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FAITHFUL
Religious Studies | Intellectual History
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“A dazzling display of the power of a Christian mind; top-notch authors at the top of their game. W
This book shows how fearless and honest Christians should engage the contemporary world.” ER IMAGINATION IN
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—C. Stephen Evans, Baylor University L
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“Faithful Imagination in the Academytakes the faith and learning discussion beyond the emphasis SA
on argument to clear vision; beyond combative metaphors to dialogue; and beyond an apologetic N THE ACADEMY
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tone to invitation. The book provokes intrigue and puzzlement through concrete examples of
what scholars have actually tried to do, rather than speculating on what might be possible.”
—Shirley A. Mullen, Houghton College
“First-order scholarship by Christian believers is no longer a rarity. Yet, because of the multiplied
complexities of existence, there is an ongoing need for learning that moves from general Christian
perspectives to specific intellectual challenges. The chapters of this book show how convincingly
that scholarship can be carried out. The book’s breadth combines with the depth of its individual F
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chapters to make a compelling statement.” —Mark A. Noll, University of Notre Dame
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In the past thirty years there has been a sea change in North American intellectual life regarding the H
role of religious commitments in academic endeavors. Driven partly by postmodernism and the F
fragmentation of knowledge and partly by the democratization of the academy in which different U
voices are celebrated, the appropriate role that religion should play is contested. Some academics L
insist that religion cannot and must not have a place at the academic table; others insist that reli- I
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gious values should drive the argument.
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Faithful Imagination in the Academytakes an approach based on dialogue with various viewpoints,
claiming neither too much nor too little. All the authors are seasoned academics with many signif- I
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icant publications to their credit. While they all know how the academy operates and how to make
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worthwhile contributions in their respective disciplines, they are also Christians whose religious T
commitments are reflected in their intellectual work. I
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Contributors
Janel M. Curry, Mark Fackler, Susan M. Felch, John Hare, Del Ratzsch, Kurt C. Schaefer, Helen M. I
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Sterk, David A. Van Baak, Ronald A. Wells
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JANEL M. CURRY is professor of geography and dean for research and scholarship at Calvin H
College. E
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RONALD A. WELLS is director of the Maryville Symposium on Faith and the Liberal Arts at
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Maryville College.
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Belief and Scholarship
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For orders and information please contact the publisher
LEXINGTON BOOKS JANEL M. CURRY
A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-2547-2 EDITED BY
ISBN-10: 0-7391-2547-8
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200
Lanham, Maryland 20706 RONALD A. WELLS
1-800-462-6420 AND
www.lexingtonbooks.com
Faithful Imagination
in the Academy
Faithful Imagination
in the Academy
Explorations in Religious
Belief and Scholarship
Edited by Janel M. Curry and
Ronald A. Wells
LEXINGTON BOOKS
A division of
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Lanham (cid:129) Boulder (cid:129) New York (cid:129) Toronto (cid:129) Plymouth, UK
LEXINGTON BOOKS
A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200
Lanham, MD 20706
Estover Road
Plymouth PL6 7PY
United Kingdom
Copyright © 2008 by Lexington Books
“First Lesson in Rhetoric,” from Purpaleanie and Other Permutations by Sietze
Buning. Copyright © 1978 by Middleburg Press. Used by permission of the
publisher.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission
of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Faithful imagination in the academy : explorations in religious belief and
scholarship / edited by Janel M. Curry and Ronald A. Wells.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-2547-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-7391-2547-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-3035-3 (electronic)
ISBN-10: 0-7391-3035-8 (electronic)
1. Theology—Congresses. I. Curry, Janel M., 1956– II. Wells, Ronald, 1941–
BR41.F35 2008
261.5—dc22 2008023384
Printed in the United States of America
(cid:2) ™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Janel M. Curry and Ronald A. Wells
Part I: Probing Linguistic and Moral Coherence
1 Words and Things: The Hope of Perspectival Realism 13
Susan M. Felch
2 Can We Be Good without God? 31
John Hare
Part II: Questioning Assumptions Underlying Science
3 Can Scientific Laws Teach Us the Nature of the World? 45
David A. Van Baak
4 Design in Nature: What Is Science Properly Permitted to Think? 57
Del Ratzsch
Part III: Truth Telling and Truth Searching
5 Reckoning with the Conquest of California and the West:
Josiah Royce and American Memory 81
Ronald A. Wells
6 Better Media with Wisdom from a Distant Place 99
Mark Fackler
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vi Contents
Part IV: Imagining a World
7 Gender Partnership: A Care Theory Perspective 115
Helen M. Sterk
8 American Poverty Policy: Concerns about the Nature of
Persons in a Good Society 131
Kurt C. Schaefer
9 Understanding God, Nature, and Social Structure:
A Case Study of Great Barrier Island, New Zealand 151
Janel M. Curry
Index 165
About the Contributors 173
Preface and Acknowledgments
The authors whose chapters appear in this book did not start out believ-
ing their work would end up in a common volume. This book came about
because the two editors and the Provost of Calvin College, Dr. Claudia
Beversluis, believed that it might, or should, be so. We all—editors, authors,
and provost alike—believe deeply both in scholarship rooted in a liberal
arts consciousness, formed in a faith-related context, and in its dissemina-
tion both to general readers and to teacher-scholars in institutions of higher
learning.
The chapters in this book are by no means thought to be anything like
the last word on the chosen subject for the various disciplines. We have
a more modest goal. These essays are contributions to the ongoing and
widespread revisionist project that asks the question: What can it mean
for scholars to integrate their faith with their academic work? As much for
scholars in so-called secular universities as for colleagues in church-related
liberal arts colleges, we offer this work as an example of what faith-based
discourse might possibly amount to.
In the past thirty years, there has been a sea change in North American
intellectual life regarding the role of religious commitments in academic
endeavors. That change has been driven partly by postmodernism and the
concomitant fragmentation of knowledge and partly by the democratiza-
tion of the academy in which different voices are celebrated. However,
the appropriate role that religion should play in all this is contested: some
academics still insist that religion cannot and must not have a place at the
academic table or it will not be academics at all; others insist that religious
values should drive the argument.
vii
viii Preface and Acknowledgments
This book takes a determinedly moderate approach, claiming neither
too much nor too little. All the authors are seasoned, veteran academics
with many significant publications to their credit. We all know how the
academy operates and how to make worthwhile contributions in our re-
spective disciplines. At the same time, we are people of faith who want to
demonstrate how religious commitments are reflected in our intellectual
work. In this respect, we respond in advance to two possible objections: to
those who think that religion does not and cannot have a place in academic
discourse, we ask that they give these essays an honest and open reading; to
those scholars of faith who think that one’s academic conclusions should
be substantially—some would say antithetically—different from secular
people, we ask that they, too, give us an honest and open reading before
they express their possible disappointment at our cautious approach.
These essays were first delivered as lectures when we were “The Calvin
Worldview Lecturer.” That program was conceived of, and administered by,
Calvin College and Chaplaincy Ministry of the Christian Reformed Church.
In brief, the program releases a Calvin faculty member from teaching each
academic year so that the person might travel to lecture at universities that
invite us. We were meant, as far as possible, to work with university chap-
lains, who were to negotiate invitations for us at departmental lectures, col-
loquia, and seminars. We lecturers were meant to go to secular universities,
not theological seminaries or church-related liberal arts colleges.
The editors of this volume asked each Calvin Lecturer from the inception
of the program in 1998 to 2006 to give us the lecture that best represents
the dynamic that went on in universities from British Columbia and On-
tario to California, Massachusetts, and New Mexico and from Switzerland
and Britain to New Zealand, Kenya, and Korea. The various authors have
worked with the editors to bring their spoken presentations into the literary
essays found in this book.
We should say that there is one essay in the group that was not given by
a Calvin Lecturer, as such. Janel Curry, as dean for research at Calvin, has
the oversight role for the lectureship, so she was closely associated with the
program. Her coeditor in this book noted the relative lack of essays in the
social sciences; thus it was decided that she contribute an essay that was in
the spirit of the lectureship. We think her work demonstrates and illustrates
the intent of the book in a discipline and a geographic area that had not
otherwise been touched.
We could not have done this book without the human encouragements
and financial assistance of two successive provosts at Calvin College, Joel
Carpenter and Claudia Beversluis, and three successive deans for research,
Stephen Evans, Shirley Roels, and the present coeditor Janel Curry. We
thank them heartily. Special thanks are due the Rev. William van Gronin-
gen, the head of CRC chaplains when the program was conceived, and to
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
the Rev. Peter Schuurman, whose leadership from 2004 onward gave fresh
energy and resolve. We also thank the various chaplains whose hard work
on our behalf facilitated many good venues. While all chaplains did good
work for us, we risk singling out one for his outstanding leadership and
assistance, the Rev. Dr. Michael Fallon, at McMaster University in Ontario.
We thank Dawn Crook for providing the administrative support for the
lectureship program and for her help with this project. Finally, we thank
James Bratt, Donna Romanowski, and Dale Williams at the Calvin Center
for Christian Scholarship, whose human and financial help at a key stage
was critical and much appreciated. Last, we thank our publisher, Jon Sisk at
Rowman & Littlefield, who always seems open to new ideas.
We hope and trust that these essays will find their way into the hands of
comrades in the cause of liberal arts faith-based scholarship, and into those
of people who might want to know, perhaps for the first time, what all this
discourse regarding faith-based scholarship is all about.
