Abstract
Mike Higton,
A Theology of Higher Education
, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2012; 288pp.: 9780199643929, £75.00 (hbk)
Higton's book is important for two reasons. First, he offers a standard but robust account of the development of the university. He travels from medieval Paris (the founding of the religious university) to Berlin in the nineteenth century (the birth of the secular research university) to Dublin and Oxford (with Newman) and modern day Cambridge (a ‘secular’ university where being religious is possible). Higton is co-based at Exeter and Cambridge. The tour finishes with an original and critical assessment of different theological voices on the nature of the university. George Marsden did not pursue his idea of the distinctive ethos to Christian scholarship and Nicholas Wolterstorff and Stanley Hauerwas are in danger of overemphasizing particularity and failing to engage in a conversation of equals. The historical tour helps to contextualize the issue: there are different models of higher education and they raise complex questions and problems. Higton seeks a solution that will allow theologies of all sorts, and non-theologies, to flourish together. There is a basic presumption that this is possible within a secular institution. This strategy does not exclude that advocated by a Hauerwas for a more ‘sectarian’ type of university. That is Part I of the book.
Second, Part II of the book is the constructive task, and it is a tight, elegant and very original contribution to the debate about the university. Higton draws on a range of Anglican divines (David Ford, Daniel Hardy and Rowan Williams) to shape an Anglican approach to learning within a radically pluralist secular university. His chapter on ‘An Anglican Theology of Learning’ is powerful and persuasive and well worth a second read. Higton takes this distinctive tradition-formed vision and argues that it is naturally outward turning and given to the cooperative ‘pursuit of wisdom’. David Ford's influence is especially acknowledged and is a deep inspiration to Higton. Anglicanism in this country, as a state religion, is perhaps well disposed to develop this type of approach. However, Higton, while never losing sight of the particularity of his own engagement, is commending this as a model that might work for different particularities that could be shaped and developed within the modern secular research university. Hence, the final four chapters allow Higton to explore four aspects that are central to his Anglican vision but can be shared with other religious and non-religious communities and individuals. How, he asks, does one create together a virtuous, sociable, good and negotiable university? And, in tackling these four themes, Higton advances a proposal that requires careful scrutiny simply because it is so particular, and yet so catholic and eclectic: for example, when speaking about the virtues, he argues that all communities in the university seek the intellectual virtues of honesty, truth telling and so on. This common searching provides the context for the university to be a place of genuine discourse between different traditions.
This is a challenging and important contribution to the debate about the nature of the university and theology/religion within the university.