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Book Review: Teaching as Believing: Faith in the University, by Chris Anderson
Book Review: Teaching as Believing: Faith in the University by Chris Anderson
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Chris Anderson, a professor of English at Oregon State University, can not take these ideas for granted. In his latest book, Teaching as Believing: Faith in the University, Anderson explores the connection between faith and learning, belief and scholarship, as a Christian teaching in a secular environment.
He asks the question "How do I teach the Bible at Oregon Sate University, and Augustine, Dante, and the other Christian classics" How do any of us who are Christians teach what we teach, in whatever field, at the public university or at any university, where it sometimes seems that everyone is welcome except believers?"
Anderson answers that question by writing a "teaching memoir" joined with argument and analysis. Shifting back and forth between actual experiences in the classroom, as well as his life as a lay leader in his local Catholic church, he draws these experiences into the work in his classroom, exploring what it means to teach as a believer. The reader is privileged to "look into" Anderson's classroom, as he demonstrates what it means to grow and live "divide no more-" to use Parker Palmer's expression. Like Palmer, Anderson suggests that we must first turn inward, exploring our own spiritual and intellectual life, before coming back to the community to share what we have found.
CCCU faculty and administrators will find much in common with Anderson's intellectual and spiritual journey. He openly engages the reader thinking about what pre-existing beliefs or world views shape our understanding of truth and how we come to acquire that truth. He openly talks about his own faith in the classroom as a faithful follower of Jesus. Like St. Augustine and many Christians down the ages, Anderson is longing for God, for the sense of the otherness of God, and to make sense of his own struggle to understand the incarnation for his life.
Throughout the six chapters of the book, Anderson uses the Bible and other literary texts to develop both a theory of higher education and an understanding of faith. The image of the cross, he argues, helps us understand the creative tension between faith and reason-not just in the reading of literature, but in all reading, all living. Think of the three parts of the cross-the horizontal beam, the vertical beam, and the place where the two come together.
In the first two chapters of the book, under the heading "The Way of the University" Anderson explores the "horizontal beam." He uses his teaching of Genesis and Mark as way of talking about the secular work of the university. This line is "horizontal" in the sense of being earthly and everyday, without the benefit of anything that might come from above. In the last chapters of the book, under the heading "The Way of Faith," he reflects on his experience both in the classroom and in the church as a believing Christian, experience that is "vertical in the sense that it has to do with meaning that comes from "above" or "beyond" the everyday work of the university. At the intersection of the vertical and horizontal beam is where Anderson strives to live-to make sense of the brokenness of the world, alongside the beauty of a poem, the reality of the Incarnation, and the effects of humanity on the environment. This is where the Christian teacher-scholar is called to live.
With humility, integrity, authenticity and spiritual and intellectual integrity, Anderson's exploration of his own faith and scholarship provides a fresh set of perspectives for those teaching and leading at Christian college and universities. His genuine concern for his students, along with a deep longing that they be able to "cross the line" from the academy into the church, provides both encouragement and challenge to those of us who are committed to "teaching as believing."
