Faith and Institutional Purpose

David C. Ratke

As a faculty member in the department of religion, I feel constrained in being too assertive about the Christian ethos and vision—the content—of Lenoir-Rhyne. To argue for a more prominent role for faith in curriculum, ethos, vision, in the College is to risk being seen as self-serving in an institution which desperately needs to scale back on faculty and, I believe, in the required courses in the core (at the same time, I would argue for distribution electives which I think would be more in tune with a truly "liberal" liberal arts program).

That said, I believe that faith perspectives need to be emphasized more. This can be done in one of two ways: 1) supplementation (more or less our current model); or 2) integration (more desirable, but …). It's my conviction that the current two courses in the curriculum are sufficient. A more important question is whether these two courses achieve what we want them to achieve: development of the whole person, liberation of mind and spirit, clarification of personal faith, a sense of community, promotion responsible leadership for service in the world. That is, do we liberate mind and spirit, clarify personal faith, etc.?

But it's too much to expect a four person department to carry the burden of faith for an entire campus. We don't have adequate human resources to do this properly. We need to either add more faculty to the department (and this might be desirable but not, in my opinion at least, for this reason) or to spread the burden around. We talk about "writing (or communication) across the curriculum", perhaps we should be talking about "faith across the curriculum" or rather "faith in the curriculum".

Within the religion department, the questions or concerns are not so much about a Christian faith perspective or even a Lutheran perspective (we're all Lutherans after all!). My concern is more the other direction. LRC talks about "building community" but our community is very narrow indeed. We're all white, all male, all Lutheran. We need more catholicity in the department. I'm not one that is particularly entranced by the idea of diversity that has no center, but we tend to a center with no diversity. The theological concepts are catholicity and unity. We have little catholicity, but we have unity. I suspect that to non-Lutherans, we (i.e. the religion department) seem parochial and narrow. We need to actively work towards changing that perception.

In recruiting, hiring, and retaining new faculty, we need to pay more attention to the Christian faith life of new hires for a number of reasons. People who are in tune with the mission statement will give the institution more integrity. People who identify with the mission of LRC are more likely to stay here despite the lower salaries. Calvin College's salaries are in the 2nd and 3rd quintiles; Wheaton likewise. Clearly we're not at that same place with respect to salaries, but equally clearly salaries are not the main reason faculty stay at those institutions. Alongside diversity, we need to attend to the matter of faith identity and perspective.

Related to all of this is the matter of institutional identity. One of the first assignments I give my REL 400 students (ostensibly seniors and juniors) is to reflect on the mission statement. I would say that 80% say that they've never seen it or heard of it before. Maybe 1 in 10 says that they've actually thought about it. This has to change. Students—and faculty—have to be oriented to the mission statement and encouraged (required?) to think about it and their relationship to the college. How do we as individuals contribute to the mission and identity of Lenoir-Rhyne?

Worship opportunities need to be expanded. At minimum there ought to be a weekend service; ideally there ought to be a daily prayer service. This would help us achieve the diversity (catholicity) in our religious life that would more accurately reflect the diversity (catholicity) of the student body (not to mention the staff and faculty).