Book Review: Educating for Shalom: Essays on Christian Higher Education by Nicholas Wolterstorff
For more than forty years, philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff's voice and pen (or keyboard) have delivered what arguably may be one of the most visionary, comprehensive, winsome and yet prophetic visions of nature of the work in Christian higher education. Here in one volume is a collection of many (but certainly not all) of Professor Wolterstorff's essays-focused around a biblical understanding of shalom.
In the introduction to the book, Clarence Joldersma (education professor, Calvin College) provides a rich summary and context for understanding the concept of shalom in Wolterstorff's work. Simply put, it is a vision of flourishing, of people living in right relationships with God, themselves, each other and nature. But shalom is also about struggle--a struggle to bring about that human flourishing. Wolterstorff's vision, his call to Christian educators, is that "The Kingdom will not come without our efforts" (p.xiii). The work of the Christian is here and now, in this world, engaged in struggle to bring true shalom to a broken and sinful world.
Beginning with an essay, "Rethinking Christian Higher Education," (originally delivered in 1977 as a speech at Goshen College), Wolterstorff is pushing for a vision of Christian education that is a project of and for the Christian community. There is no sense in which Christian colleges can be isolated ivory-towers, or simple academic communities disconnected from the life of the church. He then outlines a number of implications for the work of Christian educators. While Wolterstorff does not refer to shalom in this essay, the theme is there when he closes with the challenge that we work out the rationale for the education we offer-what does such learning have to do with life?
In "Teaching for Shalom," Wolterstorff calls for Christian college graduates "who pray and struggle for the incursion of justice and shalom into glorious but fallen world, celebrating its presence, and mourning its absence-that is the graduate that the Christian college must seek to produce."
Over the next 300 pages, the reader journeys with Wolterstorff as he reflects and wrestles with topics like "The Integration of Faith and Learning - The Very Idea," " The World for Which We Educate," "The Project of a Christian University in a Postmodern Culture," "Teaching for Justice: On Shaping How Students are Disposed to Act," "Christian Learning In and For a Pluralist Society," "Can Scholarship and Christian Conviction Mix?," and near the end of the collection, "What is the Reformed Perspective on Christian Higher Education?".
There is much to commend in this volume. These essays will challenge and stimulate faculty and administrators across disciplines and offices. This collection both challenges and reminds the reader that the work of establishing "shalom" requires personal as well as institutional commitments. That faithful living and learning must be connected with human suffering and the brokenness of our world. That engagement with those who disagree with us must always be marked by a personal commitment to a personal shalom-to bring both healing and understanding, to bring more light and less heat to the complex issues of our day. That true, transformational education is one that engages the whole person, and that we have much work to do in understanding what it means to be people who love God with all of our hearts, souls, minds and strength. And that this call to struggle for shalom is one that we have no choice but to answer.