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This individualist conception of Christian existence has devastated our academic life, stanching all attempts to unify the disciplines within a common discourse. The call for such dialogical unity is dismissed as authoritarian, while teaching and learning are conceived in descriptive and supposedly neutral terms. Professors "objectively" disseminate information from their various disciplines, students personally collect and perhaps even assimilate it, and then they make up their own minds about its possible bearing on their personal lives. Our unwitting aim becomes the making of our students into good consumers. Gone almost entirely is the communal idea of education—shared by Greeks and Romans, by Jews and Christians alike—as a moral and religious exercise in the formation of character.

While the Christian university is not a church—Baylor does not require its students to be Christians, much less that they subscribe to a creed or belong to a church—it should be a place where students and faculty are both formed and transformed. Baptist and other Protestant churches undertake this task by preaching the Gospel and converting the unbelieving, by healing the sick and ministering to the poor, by celebrating the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. The Christian university fulfills its mission by integrating our faith with our learning.

This mission means that we are called both to think and to live in accord with the various virtues—intellectual and moral and religious—that make for a flourishing academic life. It also means that we will cease to reap the Enlightenment whirlwind sown by our individualist ancestors only when we celebrate a tradition- and community-centered understanding of both Christian faith and Christian education. And this is what—in fits and starts and mistakes—we are attempting here at Baylor.

Ralph C. Wood is University Professor of Theology and Literature at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

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Christianity Today's earlier coverage of The Battle for Baylor includes:

2012: A School Odyssey | Baylor strives to go where no Christian university has gone before—in ten years (Nov. 22, 2002)

Christian History Corner: Breaking Down the Faith/Learning Wall | How the history of Christians in higher education has stacked the deck against Robert Sloan's "new Baylor" (Sept. 19, 2003)

Weblog: Baylor Regents Overwhelmingly Support President | After a very bad week at Baylor, good news for Sloan's vision of Christian higher education (Sept. 12, 2003)

Weblog: Showdown at Baylor, Continued | Baylor U.'s sports troubles leak into school's religion debate (Aug. 1, 2003)

Weblog: Showdown at Baylor | Baylor's president faces off against critics this week amid multiple controversies (July 18, 2003)

Design Interference | William Dembski fired from Baylor's Intelligent Design center (Nov. 28, 2000)

Unintelligent Designs | Baylor's dismissal of Polyani Center director Dembski was not a smart move (Oct. 23, 2000)

Books & Culture Corner: Defending Faith and Learning | Baylor University's Polanyi Center comes under fire from the university's faculty (Apr. 24, 2000)

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October (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47