In his recent article “Commit Lit,” philosopher Joseph Keegin describes an important aspect of the state of higher education in our contemporary moment. Interweaving analysis of the broader trends besetting academia in 2024 with his own inspiring story of returning to college at age 25, Keegin contrasts the popular “quit-lit” view of academic humanities as “a charnel house of competition and hopelessness” with his own discovery of college as “an oasis.” What he found at the small, lesser known college in southeastern Indiana, with its “uninspiring” and “unmemorable” campus (one that “invites no awe, pretends no grandeur and assumes no superiority”), was – perhaps surprisingly – a vigorous community of learning devoted to the life of the mind. Philosophy had caught him – Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Hannah Arendt, taught by professors who were dedicated to their students and their ancient, unfashionable subjects.
Why bring this story here? Because as I read Keegin’s account, I can’t help but see how Bethlehem College and Seminary fits into many of the positive assessments he makes about such less-prestigious schools. One example:
In circumstances such as these, the kind of learning that allows for serious investigation into fundamental things might be better conducted not at highly competitive elite institutions, but in more humble environs where conversation is possible but hardly anything happens. One such place, I’d offer, is the imperfect but nonetheless quiet and nourishing environment of the hinterlands humanities department. Study at a school like this is almost entirely free of the temptations toward money and power that have always threatened to corrupt the task of pursuing wisdom.
Bethlehem College and Seminary occupies a small bit of real estate in that same academic environment of “humanities hinterlands.” We aim, with God’s help, to cultivate and nurture just such a place in which our students can find the requisite quiet, focused, nourishing community “where conversation is possible.” We aim to create, in the words of classicist D. S. Carne-Ross (also cited by Keegin), “within the confusions of our society, enclaves where the life of the mind is ordered around exemplary texts, around the canon of sacred texts that every true culture requires.” We are quite happy being lesser known, humble, and unfashionable. It is in that way that real education that seeks and, in God’s kindness, finds wisdom and thus student and teacher are transformed into Christ-like men and women.
That’s our aim, with God’s help, out here in the hinterlands. Would you consider making it your aim, too?
Matt Crutchmer, M.A.
Assistant Professor of Theology
Prayer Requests:
- Pray that our education would produce Christ-like students and teachers.
- Pray for those planning, preparing, and attending Serious Joy: The Bethlehem Conference for Pastors.
- Pray for our students and faculty as they come back to the classroom for the semester on Monday.
- Pray for the full funding of The Serious Joy Scholarships needed to support this year’s students.