Breaking Stereotypes

{Note:  This is the manuscript of my essay for “The Truth That Makes Them Free" Anthology, described in this post. Thus it is longer than most posts.}

 “Always share your faith. If necessary, use words.”

      St. Francis of Assisi

"Ooh", said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he...quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion!"

"That you will deary and no mistake", said Mrs. Beaver. "If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly."

"Then he isn't safe?", said Lucy.

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? Course he isn't safe.....but he's good. He's the King I tell you."

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

I grew up in a normal American family—my parents and a younger sister. We were Americans, so that meant we were Christians. Then, when I was around the second grade, my dad was urged by his father, “Kevin, you get those kids into church!” So, we started attending a Methodist church. My sister and I didn’t find the services terribly interesting, but I seemed to absorb the Bible stories in Sunday School. Several years passed, and Dad’s Sunday School teacher began to challenge him to take the Bible’s claims about truth seriously. Thus began a bittersweet time for my sister and I—we went from listening to music in the car to all of these radio preachers, hardly an enticement for young kids to be interested in spiritual things. 

The Collegium of Feudal Lords

Ask non-academics, or students who want to be academics about their picture of the professoriate, and I suspect their picture will be like mine was, once. I had a somewhat romantic notion of mostly slightly socially awkward introverts who nonetheless liked to gather with each other over some mild refreshment or socially acceptable vice like pipes and scotch to chat informally over esoterica on any number of subjects, sometimes with good-natured heat.

Enter the reality.

Carrying Culture Too Far

Today I met a lovely postdoc who is an international Fulbright scholar at a major university. She is working with a professor who happens to originally hail from her native country. There is a surprising bit of friction because the professor apparently perceives her as competition rather than a colleague. While this occurs sometimes in the US, it is fairly rare, but in this woman’s country it is fairly common. So there is no shortage in irony in this situation.

One of the things I love about universities is how cosmopolitan they truly are:  folks from the globe over coming together in scholarly pursuits, sharing and studying a world of knowledge and culture, ideally in harmony. All cultures have their weak spots as they are composed of fallen human beings, but it is still a shame when those weaknesses survive the transfer to a new environment, even though it should be expected.

When these rough spots arise, ideally the egalitarian environment of the university helps resolve them. This should be the hallmark of the Church, yet universities are more known for ‘inclusiveness’ and Christians known for ‘divisiveness.’ Both are stereotypes in every sense of the word. As Christian faculty, we have the opportunity to be peacemakers in both cultures, and from there affect many more.

“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” Proverbs 27:17

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” Matthew 5:9

SDG