Called to the Life of the Mind by Mouw Richard J.;

Author:Mouw, Richard J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Published: 2014-11-13T15:04:07+00:00

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Safe Spaces for “Playing Around”

One day a philosophy colleague at Calvin College told me about a conversation he had just had with a student who visited his office. The student informed the professor that he had become an atheist. “What year are you in?” my colleague asked. “I’m a junior,” came the reply. “Oh,” said my colleague. “You are a year behind where I was as a college student. I went through my atheist year as a sophomore!”

That may have been a bit condescending on my colleague’s part. But the story points to something helpful in thinking about Christian higher education. It is good to promote a “safe-space” atmosphere for serious intellectual engagement.

I like the idea of “safe spaces” for dealing with tough issues. Over a decade ago a Mormon scholar and I agreed to codirect a dialogue between a small group of Mormons and an equal number of evangelicals, focusing on our theological differences. Since the convening institutions would be Fuller Seminary, along with Brigham Young University, and I knew that this could be somewhat controversial in the evangelical world, I invited my Mormon counterpart to meet with our Board of Trustees to offer his perspective on the project. He won our trustees over with his candor. “We Mormons have not had serious contact with historic Christianity for at least a century-and-a-half. We’re not even sure we are using the right theological vocabulary in explaining our views on key topics. Fuller is offering us a safe space to try out our formulations. We need that!”

Safe spaces are crucial for intellectual explorations. If a bright student is going to decide to be an atheist or an agnostic, I would hope that this would happen in a Christian setting where his or her questions are taken seriously. My own most challenging period of religious doubt took place during graduate studies on secular campuses. Spiritually it was a very lonely time. I’m grateful for the “love that would not let me go” through those difficult times. But I still wish it had happened during earlier years when I was in a “safer” environment for facing those challenges.

If we are going to make the case for safe spaces in Christian higher education, we need to find them in our own personal scholarly lives. I had a colleague, a well-known scholar, who would often end hallway conversations by saying, “Well, I have to get back to my office and play around with a few ideas.” Intellectual engagement as “playing around.” To be sure, scholarship is a serious business. But it is precisely because it is so serious that we need to relax a bit in our scholarly engagements. It’s something like getting your blood pressure checked. The need to have it checked can be a serious business. But the test will be accurate only if you can stop concentrating on how serious it is. The instrument used will reveal the truth only if you are able to relax.

Good spiritual resources are available to

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