The Challenges and Opportunities of Wesleyan Higher Education: Working Toward a Hopeful Future
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
The reflections in this paper were first presented at the gathering of the John Wesley Scholars at their “Christmas Gathering,” January 13-15, 2022.
Until I returned as president to my alma mater, Houghton College, in 2006, I had not realized how the rich and quite distinctive legacy of the Wesleyan tradition might shape our particular calling to higher education. It is this very legacy that speaks so powerfully to the current challenges and opportunities of Wesleyan higher education, and that can be our best gift to the church and to the world at large in this moment.
Not long ago I was asked to present my thoughts—as a recently retired college president and someone who has spent 40 years in the world of “faith-based higher education”—on the “challenges and opportunities of Wesleyan higher education” to a group of young academics in the United Methodist church preparing to serve the world of higher education out of their Wesleyan heritage. I share those thoughts with you now, retaining the style of a delivered talk rather than a formal paper, and inviting any reflections from you, the reader, as I did from the audience when these thoughts were first presented.
It is not difficult to identify the challenges for “Wesleyan higher education.”
There are the challenges common to all of higher education, especially noticed since the economic downturn of 2008. The litany of these challenges has become all too familiar. They are linked to economic concerns, to demographic changes, to growing government regulation, to technology, to growing public skepticism about the value of higher education, to changes in the structure of the professoriate. The list could go on. These challenges for all of higher education have been exacerbated and accelerated by the polarization of politics since at least the 2016 election; the increasing suspicion of the academy as a part of the “left”; alumni constituencies and student bodies that reflect the cultural flight to the poles of the political spectrum and the vacuum of a convening, bridging “middle”; the pandemic, with its accompanying politicization of science as an authoritative voice; the dramatic intensification of racial tensions throughout the summer of 2020 and the continuing controversies around “critical race theory”; and finally, the 2020 election and its aftermath, including especially the events of January 6, 2021.
In addition to the challenges common to all of higher education, part of the “Wesleyan” higher education sector has also shared in the challenges associated with increasing competition for students, and the concerns about “hiring for mission” that have arisen in many faith-based institutions in response to the Obergefell and Bostock decisions of the Supreme Court.
I would suggest, however, that the truly distinctive Wesleyan challenge—whether one is situated institutionally in the world of Wesleyan higher education or an independent scholar—is the greater-than-average tension we feel amidst the current cultural and theological polarization. We feel the polarization more than the average academic, and Wesleyan educators are more likely to be caught in the crossfire of the polarization because the Wesleyan tradition does not fit neatly into the current categories of either the right or the left.
As those in the Wesleyan tradition, we care both about personal morality and personal wholeness (stereotypical concerns of the right) and about social justice and the environment (stereotypical concerns of the left). We care both about evangelism and the authority of the scripture (stereotypic concerns of the right) and immigration reform and economic development (stereotypic concerns of the left).
All this is further complicated by the fact that there is no unified or even coordinating voice for Wesleyan higher education. There is no forum for sorting out how to act in concert. Each of us in this place will no doubt feel the complexity of being a particular “embodiment” of Wesleyan higher education in a particular place. Each of us is also invited to make that embodiment an opportunity for the sake of the common good.
My suggestion to us today is that some of the very aspects of being Wesleyan that make us feel caught in the crossfire are also the source of the greatest opportunities in this moment for Wesleyan higher education. Rather than be paralyzed by the tension of being pulled in certain respects toward each pole, we have the opportunity growing out of these very tensions to be a countercultural source of hope and imaginative possibility.
It is no secret that we are in a moment of polarization and fear. As a historian, I am not convinced that this polarization is unique in our history. We have met this before. (For further reading on this subject, consider Jill LePore’s one-volume American history, These Truths; Gordon Wood’s Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson; Robert Putnam’s Upswing, and Anne Applebaum’s Twilight of Democracy.)
In a time of polarization and fear, when people are fleeing to the poles for safety, or in search of certitude or common ground, it is critical that some people have the courage to choose to stay in the crossfire, to offer convening ground, to create the spirit of hospitality where difficult conversations can happen, to affirm that dialogue can be productive, and can lead us toward Wisdom grounded in conviction and the pursuit of Truth rather than toward tepid relativism.
Those of us in the tradition of Wesleyan higher education are uniquely equipped to create and navigate this hospitable middle space where true listening can happen, where people from both sides can share their concerns and have their own seeing enlarged, where civil society can be made stronger and safer by learning from the complexities and ambiguities that confront our efforts to be fully human as finite beings in a fallen world, rather than by denying that these complexities exist.
It is, in short, the very tensions of the Wesleyan tradition that are our distinctive gift to higher education, to the church, and to the society in this moment. Rather than seeking to hide from these tensions or be paralyzed by them, we are invited to embrace the tensions and make them sources of redemptive activity, or spaces where God’s improvisational grace can work.
So, what are these tensions of the Wesleyan tradition that we are called to steward as opportunities in this moment of cultural polarization, fear, change, and temptation towards hopelessness?
First, there are epistemological tensions. Whether or not one buys into a rigid notion of the “Wesleyan quadrilateral” or believes that Wesley himself was self-conscious about this schema, it seems clear that Wesley’s notion of how truth comes to us is complex. The Truth is there; Wesley was no skeptic. But how Truth comes to us is not easy to articulate. It is not stereotypical Enlightenment “rationalism” that sees all significant truth coming to us deductively or in combination with empirical sensory data. Nor is it stereotypical reliance on tradition as authoritative. Nor is it stereotypical reliance on “scripture alone.” Wesley’s approach to Truth-seeking was not “stereotypical anything.”
In this moment, like Wesley, we can affirm that Truth is there. There is a point in seeking it out. We are not left with the hopeless conclusion that Truth-seeking is merely a game of power. We are not Nietzschian. Yes, power arrangements, our own history, and personal willful blindness can interfere with our efforts to see clearly and to follow where the Truth would have us go. But Power is not all there is. Truth claims do not simply collapse into power arrangements.
At the same time, we also affirm that getting at the Truth or allowing it to be seen is complicated.
We have the gift of reason, or critical thinking.
We have the insights of personal experience—or their closely related cousin, the results of sensory experiments.
We have the authority of tradition, the wisdom of those who have gone before us, sometimes embodied in institutions, sometimes mediated through individuals.
We have the gift of God’s revelation—the written word of the Law and the Prophets, and most powerfully the Word made flesh in Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity.
Coming to see clearly is hard work. It requires the intellectual virtues of curiosity and ruthless honesty, and the moral virtue of humility. It requires not just our own effort as individuals, but the work of the community—finding truth is not a win-lose game or a zero-sum game. It requires cooperation and partnership. It also requires reliance on the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
This tension between ontological confidence and epistemological humility creates the very space for which our culture is yearning. This tension provides space to be mistaken without feeling that one has betrayed the truth or has nothing to hang on to. It puts a stop to “all or nothing” thinking about Truth-seeking. It provides space to allow me to enlarge my own understanding of the Truth without feeling that I must have been entirely wrong. It allows us the space to admit where power arrangements have obscured our seeing, without leaving us with nowhere to go beyond those admissions. The tension calls us to bring these insights into a richer sense of the human community, not simplistically, but in the company of repentance and the pursuit of justice. To put this much more bluntly, “identity politics” matters, but it is not all there is.
This tension provides the security that we will not find ourselves in the abyss of relativism just because we encounter complexity or ambiguity. We must go deeper. The tension provides the relief that, in the end, defending the Truth does not all depend on me or on my little (or big) group of “those who have it right.” God himself, in the form of the Holy Spirit, is the one who is charged with convincing of the Truth and leading us into Truth.
Second, the theological tensions. Wesleyan theology, like Wesleyan epistemology, requires that we embrace several tension points that can become gifts of the “convening, hospitable middle” in our time:
The tension between free will and grace. There is tension between the responsibility created by free will and agency on the one hand, and the powerful grace that goes before us and without which we would not see God on the other. This tension cannot be put into systematic form in a way that dissolves the tension. It includes the mystery that we work and God works (Philippians 2:13).
The tension among our cognitive, affective, and volitional “selves.” Sin is “willful transgression” of God’s law. Our knowing self, our desiring self, and our willing selves must be in accord and must all be taken seriously. It is not enough to know the Right and the True; we must love the Right and True; and we must embody the Right and True in our actions. We must have a “right heart” as well as a “right mind.” This tension creates space for recognition that our knowledge, desires, and will are not always moving at the same pace. Even more important, this complex understanding of the self creates space for how we are to work with others. People’s motives may be better than their conclusions. While “sincerity” is not enough, it needs to be taken into account. While intent is not enough, it does matter. (See Wesley’s sermon “The Catholic Spirit” for further reflection.)
The tension between personal sanctification and social wholeness. Yes, individual wholeness does matter. We are concerned with issues of personal morality, as those on the “right” of the political spectrum emphasize. But wholeness is also for the community, addressing issues of poverty, slavery, hunger, environmental stewardship, as those on the “left” tend to emphasize. This tension was reflected in the Wesleyan notion of accountability. Yes, we are responsible as individuals to God alone, but we are also responsible and can be held accountable by those in our community (e.g., the class meetings).
The Tension between being “divine image bearers”—icons of God—but fallen and in need of sanctification and restoration. We are members of God’s royal family. This is not mere childish romanticism; it really is the case. But we are tarnished—and bent—and in need of being cleaned and straightened out and re-dressed to make visible the family resemblance. This work of becoming restored involves our work, but is empowered at every turn by the Holy Spirit.
Finally, there are the Sociological tensions in the Wesleyan tradition. . .
The Tension between hierarchy and egalitarianism. Wesley was, in many ways, politically conservative. He was, after all, an Anglican. But he was also concerned for the empowerment and the improvement of the people. Wherever Wesley’s legacy has taken root, there has been respect for authority but also for the voice of the people. Wherever Wesley’s legacy has taken root, there has been “social mobility.” People’s lives have become better, not just spiritually, but economically and culturally.
The Tension between the academy and the church. Wesleyans established educational institutions, not so that academicians could engage primarily in scholarship with each other, but so that they could prepare graduates and the church better to serve the needs of the world. Wesleyan educators should be in the forefront of “translating” the work of the academy for the local church.
The tension between local and global. Wesleyan tradition grounds us in the local community but with a worldwide vision. Our vision must be global, but our work must be grounded in the particularity of local circumstances.
The tension between the “mainline” and the “evangelical” aspects of our tradition. These are reflected also in our educational institutions and allow us entrée into current discussions that many others do not have.
In this time of cultural and theological polarization, fear, and despair, Wesleyan higher education is ideally positioned by its epistemological, theological, and sociological traditions—indeed, by the very tensions within those traditions—to create convening, middling spaces of grace and hospitality. We are positioned to cultivate a community of graduates to go out into the society and into the church to do the same, bold to proclaim the hope of a Gospel that is for all peoples. This is not a Gospel rooted in American nationalism or American exceptionalism, but neither in an idealistic utopian internationalism. It takes seriously human dignity grounded in creation, but equally takes seriously the tragedy of human fallenness and the need of Salvation and restoration.
It is fearless in the pursuit of Truth that is there to be found—not in rationalistic propositional statements, or in authoritarian dogmatic assertions, but in the Person of Jesus Christ, whose life and work has redeemed us and shown us a model of life, and who by the power of the Holy Spirit seeks to live out the mystery of the Gospel in each of us.
It is confident in creating communities grounded in grace, rich in the diversity of God’s Kingdom, and active in the pursuit of justice for all those bearing the image of our Heavenly Father, making room in those communities for growth and learning from one another and being drawn ever deeper by the work of the Holy Spirit into the Life and Love at the heart of the universe.
Let us, as Wesleyan educators, encourage and even provoke one another to live up to the promise and possibility of our Wesleyan heritage. Let us together seek to steward this legacy with imagination and conviction, not only for the sake of Wesleyan higher education, but for the sake of the church and the sake of our world.
Shirley A. Mullen is President Emerita of Houghton College.