There are two things that stand out to me:
1. the importance of developing character as well as knowledge. this is a current fault of many seminaries today where people are prepared for ministry by lectures and essays, but communal living and service feature much less. obviously a university is less intentionally 'pastoral' than a seminary, but it would be important to see this as part of the plan.
2. even among christian universities, there is no guarantee of integrated curricula. a good example is many of the 'clinical psychology' courses run at american christian universities. these courses are sometimes no more than secular skills delivered by christians. few have made attempts to build a 'new psychology' based both on a christian view of personhood and scientific skills. there is a danger of just following a 'scientific rationalist' worldview in these departments. a true christian university would have to build up each subject area from first principles.

on the topic of whether christian universities are a good idea, it is worth mentioning the Harvey Fellows programme which aims to send believers to 'top 5' secular universities, on the basis that degrees from these schools will mean graduates gain prominence in their countries. they then run a summer school to keep the focussed on God. http://www.harveyfellows.org/

Rob Waller   27 September 2008

Aren't we in 'desperate' need of a coordinated international network of Christian research, thinkers and practisers to substructure our sociatal and political arguments? Wouldn't -in the first place- a webcommunity, with data bases, links to international Web communities,... be necessary. meeting and living together (for a week or so per year (regional). could be of great value, discussing particular topics...
Luc (ien A.M. Borkes
Genk-Belgium (C'axent www.caxent.be Research and Development,
BA Education/ BA Bible and Theology/ MA Christian Ministries)

Luc Borkes   27 September 2008

Do we need a Christian University? In the United Kingdom we certainly do not need as many universities as we have at present, and we certainly do not need to send anywhere near 50 per cent of our young people there.

We are producing far too many graduates, many more than there are graduate-level jobs for. Many of them, though academically able enough for a university education worthy of the name, end up graduating without the faculty for creating wealth and earning as much of a living as they would have done had they chosen to go straight into the workplace and to technical college to learn practical skills.

Michael Petek   28 September 2008

I have just finished a theology degree which incorporated Islam,Judaism,Hinduism,Sikhism,Buddhism and Anthropology and Psychology. All of which need to be incorporated, if you are to have an all round knowledge of where people are coming from in today's multi-cultural society.However,I feel at the expense of Christianity.For fear of upsetting secular interpretations. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, Biblical college would have been preferable a Christian University without a doubt a benefit.

Deborah Andeton   29 September 2008

In my understanding of the kind of institution needed, it's an idea whose time has come. There have been and are endless institutions that overlap in different ways with academia but, in my experience, they are either beholden to a church organization or a statement of faith, so called, and thus often impeded from dealing with some frontiers of knowledge. Kuyper's New University was and is a fine record but its echoes in South Africa were far from helpful.
It will take the involvement of people who can operate within a simple structure (Jesus Christ as God and Incarnate human and the Bible as a primary source of guidance) to launch the kind of Christian University that is needed, one that can honor scholarship and have many nobel winners! That will mean independent money resources. I doubt if any one of the big organizations, Anglican, Catholic, or Presbyterian can handle it.

The trigger that makes this important now comes from our discoveries about learning, how it collides with authoritative structures of knowledge.

Angus M. Gunn   29 September 2008

A few comments on this excellent introductory paper:
(1) In the space available Nigel could not cover the vast literature on this topic, so it is worth mentioning some of the key books that don’t appear in his paper (listed purely in author order):
William Lane Craig & Paul M. Gould (eds), The Two Tasks of the Christian Scholar: redeeming the soul, redeeming the mind, Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, 2007
Stanley Hauerwas, The State of the University: academic knowledges and the knowledge of God, Oxford: Blackwell, 2007
Stanley Hauerwas & John H. Westerhoff (eds), Schooling Christians: “holy experiments” in American education, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992
George Marsden, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, OUP. 1997
Donald Opitz & Derek Melleby, The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness, Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2007
Cornelius Plantinga, Engaging God’s World: a Christian vision of faith, learning, and living, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002
Elmer Thiessen, In Defence of Religious Schools and Colleges, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001
Nicholas Wolterstorff, Educating for Shalom: essays on Christian higher education, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004

It is hard to know where to stop, especially if you include the Catholic literature. Of these two must be mentioned:

Gavin D’Costa, Theology in the Public Square: church, academy and nation, Oxford: Blackwell, 2005
Philip Gleason, Contending with Modernity: Catholic higher education in the twentieth century, OUP, 1995

(2) Nigel’s first list of categories on page 2 has at least one omission. The Stapleford Centre in Nottingham offers Christian distance-learning courses in education leading to postgraduate qualifications, but doesn’t fit into any of the existing four categories. One possible way forward is a ‘university’ that networks a number of these existing Christian centres, colleges and other institutions that function at tertiary level.

(3) For a few years WYSOCS in Leeds (www.wysocs.org.uk) ran a one-year gap-year programme like Nigel’s suggestion on page 4, column 2. It worked very well, but we were unable to recruit enough students to make in viable in the longer term. It is a ‘chicken and egg’ situation: in the absence of a Christian tertiary sector there is no awareness or promotion in our churches of such a choice as a real option for Christian students.

Arthur Jones

(Dr Arthur Jones, Chair, Association of Christian Teachers, Course Leader, Stapleford Centre postgraduate courses in Faith and Education, Senior Tutor, West Yorkshire School of Christian Studies, Leeds)

Dr Arthur John Jones   7 October 2008

The Paper refers to the concept of a more inclusive "Relational university", based on the ethical values of the Judaeo-Christian tradition rather than on a set of doctrinal beliefs. Michael Schluter's description of these can be found in The Case for and Nature of Relational Colleges and Universities, in the resources section of the Jubilee Centre website.

Nigel Paterson   9 October 2008

Your summary mentions that while the university began as a Christian ideal, most modern universities today are secular. While this is no doubt the case in the UK and in the West generally, around the rest of the world, and in particular the developing world, Christian and other faith-based universities are springing up all over, so quickly that researchers cannot even monitor the growth. I work at a Christian University in Uganda (UCU - Uganda Christian University) which began 11 years ago formed out of the pre-existing 80 year old flagship Anglican theological college. Student numbers then were 250. Today we have over 7,000 with more than a dozen academic departments from Health Sciences to Law to Mass Communication. We work hard to contain the growth, and to maintain quality assurance over quantity as we could easily rocket to many times our present size. In Uganda in 1989 there were 2 universities in the country. Today there are 28. Of the private (non-government) universities, 15 are faith based and only 7 are secular. Two are Muslim, the rest are Anglican (4), Pentecostal (3) Roman Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist, and inter-denominational.

The extent to which they are "Christian" varies dramatically, with quite unwieldly combinations of many of the models your paper highlighted. As one example, UCU, both in its charter and founding documents, references its "instruments of identity" including a strong evangelical Statement of Faith, a "rule of Life", and a "rule of Prayer". Denominational connections are strong at the institutional level, but on the ground it has a very interdenominational character. The Christian identity is maintained by its hiring policies (only committed Christians with a testimony of salvation for full time positions), a university-wide Mission or Evangelism week each semester and a full range of services, Fellowships, and community worship sessions organized by the chaplaincy. Further, there are core required Christian Foundation courses cutting across all disciplines including Old & New Testament Survey, Christian Worldview and Christian Ethics. Finally, there is an ongoing and concerted effort to promote "Integration of Faith and Teaching" in the classrooms, not only within the course content, but in teaching methodology, and staff-student relationships (ie. modeling the Christian life for our students in and out of the classroom). Some faculties have moved further in these areas than others, and integrating faith and teaching brings particular and unique challenges to each individual program and course.

The point of all this is to say that we are not alone. Faith based universities are fast becoming the rule, not the exception around the world, and are experiencing tremendous and unprecedented growth. They are often proliferating in parts of the world which have had a dearth of university opportunities and thus have enormous markets of young people desperate for affordable tertiary level education. These are countries which do NOT have the secular traditions of the West, the legacy of Enlightenment thinking, empirical bias, rationalist approach, naturalistic presuppositions, or any of the other "barriers" to Christian based higher education in the West.

Your paper was an excellent introduction, but I found it limited to a UK perspective. If you want to truly explore this subject in a global framework, then simply analyzing the few struggling models in the UK and comparing them with the somewhat more successful models in the US is simply insufficient. The idea of the Christian university is already "back", and in a big way. The West's tiresome battle between secular and Christian higher education is rapidly becoming redundant in the face of the facts on the ground around the rest of the world. True, these "new" universities have a long way to go to catch up to the standards of Western Universities, (and indeed may never do so in those terms), but the sheer numbers of students impacted in the non-Western world may in some ways overcome the the gaps in quality standards of the institutions themselves. The question is not, "Is there a need for Christian higher education", but rather, "how might we better understand and harness the energy of these new Christian universities for God's Kingdom?"

(Daniel Button, Head of Department of Foundation Studies, Uganda Christian University; Mission Partner with Crosslinks UK and Global Teams USA.
--If anyone has further interest in this area I have written papers on "The New Universities: Integrating Faith and Teaching in Developing Countries" and "Worldview Wars in the Global South: A Case Study of Uganda Christian University - drbutton@ucu.ac.ug)

Daniel Button   17 October 2008

Reading Nigel Paterson's paper and the comments above, I am encouraged by the breadth of interest and debate that is evidenced. Three thoughts prompted by Daniel Button's interesting post:

1) Nigel Paterson's paper ought would be complemented by a comprehensive survey of what kinds of Christian HE institutions currently exist in the world and of global trends in Christian HE. I see that the International Asscociation for the Promotion of Christian Higher Education is compiling a database which could provide the basis for such a survey. (See http://www.iapche.org/ > Research - incidentally, 15 UK institutions are listed as meeting the criteria of this survey)

2) Those of us who are academics in secular institutions but share the vision for integrally Christian scholarship might do well to survey what already exists and acquaint ourselves personally with institutions anywhere in the world that come close to embodying our vision.

3) If we agree that Christian HE in the UK needs developing (and the comment from Deborah Anderton above is encouraging), a further study should be conducted on the available options. These evidently include Michael Schluter's proposal of relational colleges (linked from Nigel's comment above), and the possibility of "buying into" or networking existing institutions that have a suitable ethos, as an alternative to founding a brand new institution.

(Richard Gunton, postdoctoral researcher in plant ecology - rmg 'at' cantab.net)

Richard Gunton   7 December 2008

The comment by David Button, on the diversity of denominationally-based institutions in some parts of the world, highlights some of the difficulties in thinking about 'Christian' universities. While the ethos is key (expressed in relationships,student care etc) , if the orientation of the university is to emerge within its teaching methods and materials (Nigel suggests one priority might be 'use of the Bible within all its courses') then there will likely be clashes concerning interpretation. One has only to see the extent of debate on how to read and interpret the scriptures among the Christian members of the theological and biblical studies communities to see that 'use of the Bible' is anything but straightforward. As someone who has made the move into biblical studies from biosciences, I am particularly aware of the different ways in which scriptures may be employed within scientific subjects.
However, thank you, Nigel, for a thought provoking introduction to the topic .
Cherryl Hunt (http://huss.exeter.ac.uk/theology/staff/hunt/)

Cherryl Hunt   23 December 2008

Do we need a Christian University?

In the first instance, I need to introduce myself as a Nigerian. It is very important that Christians everywhere take note of what is happening in Nigeria or other non western countries.

Before the Nigerian civil war, the churches were only the ones introduced by the British – Catholic, Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, etc. The Catholic Church played a great part in the education of the people and they did a lot in Nigeria through the Rev. Sisters, Rev. Brothers, Rev. Fathers, etc.

After the civil war, there was a revival in Nigeria. The Holy Spirit was outpoured and men and women started seeking God earnestly. The most interesting thing is that men and women of God targeted children - children in primary schools, secondary schools, teacher training schools and universities. The work of Scripture Union, Children Evangelism Mission, churches and individuals yielded such fruits that Nigeria now has more pastors than most countries in the world. These pastors are well educated men and women.

In recent years, men and women and churches have started Christian universities as a means of combating the corruption in the government arena. The hope in Nigeria now is to produce men and women of calibre who will take over the government and run it with honesty and integrity. That is the only hope.

Paul the apostle taught us to believe, 'I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.' Because of standing on that word, the Nigerian Christians are doing well in all areas of life all over the world.

We live in a Britain where you can not say 'Jesus' because you would offend someone. Our children in schools are shut up and shut down if they try to mention the name of God. The Muslims have their own schools where they teach their children how to identify an infidel and what to do with the infidel. The Christians in Britain are still making excuses with regards to having Christian schools or Christian universities. It is amazing how the enemy can pluck the eyes and one cannot see anything at all. The good old Book declares that wisdom is the principle thing.

In my years as a Christian, I have seen the devil himself convince Christians on what or what not to do. We need to wake up and say to him, 'Get behind me Satan.' The aim of the Muslims in Britain is to take over the government of Britain by the year 2025. They have set themselves targets and they are working at it. The Christians are not allowed to open their mouth anywhere and Great Britain built on the blood of saints and martyrs is about to be passed unto the Muslim world while the Christians sit down to debate on whether we should or should not have Christian universities. Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ declares that all power in heaven and earth belongs to Him. He told us we can do greater things because He was going to His father and He gave us power over the powers of the enemy and told us that nothing can in any wise hurt us. But the devil is a deceiver. He leads us off the track and he himself wonders at our foolishness in not believing the word of our Master.

We need Christian Universities. There is nothing better to invest on as Christian Universities where young men and women will learn, above all else, the fear of God, the word of God and the power of prayer - for the weapon of our warfare is not carnal but mighty through God to the pulling down of satanic strongholds.

What other hope has Britain?

May God help us.

Rev E. Chukwudinma   2 November 2009

I completely agree with the concept of a "gap-year" pre-university experience as mentioned in this article, for the purpose of preparing students for the spiritual warfare of university life. The Emmanuel Community have run such programmes in Paray-le-Monial (France), Altotting (Germany), Rome and Manila (Philippines) for 25 years with great fruits given by the working of the Holy Spirit. From our experience, we have found the opportunity for students to take time out of formal study for one year to immerse themselves in prayer, mission and works of compassion is attractive to young people. The experience also offers students the opportunity to serve in concrete and simple ways, imitating the Lord who washed the feet of His disciples. Let us pray similar alternatives present themselves in other parts of the world!

Kevin Wagner (Director Emmanuel School of Mission - Rome)
http://en.emmanuel.info/

Kevin Wagner   15 June 2010