In my teaching of all things cultural apologetical in the key of ‘subversive fulfilment’, I’ve developed a little pattern or framework based on Paul’s Athenian encounter in Acts 17:

• Entering: stepping into the world and listening to the story;
• Exploring: searching for elements of grace and the idols attached to them;
• Exposing: showing up the idols as destructive frauds;
• Evangelizing: showing off the gospel of Jesus Christ as subversive fulfilment.1

I recently had the opportunity to both utilize and promote this framework to a group of Christians who inhabit the ‘world’2 of the academy, a world I’m somewhat familiar with albeit tangentially these days. Most but not all were postgraduates and postdocs at the start of their careers, who represented a range of academic disciplines. My stated aim was to cover how we introduce matters of ultimate concern in a world whose horizons appear to be stubbornly limited and inflexible, far removed and perhaps even vehemently opposed to any consideration of the gospel? How do we share the gospel of Jesus Christ with our colleagues in an authentic and organic way without attempting the excruciating ‘crunch’ of conversational gear-changes that is both superficial and artificial? Might it not be better to keep our heads down, quietly get on with our work, and leave evangelism to the experts? I attempted to articulate a conceptual framework showing how academics in all disciplines can introduce the gospel in a winsome way, drawing naturally on their own academic expertise demonstrating the way Christ both subverts and fulfils the deeper longings expressed through the cultures of our various faculties. After I presented my paper, three more senior academics from a range of fields—sociology, English literature and biology—responded to the proposed framework and considered how it can be applied.

There is one particular issue I mentioned in my paper which was confirmed for me in some of my respondents’ comments, and worth dwelling on for our Themelios readership, whether those in university and academic settings (‘secular’ or Christian) or church leaders who have pastoral oversight over those who have been called by God to work in the academy.

In our entering and exploring we must ask the specific shape of the ‘world’ of the late modern university in which we live, move, have our being, and give a reason for hope? Understanding this context is important as it affects how we hear and how we are heard, what ‘defeaters’ we have to deal with,3 and plausibility, or in our case maybe implausibility, structures.4 Of course, attempting to characterise the world of the late modern university will always be generalised with the danger of caricature and superficiality. We know that each university is its own world, each department and subject its own world, indeed, each academic is living in their own world! That notwithstanding, some have attempted such descriptions particularly when it comes to the place and acceptability of religious faith within the university. George Marsden famously describes the ‘soul’ of the American university as ‘established unbelief’.5 Gavin D’Costa surveys the scene as follows:

The foundation of the universities took place in a universe with a sacred canopy, where people understood their practices to relate to a cosmic and organic pattern participating in the nature of the reality. This reality was divinely created for the good of men and women, for the flourishing of human society, and for participation in truth and love. The modern university, with some exceptions, in contrast, develops its programs and practices without any reference to a sacred canopy. Often finance is the chief criterion, without any organic vision of the relation of the different disciplines, without any shared value regarding the good of men and women, or concerning what truth might possibly be.6

I have found this statement very helpful. On the one hand we can, indeed we must, talk about the ‘isms’ (philosophical underpinnings), ‘ities’ (social conditions), and ‘isations’ (transitions from one condition to another) that have shaped the late modern university. We can and must talk about the fatal move from divine revelation to autonomous reason in the Enlightenment, of the divorce between ‘fact’ and ‘value’ of key figures, for example, a Max Weber. When it comes to the late (or post) modern university we see a complex mixture of intensification, inversion, and unmasking from the ‘modern’;7 the rise of social construction and the language of ‘theory’, and key figures, for example, a Michel Foucault.8

It may be anecdotal, but over the years I’ve come across some universities, disciplines, and academics that seem to remain unapologetically ‘modern’, and others thoroughly ‘late modern’ with, of course, a range in-between. It is vital to understand our own academic world in which we are situated, which includes a number of recent apologetics to accept ‘religious faith’ in the University, for example Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Religion in the University9 and the work of the aforementioned Gavin D’Costa.

On the other hand, however, D’Costa’s statement above recognises that there are other ‘isms’ ‘ities’ and ‘isations’ at work in the late modern university that are perhaps overlooked but which for Christian apologetics and Christian discipleship are hugely influential in shaping of the academy and their academics. We need to understand these commitments and the pressures they exert as well. And often they are hidden in plain sight. What about the commercialization of the university? What about the commodification of knowledge? In this brave new world, one of my respondents noted the tendency of the academy to think of knowledge as radically atomised, disconnected with a larger totality and telos:

There are two obvious ways in which this attitude to knowledge shapes the culture of the modern university. The first, is that knowledge becomes a product. Ideas become commodities. The academy becomes a Knowledge Exchange in which our primary activities are buying and selling—and, perhaps, theft—rather than conversations that bring mutual enrichment. Ideas become something to be bartered for position (is it REFable?)10 or something to be sold (if you can write a book that actually makes money). Second, our collective life becomes contentious. If every bit of research is an argument for yet another competing totality, then even the least controversial claim is, in some sense, an act of aggression, an assault on the coherence of our colleagues’ realities.

We’re in a very different world from John Milton’s definition of education: ‘the end of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him.’11

Let’s continue. What about trends towards juridification and bureaucratisation?12 Yes, we can talk in quite rarefied terms about the philosophical and ideological influences that shape our disciplines and in which we as Christian academics engage in apologetically, but what about a rampant and seemingly more ‘worldly’ careerism and materialism that we see around us. What about the phenomena of employment absenteeism or presenteeism? These seem to be equally powerful commitments and idolatries to which we subscribe both consciously and unconsciously and which must be exposed and evangelised by the gospel. Furthermore, I would contend these forces are present not only in what we might call mainstream ‘secular’ higher education setting, but within higher education settings of ‘established belief’.

I realise this might be somewhat of a disappointment, but it seems that within your average university department, made up of messy human beings, the chat over the lunch break or at coffee time is rarely about some deep, intense and abstruse aspect of one’s discipline, but is about pay, working conditions, sick leave, plans for the weekend, annoying colleagues, frustration, anger, or resignation to the tech not working, promotions, and the latest equality and diversity missive that’s been doing the rounds. That familiar trinity of money, sex and power is alive and well within the modern university.

Disappointed, maybe, but when it comes to sharing our faith, these things are no less points of apologetic contact and opportunities for Christian witness. Once again I was struck by one of my respondents, a recently retired biology professor, Chris Willmott. Having very helpfully identified three dimensions to science (its context, conduct and content) which might be fruitful in using the subversive fulfilment model of apologetics, he ended by reflecting the challenge of being disciples at work in a full rich way:

There is no doubt that in many ways the late modern university … has taken significant wrong turns. What is an appropriate response? On the surface there are legitimate grounds to be bitter and jaundiced, but our right to win a hearing for the gospel may be strongest if we resist these, if we resist the allure of moaning or of gossip. I am reminded of an honorary degree speech in which author Bill Bryson shared his seven tips for a successful life. Number two, after ‘Be happy’, was ‘Don’t whinge’. Bryson said: ‘Don’t whinge; it’s awful and it doesn’t become you. Indeed it doesn’t get you anywhere. No-one will ever thank you or admire you more deeply or say “Oh, let’s invite Simon and Emma to the party, they’re fantastic whingers.” So stop moaning, it’s a waste of oxygen.’ I do look back on recent years and regret the extent to which verbalising my dismay at the state of higher education may have had a detrimental effect on my witness, so I’d encourage you to make a conscious decision to avoid falling into the same trap.

Our evangelism flows from our discipleship. If my whole life is connected to the gospel, then it will be natural to connect the gospel to the lives of our-Christian friends and colleagues, because we face the same common struggles and pressures in our world(s). Of course one consequence of this is that everything I have said about the modern university and its devices and desires are relevant to our Christian lives as well as those who do not know Christ.

And this means that if you have been given the responsibility of pastoral oversight, while you may not be in the academic world, you do have the task of discipling those in your church who are. I’m passionate that such discipleship cannot be blandly generic and superficial but must be contextual to the ‘world(s)’ of our people. This involves careful and contextual listening and collaborative thoughtful theological application of the Lordship of Christ to all of life in equipping the saints for works of service. But let’s not prioritise the particular and specific over the universal and mundane in a way that might threaten and intimidate church leaders from ever stepping (both metaphorically and literally), into those hallowed halls. In the last year, I have convened a couple of informal round-table discussions people who are interested in and working within films, and those working in the music industry. While it was illuminating and encouraging to chat through together some of the distinctive pressures for these Christians within these vocations, it was probably the similarity between the groups that surprised me most, and this surprise wasn’t that in the arts they had often felt misunderstood and lonely in their fields. Rather, the surprise was the similarity of mundane issues they were facing and struggling with, issues not unique to them as artists, but to every Christian, and certainly issues present within the world of the university. As we return to this world let’s seek to disciple and let’s seek to evangelise wholistically in all this world’s profundity and mundanity. It’s not rocket science … even if it is.

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[1] As set out in Daniel Strange, Plugged In: Connecting Your Faith to What You Watch, Read and Play (London: Good Book, 2019).

[2] By ‘world’ I use Christopher Watkin’s definition of ‘a set of particular figures that give a rhythm to the space, time, ideas, reality, behavior, and relationships in a particular sphere of life, among a particular community, or in a particular artist’s work, giving them a distinctive style.’ Biblical Critical Theory (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2022), 11. For Watkin ‘figures’ are the both the patterns and rhythms that shape our lives, a way of understanding how we live in the world, ‘and the sorts of truth that can be produced in a given culture, the shapes and rhythms that must be followed if an idea is to be counted as truth’ (p. 7). He gives six broad categories of ‘figures’ what make up a ‘world’: (1) Language, ideas, and stories; (2) time and space; (3) the structure of reality; (4) behaviour; (5) relationships; and (6) objects.

[3] By ‘defeaters’ I mean those culturally specific beliefs that ‘defeat’ other beliefs, i.e., ‘I could never become a Christian because….’

[4] James Sire defines a plausibility structure as ‘a web of beliefs that are so embedded in the hearts and minds of the bulk of a society that people hold them either unconsciously or so firmly that the never think to ask if they are true. In short, a plausibility structure is a worldview of a society, the heart of a community…. One of the main functions of a plausibility structure is to provide the background of beliefs that makes arguments easy or hard to accept.’ Sire, Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 112.

[5] Note the subtitle of George Marsden’s book: The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Unbelief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

[6] Gavin D’Costa, Theology in the Public Square: Church, Academy and Nation (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 2–3.

[7] To use Peter Leithart’s summary of postmodernism in Solomon Among the Postmoderns (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2008).

[8] Christopher Watkin states in his study of Foucault, ‘By one measure, Michel Foucault is the all-time most cited author across every academic discipline from fine arts to hard science, with over a quarter more citations than his nearest rival.’ Michel Foucault, Great Thinkers (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2018), xxi.

[9] Nicholas Wolterstorff, Religion in the University (New Haven: Yale University, 2019).

[10] The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the national assessment of the quality of UK higher education research.

[11] John Milton, ‘Of Education’, in Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003), 631. Cited in Jeffrey C. Davis and Philip G. Ryken, ed., Liberal Arts for the Christian Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 16.

[12] For a stimulating article on this, see Aaron Edwards, ‘The Violence of Bureaucracy and the Gospel of Peace: A Theological Response to an Academic Problem’, International Journal of Public Theology 12 (2018): 195–217.