John Inazu (Washington University; Google Scholar), Encouraging and Equipping Christian Faculty at Non-Christian Universities:

In an earlier post, I described the Newbigin Fellows, a partnership between Interfaith America (where I serve as a Senior Fellow) and The Carver Project (an organization I founded five years ago). The Newbigin Fellows convenes cohorts of Christian faculty working at non-Christian colleges and universities. These cohorts meet monthly over Zoom and then gather in person with the goal of cultivating relationships with one another, reflecting on the theory and practice of interfaith engagement, and developing interfaith activities on their respective campuses. I co-lead the group with Interfaith America’s founder and president, Eboo Patel.

Last week, our second Newbigin cohort gathered in St. Louis. … Our time together included substantive conversations about the state of politics and religion in our country, the recent campus protests, and the challenges and opportunities of being a Christian faculty member on campuses like ours.

Our Newbigin gathering coincided with the publication of the latest issue of Plough Quarterly, which includes a piece from me titled “Loving the University.” I begin that piece by noting:

One of the central motivations of my academic career has been to ask how Christians can flourish in nonreligious colleges and universities. I would like to think that Christians can actually model some of what the university purports to be.

I argue that Christian faculty at non-Christian universities—like the Newbigin Fellows—can help achieve the university’s goals of interdisciplinarity, student engagement, and town-gown relations. Many higher education institutions today struggle to name and embody a clear purpose and mission. This lack of clarity creates enormous challenges but also invites opportunities for faculty to lead creatively and imaginatively.

Editor's Note:  If you would like to receive a weekly email each Sunday with links to the faith posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here. 

Other posts by John Inazu:

• Robby George And John Inazu On Antisemitism And The Campus Protests (May 5, 2024)
• Spiritual Formation And Political Engagement (Feb. 24, 2024)
• GenXers And Evangelical Culture (Dec. 31, 2023)
• The Lack Of Clarity And Courage In Higher Education On Hamas And Israel (Nov. 12, 2023)
• Learning From Failure (Oct. 29, 2023)
• Nii Addy: Christian. Black. Neuroscientist. (Oct. 15, 2023)
• The Bad News About Politics Without Religion (Sept. 17, 2023)
• Reflections On Mortality: Does Christianity Matter? (July 9, 2023)
• DEI Needs Religious Diversity Too (Apr. 16, 2023)
• Kicking Off The Legal Vocation Fellowship For Early-Career Christian Attorneys (Feb. 26, 2023)
• What The Left And The Right Get Wrong About The 'He Gets Us' Super Bowl Jesus Ads (Feb. 19, 2023)
• How Can Christian Faculty Be Interfaith Leaders? (Dec. 18, 2022)
• The Respect For Marriage Act, Christianity, And Pluralism (Dec. 4, 2022)
• Tim Keller On Forgiveness (Nov. 20, 2022)
• The Incomprehensible Witness Of Forgiveness (Nov. 13, 2022)
• Pandemic Forgiveness (Nov. 6, 2022)
• The Life We're Looking For (Sept. 25, 2022)
• On The 21-Year Anniversary Of 9/11, What Unites Us? (Sept. 11, 2022)
• Interfaith Doesn't Mean Compromise (Aug. 28, 2022)