BOOK REVIEW:
Educating for Shalom: Essays on Christian Higher Education.  By Nicholas Wolterstorff; edited by Clarence W. Joldersma and Gloria Goris Stronks.  Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004. xxi + 310 pp. ISBN 0802827535.

This volume contains a collection of essays on Christian higher education by Nicholas Wolterstorff.  These essays have been carefully selected and edited by Clarence W. Joldersma and Gloria G. Stronks.  The product is excellent and provides great insight into the Reformed understanding of higher education.  The heart of Wolterstorff’s unfolding point of view is a confessional perspective with a strong social conscience and progressive pedagogy.

The essays are placed chronologically across Wolterstorff’s career as a teacher and scholar at Calvin College and Yale University.  They show a clear movement from the model of a Christian college with evangelical convictions, to an affirmation of a traditional liberal arts approach that enlightens the mind, to an approach rooted in concerns for social justice.  This movement is toward shalom, a model that seeks to educate the mind and also the spirit, inviting students to engage in building a more just and peaceful society and world.  This shift reflects interaction with a wide range of scholars and world leaders.

The first set of essays speak to the purposes and mission of Christian higher education which Wolterstorff’s expresses in the three concepts of maturation, socialization, and humanization.  One sees in these essays the development of his thought from an emphasis on educating for evangelism and, to some extent, a flight from the world, to a focus on the liberating arts, to the emphasis on shalom and social justice.  The next set of essays addresses the nature of Christian scholarship, again showing a movement from “compatiblism” in the quest for the integration of faith and learning to Christian scholarship that is interactive with society and social practice.  His concern is to educate for the world we inhabit.  He argues that the broad understanding of the concept of shalom addresses our new world, its systems, global interaction, the dynamics of capitalism, and religious pluralism.  This mission to empower students to act justly also alters pedagogy in order to develop in students a critical consciousness and concern for social justice.

Wolterstorff does not waiver from his confessional perspective and argues that scholarship, teaching, and learning can be guided by both a biblical vision and the accepted “disinterested” practice of scholarship within the academy.  All scholarship contains some presuppositions, and those of biblical faith give the scholar a particular point of cognitive access, an outlook that with care and self-awareness does not distort but enriches and advances the scholarly quest.

Wolterstorff reflects a spirit of humility as he acknowledges his own restlessness concerning the Reformed perspective on Christian higher education, especially given the dramatic changes in the society and the world at the early stages of the 21^st century.  Even in this new and “postmodern” world, he maintains, the guiding principle is shalom, to empower educational institutions and students to change the world by making it a place of human flourishing.

One might wish that Wolterstorff’s writing on the subject of the Reformed understanding of higher education had continued well into our century.  The trajectory of his thought would provide guidance for those engaged in this strategic mission as educational institutions carry on their work in light of 9/11, the war in Iraq, the rise of terrorism, and the recent tragedies of the Asian tsunami, Katrina, and the earthquake in Kashmir.  How should educational institutions educate in order to prepare students for a changing world so full of challenge, promise, and tragedy?  How does this new world change the way we articulate the mission of our educational institutions, ask us to transform the curriculum, and invite us to dramatically alter our pedagogy?

Without doubt, Wolterstorff would argue for boldness, the preservation of reason and faith, and the full engagement in the world rather than a retreat from it.  But the lingering questions are whether the institutions rooted in the Christian tradition and related to the church community can make a difference in our society and world, or are they too sectarian in nature, unable for a variety of reasons to make fundamental changes, and so few in number with small enrollments that their influence would be minimal?  Are they able, guided by the principle of shalom, to speak with a relevant voice to the secularity of the West, the religious pluralism of other parts of the world, and the “clash of civilizations” in all its diabolical manifestations?

Duncan S. Ferguson
Executive Director, Friends of Forman Christian College (Lahore, Pakistan)
Crestwood, Kentucky

PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE FOR REFORMED THEOLOGY, SPRING 2006, VOL. 6, #1.