean scholarship written by a committed Christian under the lordship of Christ and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, then definitely yes. If by that term we mean "advocacy" scholarship that is explicit in asserting Christian doctrines or a Christian world-view, then maybe not. Don's research is "shaped by background religious commitments," as Marsden says, but defended with arguments and evidence that are "more widely accessible." He "plays by the rules" of public discourse in a pluralistic academic environment. He has to if he wants to be published, and he has to publish if he wants to maintain his tenure.
My research, on the other hand, has for several years been focused on religious themes and religious experience in literature. For the most part it has been aimed at a Christian academic audience. For example, last summer I became fascinated with a twelfth-century German Catholic nun, Hildegard of Bingen. I wasn't sure to whom I was writing exactly. I just wanted to know more about this extraordinary woman whose achievements in poetry, art, music, and drama as well as science, theology, and medicine suggested to me the creative capacities of a "spirit-filled" woman. Beginning in 1982 with the first English translation of her writings, and increasingly in the years since then, Hildegard has been acclaimed and ad mired as a role model for women. Several feminist critics have commented on Hildegard's struggle to integrate her faith with beliefs and attitudes that appear to have been, if not radically feminist, then at least moderately so. Her story might have special interest, I believed, for Christian women today who feel torn between the orthodoxies of their faith and increasing awareness of (if not always agreement with) the agendas of modern feminism. And so, I began my research. The first thing I discovered was that feminists were not the only ones studying Hildegard. The most compelling versions of her story are currently being told (and sold) by holistic health advocates, evolutionary ecologists, and various seekers and promoters of the New Age.
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