William H. Willimon - "Being Christian in the Postmodern University" (April 10, 1994)

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-	For the second Sunday of Easter,	0:01
	we have been led in worship by the singers	0:04
	of the Men's Glee Club of the University of North Carolina,	0:07
	Mr Daniel Hough, director, and we thank them	0:11
	for their presence with us this morning	0:15
	for this special service.	0:18
	To remind you that's four o'clock next Sunday,	0:20
	the Duke Chapel choir and orchestra	0:25
	will be performing Bach's "Ascension Oratorio"	0:27
	and Schubert's "Mass in B Flat".	0:30
	Tickets are still available for that concert next Sunday.	0:33
	This is a special day for us, as we are privileged	0:39
	to recognize the 200th anniversary	0:42
	of the University of North Carolina.	0:45
	This service concludes an entire year of celebration,	0:48
	for this, our sister institution.	0:52
	We welcome with us today, as lectors,	0:54
	our president and also the chancellor	0:57
	of the University of North Carolina,	1:01
	President Paul Hardin.	1:03
	And now, let us fill this great chapel	1:07
	with the praise of God. Stand.	1:10
	(organ music)	1:14
	♪ Praise the source of faith and learning ♪	2:13
	♪ Who has sparked and stoked the mind ♪	2:23
	♪ With a passion for the discerning ♪	2:27
	♪ How the world has been designed ♪	2:35
	♪ Let the sense of wonder flowing ♪	2:42
	♪ From the wonders we survey ♪	2:50
	♪ Keep our faith forever growing ♪	2:58
	♪ And renew our need to pray. ♪	3:05
	♪ God of wisdom, we acknowledge ♪	3:15
	♪ That our science and our art ♪	3:22
	♪ And the breadth of human knowledge ♪	3:30
	♪ Only partial truth impart. ♪	3:38
	♪ Far beyond our calculation ♪	3:46
	♪ Lies a depth we cannot sound ♪	3:53
	♪ Where Your purpose for creation ♪	4:01
	♪ And the pulse of life are found. ♪	4:08
	♪ May our faith redeem the blunder ♪	4:18
	♪ Of believing that our thought ♪	4:25
	♪ Has displaced the grounds for wonder ♪	4:33
	♪ Which the ancient prophets taught. ♪	4:41
	♪ May our learning curb the error ♪	4:49
	♪ Which unthinking faith can breed, ♪	4:56
	♪ Lest we justify some terror ♪	5:04
	♪ With an antiquated creed. ♪	5:11
	♪ As two currents in a river ♪	5:21
	♪ Fight each other's undertow, ♪	5:28
	♪ Till converging they deliver ♪	5:36
	♪ One coherent steady flow. ♪	5:44
	♪ Till we blend our faith and learning ♪	5:51
	♪ Till they carve a single course, ♪	5:58
	♪ And our spirit and our learning ♪	6:06
	♪ Join in praising you, their source. ♪	6:14
	♪ Praise for minds to probe the heavens, ♪	6:23
	♪ Praise for strength to breathe the air. ♪	6:31
	♪ Praise for all that beauty leavens, ♪	6:38
	♪ Praise for silence, music, prayer. ♪	6:45
	♪ Praise for justice and compassion ♪	6:53
	♪ And for strangers, neighbors, friends. ♪	7:00
	♪ Praise for hearts and lips to fashion ♪	7:07
	♪ Praise for love that never ends. ♪	7:14
-	Please be seated.	7:26
	It is a pleasure to have with us in this place	7:31
	so many of our friends and colleagues	7:34
	from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,	7:35
	and we welcome all of you.	7:38
	This morning's service is a very special celebration	7:40
	of the 200th anniversary	7:43
	of our distinguished sister institution,	7:45
	part of an eight month long anniversary party.	7:48
	Given this purpose, some of you may have been amused	7:51
	that our processional hymn uses the Duke University motto,	7:53
	"Eruditio et Religio", faith and learning, as its theme.	7:56
	But I hasten to assure our colleagues who wear	8:01
	a lighter shade of blue that Duke uses this hymn	8:03
	for all solemn academic festivals in this chapel,	8:07
	believing that it appropriately celebrates	8:10
	the connection between the spiritual and intellectual parts	8:12
	of our lives.	8:15
	The hymn and this service also convey the sense	8:16
	of collegiality and mutual support that characterizes	8:20
	the relationship between our two universities,	8:23
	and thus, we reflect the same spirit that was shown	8:27
	when UNC's own Bill Friday was the principle speaker	8:30
	for Duke's sesquicentennial,	8:33
	and again two years ago for the 100th anniversary	8:36
	of our relocation to this city.	8:38
	This morning we gather in thanksgiving for the great service	8:40
	of the University of North Carolina,	8:44
	and the service that has been given to citizens	8:47
	of our state and our nation.	8:50
	We welcome back to Duke and to this lectern	8:52
	the chancellor of the university Paul Hardin,	8:55
	a Duke graduate.	8:57
	A recent proclamation from the chancellor	8:59
	and Governor Hunt begins, "200 years ago,	9:01
	as the guns of the revolutionary war still echoed	9:05
	throughout this land, the people of North Carolina	9:08
	founded the nation's first public university in Chapel Hill.	9:11
	What a justifiable source of pride	9:15
	for all North Carolinians that the people of our state	9:18
	should have first in their vision and commitment	9:21
	to this cause."	9:24
	The proclamation also announces that on May 15th at noon,	9:26
	the bicennial celebration will draw to a close	9:30
	with a ringing of bells from the bell tower in Chapel Hill,	9:33
	and asks that bells be rung at the same time in churches,	9:36
	schools and historic buildings across the state.	9:40
	We shall be proud to have the bells of Duke Chapel ring out	9:44
	to join with those in Chapel Hill,	9:47
	and with the smallest parish church in the Appalachians,	9:49
	in schoolhouse in the outer banks, to recognize	9:52
	our shared pride in this long tradition of public education,	9:55
	equaled by no other state, and most clearly exemplified	9:59
	in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.	10:03
	The archives of the Duke Library,	10:06
	which are in a true sense part of the archives	10:08
	of the University of North Carolina too,	10:10
	since our library consortium makes these resources	10:12
	fully shared, has a report about cooperation	10:15
	from the late 1930s, and it points out	10:18
	that the collaboration between the two universities	10:21
	serves, quote, "To strengthen the natural feeling of pride	10:24
	which every North Carolinian must feel	10:28
	in these institutions.	10:30
	They are competitors only in the laudable endeavor	10:32
	of building in North Carolina institutions	10:36
	of ever increasing usefulness to our people.	10:38
	Mutually helpful in every way and living proof	10:42
	that the petty acrimonies of the athletic field	10:45
	have no place in shaping the intellectual activities	10:48
	of our universities."	10:52
	As we today give thanks for the 200 years of leadership	10:53
	from Chapel Hill, we might take exception to	10:56
	that rough dismissal of athletic competition	10:59
	as no more than petty acrimony.	11:01
	But we also join wholeheartedly with our predecessors	11:04
	in all these decades, in expressing our gratitude	11:07
	for the many ways in which Duke	11:10
	and the University of North Carolina have gained	11:11
	from each other's presence,	11:14
	and our firm belief in a continued strong relationship	11:15
	in the years ahead.	11:19
	Now let us pray.	11:21
	Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom,	11:24
	enlightened by your Holy Spirit	11:27
	all institutions of learning,	11:29
	we pray especially for Duke University	11:31
	and for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,	11:33
	on the occasion of its 200th anniversary,	11:36
	grant that we, remembering the account that we must one day	11:40
	give, may be faithful stewards of the resources	11:43
	which have been entrusted to us,	11:46
	renew our vision that in our learning and teaching,	11:49
	we may grow in service to others, and love for your world.	11:52
	Give us wisdom in facing the challenges of the future,	11:55
	and clarity of purpose that we might serve the common good	11:57
	in all things.	12:03
	In the name of the God who lives and reigns,	12:04
	forever and ever, Amen.	12:06
	Now let us pray together, the prayer for illumination.	12:09
	Open our hearts and minds, O God,	12:15
	By the power of your Holy Spirit,	12:18
	so that as the scripture is read,	12:20
	and your word is proclaimed, we may hear what you say to us	12:23
	this day. Amen.	12:27
	The first lesson is taken from the third chapter	12:30
	of Proverbs, beginning with verse 13.	12:33
	"Happy are those who find wisdom	12:36
	and those who get understanding, for her income	12:38
	is better than silver and her revenue better than gold.	12:41
	She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire	12:45
	can compare with her.	12:48
	Long life is in her right hand, in left hand are riches	12:50
	and honor.	12:54
	Her ways are ways of pleasantness	12:56
	and all her paths are peace.	12:58
	She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her,	13:01
	those who hold her fast are called happy."	13:05
	This is the word of the Lord.	13:09
Crowd	Thanks be to God.	13:11
Hymn Leader	Today's psalm is number 14,	13:21
	found on page 746 in your hymnal.	13:23
	Please stand and sing the psalm and gloria responsively.	13:26
	♪ The fools say in their heart, there is no God. ♪	13:38
	♪ They are corrupt, their acts are vile ♪	13:44
	♪ There is no one who does good. ♪	13:49
	♪ The Lord looks down from Heaven on all people, ♪	13:53
	♪ To see if there any that are wise to seek after God. ♪	13:58
	♪ They have all gone astray, ♪	14:05
	♪ They are all perverse, ♪	14:09
	♪ There is none that does good, no, not one. ♪	14:13
	♪ Have they no knowledge, the evildoers, ♪	14:20
	♪ Who eat up my people as they eat bread ♪	14:23
	♪ And do not call upon the Lord? ♪	14:28
	♪ They turn to me in great terror, ♪	14:34
	♪ Our God is with the generation of the righteous. ♪	14:39
	♪ You would confound the plans of the poor, ♪	14:46
	♪ But the Lord is their refuge. ♪	14:51
	♪ All that he regrets for will come from Zion ♪	14:55
	♪ When the Lord restores their fortunes. ♪	15:03
	♪ Jacob shall rejoice, and his child shall be glad. ♪	15:09
	♪ All glory be to you, O God, ♪	15:18
	♪ And to Jesus Christ thy savior. ♪	15:22
	♪ And to the Holy Spirit, blessed Trinity. ♪	15:26
	♪ As it was their time begun, ♪	15:32
	♪ Is now, and will be, forever more. ♪	15:37
	You may be seated.	15:47
	(choir singing in Latin)	17:13
	(organ music)	20:23
-	I want to thank my great and new friend Nan Koehane,	21:26
	and my great and old friend Will Willerman	21:31
	for this service, for giving us one of the finest days	21:34
	in the 200 year history of our great university.	21:38
	I particularly want to thank whoever invited	21:42
	the Men's Glee Club to come over here	21:44
	and lend support to the chancellor.	21:46
	I want to say to those young men that I know what it is like	21:48
	to sing in this great crawloft,	21:51
	and it's a sweet homecoming for me,	21:55
	and I know it's a thrill for our young singers	21:57
	to bring you that beautiful music.	22:00
	It may startle some of you to know	22:04
	that there are in this great congregation	22:07
	scores and scores of people who are deeply devoted	22:10
	to both of these universities.	22:14
	That may not be politically correct	22:17
	in Kenan Stadium, or Wallace Wade Stadium,	22:19
	or Cameron Indoor Stadium, or the Smiths Center,	22:22
	but before God and this congregation	22:24
	I can only tell the truth,	22:27
	and I am among those deeply devoted	22:29
	to both of these universities.	22:32
	The gospel lesson is taken from the 20th chapter of John,	22:36
	starting with verse 19B, "Jesus came and stood among them	22:39
	and said, 'Peace be with you.'	22:43
	After he said this he showed them his hands and his side,	22:47
	then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.	22:50
	Jesus said to them again, 'Peace be with you,	22:54
	as the Father has sent me, so I send you.'	22:57
	When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,	23:02
	'Receive the Holy Spirit.	23:05
	If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.	23:07
	If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.'	23:11
	But Thomas, who was called the twin, one the twelve,	23:16
	was not with them when Jesus came.	23:19
	So the other disciples told him, 'We have seen the Lord',	23:22
	but he said to them, 'Unless I see the mark of the nails	23:24
	in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails	23:28
	and my hand in his side, I will not believe.'	23:32
	A week later, his disciples were again in the house	23:37
	and Thomas was with them, although the doors were shut.	23:40
	Jesus came and stood among them and said,	23:44
	'Peace be with you.'	23:47
	Then he said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here	23:51
	and see my hands.	23:53
	Reach out your hand and put it in my side.	23:56
	Do not doubt but believe.'	23:59
	Thomas answered him, 'My Lord and my God.'	24:04
	Jesus said to him, 'Have you believed	24:08
	because you have seen me?	24:10
	Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come	24:13
	to believe.'"	24:17
	This is the word of the Lord.	24:20
Crowd	And thanks be to God.	24:23
-	Now you can imagine that I was tempted to search	24:32
	for a more accessible text than the one assigned	24:37
	by the Common Ecumenical Lectionary	24:40
	which the chancellor has just read.	24:44
	I spent most of my life around universities,	24:47
	and I know what you think of the story.	24:49
	Of a crucified Jew resurrected,	24:53
	returning through locked doors to his grieving followers	24:55
	and breathing on them.	24:58
	Doubting Thomas is the only person with whom you identify	25:01
	in this weird story.	25:05
	Thomas, being invited by Jesus to poke his Cartesian,	25:08
	Baconian fingers into the wounds of Jesus,	25:13
	Thomas, rightly called by the chair	25:18
	of our religion department in a sermon here last year,	25:20
	the patron saint of the university.	25:23
	Thomas, the first modern man.	25:26
	And yet I do find it a revelation	25:34
	that the scripture for this second Sunday of Easter	25:36
	is this one, with a bunch of Duke folk attempting	25:40
	to thank God for UNC.	25:44
	(laughter)	25:46
	Higher education in America began	25:49
	as a Christian affair,	25:54
	at the time of the American Revolution,	25:56
	of the nine colleges in the colonies,	25:57
	all were church colleges	26:00
	except for the College of Philadelphia.	26:02
	Our University of North Carolina	26:06
	was the first state university.	26:07
	A curious amalgam of Presbyterian preachers	26:11
	and federalists politicians gave birth to UNC.	26:14
	Traditionalists attacked the notion of a state university.	26:19
	One friend of the university argued, quote,	26:24
	"Learning is friendly to religion.	26:27
	It corrects prejudice, superstition	26:30
	and gives right views of God."	26:33
	After Old East, the second oldest state university building	26:37
	in America is also at Chapel Hill, Person Hall,	26:43
	which was built as a university chapel.	26:48
	Now your surprise that the second building at UNC	26:53
	was a chapel, underscores the relatively recent divorce	26:56
	of the Christian faith from higher education.	27:01
	Although Duke arose out of a church tradition,	27:05
	the future lay with schools like UNC,	27:09
	and the attempt to educate without recourse	27:12
	to what Voltaire called "the God hypothesis".	27:15
	Statements made at the beginning of UNC	27:20
	and the founding of Duke	27:22
	make clear that our founders envisioned us as institutions	27:24
	dedicated to dragging impoverished North Carolinians	27:28
	into the modern world.	27:31
	Our universities, perhaps as much as anything else,	27:34
	have made us modern,	27:40
	though the price was the loss of	27:44
	UNC's chapel, and the irrelevance to many of Duke's motto.	27:46
	In our respective universities we have given	27:52
	institutional embodiment to the modern way of wisdom.	27:55
	Wisdom without God.	28:00
	And which ought to make us a bit uncomfortable.	28:05
	Not necessarily uncomfortable that we are doing it	28:08
	without God, but a bit uncomfortable	28:10
	that we are still modern, considering	28:14
	that many on both of our campuses now believe	28:17
	that we have entered the postmodern world,	28:20
	that modernity is dead.	28:23
	The greatest challenge faced by today's universities	28:26
	is survival in a postmodern world.	28:32
	What is postmodern?	28:37
	Postmoderns believe that we can no longer construct	28:40
	a coherent world through rational thought	28:43
	and scientific method.	28:47
	No longer unify ourselves through bureaucratic organizations	28:50
	and in subservience to the modern state.	28:53
	Modern assertions of allegedly universal values	28:57
	have given way to postmodern acceptance	29:01
	of pluralistic alternatives and competing points of view	29:03
	and paradox and diversity and deconstruction	29:08
	and uncentering.	29:12
	That we persist in calling ourselves "universities"	29:16
	is modern, but that our president and our chancellor	29:21
	in their daily administration of us experience us	29:25
	as fragmented, conflicted and uncentered is postmodern.	29:28
	The modern university always lived uneasily	29:34
	with the Christian faith.	29:37
	When UNC was founded its friends argued, "Don't fear.	29:40
	Parnassus can dwell easily with Jerusalem."	29:45
	When Duke was indentured, modernity had proceeded so far	29:50
	in its assault on Christianity that Mr Duke was able	29:54
	to contrast the virtues of sane, practical education,	29:58
	as opposed to narrow sectarianism that is religion.	30:04
	I'm saying that we were never really close friends,	30:11
	Christianity and the modern university.	30:14
	By the time our university chapel was being constructed,	30:18
	yours had been closed for over half a century,	30:22
	and ours looked to many like some prehistoric preacher	30:25
	beached upon the shores of the modern university.	30:28
	We've never been close friends, the modern university	30:32
	and the Christian faith.	30:36
	And the reasons for our difficulties are undoubtedly many.	30:38
	For one thing, modern higher education is dedicated	30:44
	to producing people who go onto success,	30:47
	success as defined by late capitalism.	30:51
	Of the English public school that he hated,	30:55
	George Orwell once said that at Crossgates,	30:57
	one was bidden to be at once to be a Christian	31:01
	and a social success, which has always been impossible.	31:04
	I know I've been chaplain here at Duke for nearly a decade,	31:09
	and I've only once received a phone call	31:13
	from a worried parent, saying, "Help, my son is drunk	31:14
	every weekend."	31:18
	And yet I've received a dozen telephone calls	31:20
	from tortured parents saying, "Help,	31:23
	I sent my child to Duke,	31:26
	and he has become a religious fanatic,"	31:28
	"religious fanatic" defined around here	31:32
	as a person who goes with Catholics to work with the poor	31:34
	in Haiti rather than to law school.	31:37
	For another thing, Christianity though is non-Western,	31:42
	it is pre-modern, whereas we at Duke and UNC	31:46
	as we have said, are creations of modernity.	31:50
	That's why we flinch when hearing a Bible story	31:55
	about a dead man coming back to life, walking through doors,	31:58
	asking us to believe in him as God.	32:00
	Course I don't take it personally,	32:04
	you react the same way to a story from the Talmud,	32:05
	or the Quran, or Plato, or the Brothers Grimm.	32:08
	John's gospel offends modern presumption	32:12
	that we are fortunate enough to stand on the summit	32:17
	of all human development, privileged to sit in judgment	32:21
	upon everyone who has occurred before us.	32:25
	The Jesus story assaults modern sensibilities,	32:30
	in its defiance of explanation,	32:33
	its frustration of certain knowledge.	32:37
	Cause that's what the modern world and its universities	32:43
	have been all about.	32:46
	The holding of certain knowledge in the structures	32:48
	of exclusively human rationality.	32:52
	The modern age occurred in Northern Europe	32:58
	and in some of its colonies, lasted for roughly 200 years,	33:01
	and is now ending.	33:06
	Only for this brief period of history,	33:09
	only in this rather limited environment did anyone	33:11
	seriously suppose that human beings could hold	33:15
	sure knowledge on our own.	33:19
	When the book of Proverbs says, as we heard this morning,	33:24
	"Happy are those who find wisdom",	33:28
	it isn't talking about wisdom worked in modern universities,	33:32
	it was the wisdom that Aristotle spoke of,	33:37
	when he contended that knowledge requires a grasp of cause	33:41
	and essence.	33:46
	To know something, to really know something,	33:48
	you've got to know what that was intended to be.	33:50
	And yet Francis Bacon and all other creators	33:55
	of modern science rejected final causation,	33:58
	rejected the Aristotelian notion of essence.	34:02
	Now, while much was gained from their project,	34:07
	the smallpox vaccine, the VCR, the telephone,	34:10
	Burger King, they left us as those who have no means	34:13
	of turning facts into knowledge,	34:18
	no notion of what facts are for.	34:21
	And there are curious parallels between what we read	34:26
	in Proverbs, that is wisdom as a gift, a byproduct	34:28
	of the fear of God,	34:32
	rather than heroic human achievement,	34:35
	and postmodern thought like that of Foucault,	34:39
	who mocked the silly pretension	34:43
	of heroic human achievements.	34:45
	Pre-modern medieval philosophers said that without God,	34:48
	we can know nothing.	34:51
	Postmodern philosophers today say we have no God	34:54
	and therefore no knowledge.	34:58
	Pre-modern said that without God, you don't know right	35:02
	and you don't know wrong.	35:07
	Postmodern say that there is no God, and therefore no right	35:10
	and no wrong.	35:14
	As a group of European academics stated	35:17
	in their postmodern manifesto announcing the beginning	35:20
	of the postmodern world, "Nothing is certain,	35:23
	not even this."	35:28
	The modern age opened with the destruction of God	35:30
	and religion, and it is ending with the destruction	35:33
	of all coherent thought.	35:36
	We're learning in the modern university the limitations	35:39
	of the Baconian revolution.	35:44
	We're learning that in the scientific revolution	35:47
	our world did not grow as had been promised,	35:49
	but it shrank.	35:53
	A demystified modern world is flat, desiccated,	35:56
	cut down to size, dissected.	36:01
	A student in one of my classes said that	36:05
	the thing she resented about religious people	36:09
	was that they always seemed to have simple answers	36:12
	to complex questions, you know, "This is just God's will."	36:15
	Yet I remind you that simplification, reductionism	36:21
	is a tendency of modernism, not Christianity.	36:26
	Believers in God tend to be intellectually humbled	36:31
	in a way that ought cheer up postmodernists	36:35
	like Jacques Derrida,	36:38
	by the fact that we know we can never fully know.	36:40
	There is always more going on out there,	36:46
	there is always more going on in here.	36:49
	The modern positivists tends to see objects	36:53
	of investigation as complete, as lacking nothing,	36:56
	entirely as our limited epistemology describes them.	37:00
	The humility essential for knowing,	37:06
	humility engendered by the gap between us and God	37:10
	is lost.	37:15
	Epistemological arrogance results	37:17
	the silly modern presumption we know something	37:20
	when we have merely picked it apart	37:24
	and labeled its elements, elements which never describe	37:27
	adequately the whole.	37:31
	Guillsans said, "History is a laboratory	37:35
	in which we see the results of our thought."	37:39
	Is the modern university coming at last to know	37:44
	the evil within the systematic, the hidden cruelty	37:48
	behind our attempts at impersonal knowledge?	37:52
	The downside of vaunted human ingenuity,	37:56
	the flatness, the prison of enlightenment rationality?	38:00
	A chill goes down my spine as I realize	38:08
	that Nazism found its most willing ideologues	38:14
	in the German university.	38:17
	We helped give birth to the modern world,	38:20
	and its face is not the puckish smile of Voltaire	38:26
	but rather the cold stare of the accountants,	38:30
	and the doctors and the government functionaries	38:35
	in "Schindler's List".	38:39
	There was a shadow side to Jeffersonian rationality	38:42
	as the measure of humanity.	38:47
	Cause when we encountered peoples,	38:51
	say American Indians, or Polish Jews,	38:53
	who valued their tribe or tradition or God	38:58
	more than the modern state, we exterminated them.	39:02
	They were in their pre-modern irrationality,	39:07
	they were subhuman.	39:12
	The modern world not only gave us the mechanics	39:14
	to make the bomb but also the morality to use the bomb	39:17
	on Japanese children.	39:21
	And in many ways modern universities still rest upon	39:25
	discredited beliefs about objective truth	39:29
	and disinterested inquiry.	39:33
	Various ethnic and religious groups are expected here	39:35
	to lay aside their history as the price of being accepted	39:40
	into the closed circle of rational discourse	39:45
	as we in the academy define rational.	39:49
	We're all children of Descartes.	39:53
	Descartes began the modern world by attempting	39:55
	to suspend belief in all that he had been taught,	39:59
	so that he could start fresh, so that he could,	40:02
	in his words, "Establish a secure foundation for knowledge".	40:06
	And the only secure foundation of knowledge	40:12
	that Descartes was able to discover was within himself	40:15
	and his own experience.	40:18
	Well we now know the naivete of the Cartesian project.	40:22
	But we know not in the modern university	40:25
	how to free ourselves from it.	40:28
	We are still prejudiced against all prejudice,	40:31
	still suspicious of all tradition,	40:35
	save the Cartesian tradition of suspicion of tradition.	40:38
	Postmodernity now knows the impossibility of detachment	40:44
	from a tradition, even if it happens to be	40:49
	the Cartesian tradition that it is possible to	40:52
	detach ourselves from our tradition.	40:55
	A student was telling me that a professor here	40:59
	is reputed to have written on a student paper,	41:01
	"You still have not fully grasped the consequences	41:04
	of the postmodern world in which all truth is relative.	41:08
	Therefore I am giving you a C+."	41:13
	We still naively educate our students based upon faith	41:17
	that detachment is the beginning of wisdom.	41:22
	Maybe because we benefit from the economics of detachment.	41:26
	Why is the conventional American path to wisdom	41:30
	to leave and abandon your parents in Des Moines	41:34
	and move to Durham?	41:37
	Well, GM needs mobile workers.	41:39
	Coming to the university trains you to participate	41:43
	in this economy.	41:46
	Christians come prejudiced to the university,	41:49
	prejudiced that Jesus Christ is the way and the truth	41:55
	and the life.	41:59
	Of course, my point is that we're not unique	42:01
	in our prejudice.	42:04
	The postmodern knows that everybody stands somewhere.	42:06
	Everybody comes from some tradition.	42:11
	This fall, on the first year of student retreat,	42:16
	a student said, "I believe that	42:21
	religion is a private matter,	42:23
	something just between you and God,	42:26
	a matter of what I personally believe to be right."	42:28
	Now she did not come out of the womb thinking that.	42:33
	Somebody had to initiate her	42:37
	into that peculiar point of view.	42:39
	Someone had to inculcate her into that	42:41
	anti-Christian, anti-Muslim, anti-Jewish tradition.	42:43
	And yet because that narrow tradition, that is,	42:47
	religion is a private matter between me and God	42:51
	which is nobody else's business,	42:53
	is sanctioned by this economy,	42:55
	and held by nine out of ten average Americans,	42:58
	she can act as if it were not a point of view,	43:01
	she can act as if it were natural, reasonable,	43:04
	just the way things are.	43:07
	Christians are every bit as rational as anybody else	43:10
	in the university.	43:12
	Our rationality is not primitive, it's just different.	43:14
	Like my feminist or African American faculty colleagues,	43:18
	my scholarship is accountable to something external to,	43:22
	larger than the university.	43:26
	And it's a wonderful time to be Christian in the university.	43:30
	Because the ending of one world always promises	43:35
	the birth of another.	43:38
	Christians ask not to be given a privileged place	43:41
	in the university.	43:44
	We just want a place to articulate our point of view,	43:46
	a point of view, which we have said,	43:51
	has a weird kind of congruence	43:54
	with the world now postmodern.	43:57
	So we began with a story of Jesus returning	44:02
	to his shocked disciples, and then playfully taunting	44:06
	the doubts of Thomas.	44:09
	And Christians just love this story,	44:11
	because in this faith it's just okay to doubt.	44:14
	At the same time to yearn for tangible, visible knowledge.	44:17
	One day perhaps to be moved to confess my Lord and my God.	44:25
	Here's a story that no matter how often we tell it,	44:30
	we still don't get it right.	44:35
	We're still baffled by its thickness.	44:38
	There's no preacher able to defuse the mystery	44:40
	of this story.	44:44
	And maybe that's one reason we've been gathering here	44:46
	ever since Mr Duke gave the money for this university	44:48
	and this chapel.	44:51
	We gather to savor the mystery in a weird, wonderful,	44:53
	mysterious building.	44:57
	To tell the story, to be reminded of something	44:59
	easy to forget in the modern university.	45:04
	That there's a lot more going on out there,	45:07
	and there's a lot more going on in here	45:11
	than we can know or tell at Duke or UNC.	45:13
	Christians, having never quite made peace	45:20
	with the modern world, can be quite helpful	45:24
	in the postmodern university.	45:29
	And so we say, happy birthday, UNC,	45:33
	may God, the author and perfecter of true wisdom,	45:38
	God the creator of worlds that have been	45:42
	and worlds yet to be, may God grant you	45:45
	and us many more.	45:51
	Amen.	45:56
	(organ music)	46:02
	♪ Holy Spirit, truth divine, ♪	46:27
	♪ Dawn upon this soul of mine. ♪	46:33
	♪ Voice of God and inward light, ♪	46:39
	♪ Wake my spirit, clear my sight. ♪	46:45
	♪ Holy Spirit, love divine, ♪	46:53
	♪ Glow within this heart of mine. ♪	46:59
	♪ Kindle every high desire, ♪	47:06
	♪ Purify me with your fire. ♪	47:12
	♪ Holy Spirit, power divine, ♪	47:20
	♪ Fill and nerve this will of mine. ♪	47:26
	♪ Boldly may I always live, ♪	47:33
	♪ Bravely serve, and gladly give. ♪	47:39
	♪ Holy Spirit, right divine, ♪	47:47
	♪ King within my conscience reign. ♪	47:53
	♪ Be my Lord, and I shall be ♪	48:00
	♪ Firmly bound, forever free. ♪	48:06
Preacher	The Lord be with you.	48:17
Crowd	And also with you.	48:18
-	Let us pray. Be seated.	48:20
	Gracious God, author and perfecter of true wisdom,	48:29
	source of all enlightenment and giver of life.	48:35
	This day we gather in your name,	48:40
	still basking in the glow of Easter,	48:43
	the victory of life over death,	48:47
	still wondering at the way the risen Christ	48:51
	comes back to us and blesses us and heals our doubt.	48:53
	This day we gather in your name to ponder our place	49:00
	within the modern university.	49:03
	We give thanks for your graciousness	49:07
	to the University of North Carolina,	49:10
	for the good this school has worked in our state and world,	49:13
	for the lives blessed there,	49:19
	give us at Duke and UNC a greater sense	49:23
	of our common responsibility for the betterment	49:27
	of those less fortunate than ourselves.	49:30
	Remind us, O God, of the nobler purposes	49:34
	of higher education.	49:38
	Forgive us when we pervert our privileges into a pass	49:41
	to merely personal power rather than as means	49:46
	of fostering the common good.	49:51
	We pray for students and faculty around the world	49:55
	who must study and do research in situations	50:00
	of political oppression, of civil unrest and poverty.	50:03
	Particularly we pray for the Catholic nuns	50:09
	and priest murdered this week in Central Africa.	50:11
	We pray for those in Israel who lost their lives	50:17
	in the car bombing.	50:21
	Keep us mindful of the suffering and the need	50:25
	that is about us.	50:29
	Give to our students a new joy in their learning.	50:32
	Give to our faculty fresh wonder and the glory	50:38
	of bright young minds.	50:42
	Bless the research and the care that is offered in the Duke	50:46
	and the UNC hospitals.	50:52
	Work in them, O healing God.	50:55
	Reveal your ways to us, Lord.	51:01
	Enlighten our minds, stir up our hearts. Amen.	51:04
	Now let us offer ourselves and our gifts to God.	51:13
	(organ music)	51:26
	(organ music)	1:01:15
	♪ Praise God and let his blessing flow, ♪	1:01:16
	♪ Praise Him, all creatures here below, ♪	1:01:17
	♪ Alleluia, alleluia! ♪	1:01:23
	♪ Praise above, ye heavenly host, ♪	1:01:31
	♪ Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. ♪	1:01:37
	♪ Alleluia, alleluia, ♪	1:01:44
	♪ Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia! ♪	1:01:51
-	Gracious God, for all that has been,	1:02:11
	for all that is and for all that shall be,	1:02:17
	we give you thanks, asking that you would use us	1:02:21
	and our gifts in your work in the world,	1:02:24
	praying as our Lord our Savior has taught us,	1:02:29
	our Father, Lord in Heaven, hallowed be thy name,	1:02:33
	thy kingdom come, thy will be done,	1:02:38
	on Earth as it is in Heaven.	1:02:41
	Give us this day our daily bread,	1:02:44
	and forgive us our trespasses,	1:02:47
	as we forgive those who trespass against us.	1:02:49
	And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,	1:02:52
	for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever,	1:02:57
	amen.	1:03:02
	(organ music)	1:03:05
	(singing)	1:03:28

Item Info

Title:

William H. Willimon - "Being Christian in the Postmodern University" (April 10, 1994)

Description:

Sermon start time: 24:32. Sermon end time: 45:57.
Preaching on the 200th anniversary of the founding of UNC-Chapel Hill, the preacher briefly reviews the history of how modern universities in North America began and when they divorced from Christian faith. The preacher argues that the wisdom and rationality that modern universities boast has deviated from the true wisdom of God, which cannot be fully grasped by higher education and academic research. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Key quotation: “Christians, having never quite made peace with the modern world, can be quite helpful in the postmodern university.”

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4m03zc1s

Date:

April 10, 1994

Speaker:

Willimon, William H.

Liturgical Calendar:

Easter

Biblical Book:

John

Chapter and Verse:

John 20:19b-29

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 VHS-0364
ref9396_098
uachapelsermaud
duke:321305
dcrmv001349
ark:/87924/r4m03zc1s
3e50615d-8cdd-436b-be6c-b1d5fbc84ae9

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

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Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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William H. Willimon - "Being Christian in the Postmodern University" (April 10, 1994)

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1. William H. Willimon - "Being Christian in the Postmodern University" (April 10, 1994)

Duke University Archives

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William H. Willimon - "Being Christian in the Postmodern University" (April 10, 1994)

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Duke University Archives

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