Two Handed Warriors

For Jesus prayer and education were inseparable, because education and the knowledge of God are inseparable.

Lafayette and Swarthmore Colleges sponsor conference on challenges facing historic liberal arts institutions By Eric Hoover Easton, Pa. — Demand for higher education is up, but so, too, are college costs. The returns on investing in a bachelor’s degree have grown, yet net prices, for many families, have increased relative to their incomes. Put another way, it’s both [...]

Whereas Plato and Aristotle called their students friends, today’s students are often little more than numbers. The liberal arts vision of generating a steady stream of truth-seeking leaders to flood our culture with virtue has clearly fallen on hard times.

The patron saint of Ireland is rarely credited with what was perhaps his greatest achievement.. “I am driven by the zeal of God, Christ’s truth has roused me. I speak out too for love of my neighbors who are my only sons; for them I gave up my home country, my parents and even pushing [...]

If the Torah cannot go out into your world of scholarship and return stronger, then we are all fools and charlatans. I have faith in the Torah. I am not afraid of truth. — Chaim Potok, In the Beginning Rabbinic Judaism forms a second important stream for understanding how higher education was originally designed to [...]

Whereas Plato and Aristotle called their students friends, today’s students are often little more than numbers. The liberal arts vision of generating a steady stream of truth-seeking leaders to flood our culture with virtue has clearly fallen on hard times.

Culture-making Education through Devotion to BOTH the Life of the Mind AND the Life of the Spirit Ever wonder what casting a vision for two-handed warfare might sound like when addressing college students? Here’s one attempt from Geneva College (Pennsylvania.) I couldn’t include the slides, but I have included the movie clip from THE PRINCESS [...]

While academics are understandably proud of their “outer” accomplishments in the fields of science, medicine, technology, and commerce, colleges and universities have increasingly come to neglect the student’s “inner” development–the sphere of values and beliefs, emotional maturity, spirituality, and self-understanding, despite the importance of spiritual matters to young people in their quest to lead integrated lives.

Higher education has played a key role in the history of training two handed warriors. Ever since the formation of the first “Christian” college—a catechetical school connected to the Roman rhetorical school at Alexandria in the second-century, learning communities have often excelled in forging faith-building with culture-making. Although God can and certainly has worked through [...]