Review: Witness In The Academy

October 9, 2023October 8, 2023 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

Witness In The Academy, Rick Mattson. Madison, WI: InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries, 2023.

Summary: Offers both a framework for thinking about Christian witness among graduate students and faculty and a host of practical resources aiding in that witness.

One of the most challenging fields for Christian witness, at least by perception, is the population of graduate students and university faculty working in public or private institutions of higher education (other than explicitly Christian colleges). Not only is there a higher degree of skepticism about Christian claims but there are real risks Christian peers may face in terms of reputation or even employment in seeking to bear witness to what one believes. Often Christian peers fear imposing themselves or being perceived as racist, homophobic, colonizers.

Does this then mean Christian acacemics get a “pass” on “you shall be my witnesses” among their peers in the academy? Rick Mattson thinks not. Mattson is a traveling evangelist and evangelism trainer with InterVarsity’s Graduate and Faculty Ministry and his work over many years has convinced him there is not only the possibility of witness but that there are people hungering for spiritual reality and that those of us who work with this population may have the joy of walking with some as they place their trust in Christ.

The first part of this book offers a framework for Christian witness in the academic world. Very quickly, we discover the source of Mattson’s optimism. In the first chapter, “A Theology of Witness,” Mattson articulates the encouraging truth that “God goes before us.” Witness begins, not with slick salesmanship, but with “listening in stereo” to both the person with whom we are speaking and to the Holy Spirit who may prompt us with questions we might asks and what we might say, and how far, in a conversation, we might go in faith sharing. At some point, this involves taking a risk, either in identifying ourselves in some way as a Christ follower or in asking a question that takes the conversation to a deeper level. Mattson discusses the importance of consent, of asking permission when we do so. God going before us, discernment, and taking risks make up the first three chapters of the book and Mattson ties it all together with a running narrative of an in-flight conversation with “Ruth” that is illustrative of the process and how natural this may be.

The final part of this framework is a discussion of five thresholds of conversion, describing the process by which people come to faith. Rarely is this in a single conversation, but rather over time as a person trusts a Christian, moves from indifference to curiosity, becomes open to change, moves from meandering to seeking, and becomes a follower of Christ. Mattson believes this is a process in which God is at work in a person but offers suggestions of how we might walk alongside someone in that process helpfully.

The rest of the book consists of fifteen appendices, each a few pages long with very practical helps. Mattson discusses things like the 40-60 model, where we spend more time listening than speaking, helps in telling our own story, three steps to inviting people to events, and the place of scripture in our witness. He offers appendices for specific groups within this larger category of “academics”: international students, faculty, and Black scholars and professionals.

This book is written specifically for those involved in InterVarsity’s Graduate and Faculty Ministry (of which I am a part). This includes graduate students, post-docs, researchers, and faculty along with the campus ministers serving this population. At the same time, there are many others engaged with this population who will benefit including study center staff on university campuses and other campus ministries and local congregations. In addition, there are Christian graduate students and faculty on many campuses not yet being served by any outside ministry who will find the principles and resources in this book helpful. Finally, the framework and some of Mattson’s resources are applicable more broadly, as evident from illustrations that he includes from outside academia.

Mattson’s succinct, highly readable, and practical book offers hope for a culturally appropriate and effective Christian witness among graduate students and faculty. The good news that God goes before us in witness means we don’t have to make something happen. Rather than impose our faith on the unwilling, we have the opportunity to expose our faith with those in whom God has been working, as we discern through “listening in stereo.” My experience is that God loves to surprise us in such things, often through conversations with those we thought most unlikely to be interested. And that is part of the joy!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Repentance and the Christian Mind

July 7, 2021July 7, 2021 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

It is typical to think of “repentance” as a highly emotional experience, often arising from a sense of one’s sinfulness and need for God. Perhaps the comic image of a bearded man carrying a sign saying “Repent or perish” comes to mind. We may think of a revivalist setting with an “earnest bench” or an altar call for the repentant turning to Christ.

I do not want to deny the reality of such experiences. In fact, there is an element within them that I want to focus on. All of these involve a mental understanding of a need to turn from one way of thinking and living to another, combined with actions that reflect this change of mind.

“Change of mind.” That phrase is a good way to translate the Greek word metanoia which is often translated as repent in the Bible. It reflects what happens in genuine Christian conversion, or other forms of conversion. A person who has been thinking, seeing the world, and living one way, begins to think, see the world, and live differently. Christians believe this involves both human agency, believing and following Christ, and divine intervention–forgiveness and the indwelling of God’s Spirit, initiating and empowering this new life.

I’ve written from time to time as one who works among academics of the idea of the Christian mind and how this is formed. The title of a chapter in Who Created Christianity titled “Metanoia: Jesus, Paul, and the Transformation of the Believing Mind” written by Alister McGrath stimulated my thinking about some of the ways metanoia or repentance shapes the Christian mind.

Humility. The awareness that one’s prior way of thinking was subject to error ought lead to humility in our thinking. We may believe that the faith we have embraced is true but we don’t confuse our own grasp of that faith with the one we believe to be true. I think this makes us more willing to be proven wrong in other areas.

Passion for Truth: When we turn from being our own source of truth, we become more passionate for truth in whatever field we pursue it. We discover that truth is bigger than us and that if someone else has an insight or even shows where we have gone wrong, we are glad and open to learn, because we have been freed from a life that sees ourselves as the source of truth.

Dependence: Understanding in any field, whether Christian doctrine or any field of academic study doesn’t come easy. The change of mind that is repentance means turning from autonomy to dependence upon the God we trust. If we believe that God is creator and the source of all knowledge and wisdom, it only makes sense to turn to God for insight in our studies. It’s not that God does this for us, but that God wants to do this with us.

Doxological wonder: I draw this phrase from Jeff Hardin, an embryologist, who hopes to foster that sense of wonder in his students. So many who are drawn to academic work come to this with a profound sense of the wonder of some aspect of the world, whether it is how tone, harmony, meter, and rhythm make music or for how four nucleotides paired together in a double helix can encode all the instructions needed for the “program” that creates all living things. Whereas we’ve wondered what to do with this wonder, with this newfound way of thinking and seeing, we find that worship is the proper outlet of wonder.

Realism: In life among the academics, I’ve observed this interesting fluctuation between ungrounded optimism about the human project and unremitting cynicism (usually directed toward the institutions within which one must work). We are quite skilled in seeing what is wrong with “them” but pretty clueless to what is wrong with us. Repentance recognizes the worst in human beings because we’ve seen it in ourselves and yet believes in a God who does not give up on us. We live with a kind of critical realism that holds together our newly won self-knowledge of our finiteness and fallibility and hope in one who is devoted to the world he has created and is redeeming.

Peacemaking: To repent is to accept God’s peace offer ending our rebellion against God. Of all people, Christians ought be people of peace because of our peacemaking God. We often work in contexts of contended ideas. Often these reflect societal binaries–the either/ors that often polarize and separate us. While contradictory ideas cannot both be true (they both can be false!) it is rare that people are utterly wrong. Might the role of Christians in at least some of these disputes be to listen to both sides and help reconcile the connections to a possible larger underlying truth and place of agreement? Often, instead, we side up and add to the acrimony.

Curiosity: I do not think that curiosity is unique to the believing mind. In fact, curiosity strikes me as one of the things that drives the academic enterprise. Questions drive research as well as the peer-review process that tests and advances that research. I would simply suggest that repentance punctures all our mental pretensions, challenging us to question our questions, to doubt our doubts. Curiosity coupled with a new way of seeing might lead us to ask different questions. One education researcher I know, caught in the tension between social justice and academic performance asked the questions, why aren’t advances in academic performance for ethnic minorities not social justice? and, why shouldn’t social justice be concerned about academic performance? This led to crafting a novel approach attempting to bring these two polarized streams in educational theory together. (This is also an example of peacemaking!)

Excellence: People in the academic world care about excellence. Often career advancement and reputation become obsessions that drive excellence. Repentance de-centers the self. Someone else and what that Person cares about becomes the center of our lives. Excellence is no longer a competition with others over who gets the most citations or the biggest grants. It is a passion for the reputation of God showing through how we teach, the quality of our work, our care for students and collaboration with colleagues. It shapes not only how we work but our ethics. Nor is it one dimensional. It concerns our families, our community life.

You might think of other implications of repentance for the development of the Christian mind. The development of a Christian mind is a lifelong project as we seek to see God’s world God’s way. Likewise, repentance is not a moment but a way of life. We keep turning from a self-centered to God-centered life. I would propose, as I have here, that this means a change from a mind closed in on our selves to a mind set afire by the grandeur of God. To my mind, that is a project worthy of our lives.

The Line Between Prudence and Courage

June 22, 2014 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

I am participating this week in a conference on higher education and the role of Christians in exercising a redemptive influence in the academic world. A message this morning told the story of a pre-tenured professor who was respectful of others but forthright in sharing how his faith informed his academic work in public presentations. As anyone who is familiar with the academic world knows, this can be risky business. Tenure depends not only on objective things like publications, funding, service, and teaching, but also on what your colleagues think of you. And no matter how good the former, if the latter is a problem, a way often can be found to deny the candidate tenure.

Truth is, this poses a serious question for any person of faith. For such people, one’s beliefs are not confined to a small segment of life but inform how one thinks about all of life. And yet increasingly, people of faith are asked to keep those beliefs to themselves and not allow it to inform their ethics or their scholarship in the academic workplace, except where that conforms to academic orthodoxy.

Admittedly, there are times for prudence. Not every outrageous remark requires an answer. Not all battles are worth fighting. There are some sleeping dogs it is best to let lie. And there is the issue of recognizing that the university is supposed to be a place where no religious view is privileged. Hopefully what that means is that we can have respectful and civil conversations about differences. It does not mean we get to enforce our faith informed view on any issue unless we can persuade others that it really makes the most sense.

But when is courage called for? That is the harder question because courageous acts always require risk, and prudence often suggests avoiding risk. It seems that one instance is where the “prudent” act would be one that deceives others about oneself and denies the truth of what one believes, perhaps including the God one believes in. Courage seems in many cases to involve simply honesty when the alternative is evasion, deception, or denial.

Courage may also be called for when the welfare of others is endangered and trouble can be avoided by avoiding speaking up. I’m reminded of a faculty member who spoke up for a Christian student group whose status on campus was called into question simply because they required their leaders to be Christian. This person, who was highly respected, was not directly connected to the group and did not need to do so, yet was convinced that the university was wrongly using its power and put his own reputation (and power) on the line to make that point.

Those are a few of my reflections. I’d be curious what others think about this issue of where the line between prudence and courage is drawn?