Each year CHRISTIANITY TODAY publishes a higher education issue. During the past year we received more manuscripts on this topic than on any other topic out of the hundreds upon hundreds that arrive unsolicited at my desk. No doubt college and university teachers tend to write more articles than other people! But this is not the only reason for the superabundance of articles on this theme: Christian people are rightly concerned about Christian higher education. They know our colleges and universities determine the theological and intellectual leadership for the next generation of the church and of the world.
In this issue, Leland Ryken analyzes Puritan attitudes toward education and finds illumination for the contemporary scene. Robert Baptista draws upon his experience as a college dean and president to discuss problems of Christian higher education and to suggest how these problems can best be solved. The growing popularity of Bible colleges (four-year colleges with majors limited to Bible, Christian education, and related areas) warrants an article assessing this trend in Christian higher education. Kenneth Gangel, after spending years as professor, dean, and Bible college president, notes the achievements, problems, and challenges of these schools. He concludes with a balanced exhortation that they take seriously their responsibility to provide a college-level education for Christian leaders. Finally, Charles Malik warns evangelicals that any evangelism that avoids penetration of the intellectual citadels of our great secularized universities is doomed to failure. It is there that the movers and shakers of tomorrow’s world are to be found. For too long evangelicals have shied away from the realities of our contemporary culture. If Christianity is not to drift into inconsequential back eddies in the twenty-first century, this retreat from the neural centers of influence and power must cease. Evangelicals must allocate energies and resources into evangelism of these centers of intellectual life and influence and reclaim them for Christ’s kingdom of righteousness.
Robert Culver and William Drescher conclude our three-part series on just war and pacifism with two solid pieces that will be of special interest to college and university students, but also of deep concern to all Christians.
