4/19/59

Scripture: Read Matthew 28: 11-20

We all face an unknown future. Some of it seems quite bright. Some of it makes us sober, even fearful, as we contemplate the possibilities. Some of it will not be of our own making, and the secret of our lives will lie in how we can live with it. Much of it will be of our own making, and the secret of our lives is to make it good.

To meet that which can not be changed requires a mind that is disciplined to constant training. To meet that which needs building or training requires, equally, a trained mind. For millions of young people, that means a lot of schooling -- high school, college, university -- in order to establish the self-disciplines of thinking and action so necessary for adequate living. The new occasions will require new duties that can be learned only by minds in constant training.

The story is told of an elderly handyman who sat rocking in a chair on his front porch, greeting summer residents who passed by his place. “They tell me I have lost my mind,” he would say, “but I don’t miss it none.” That can not be true of anybody who is going to live in the unknown future. Disciplined minds will not just appear out of a vacuum. Neither will they be adequate if they are just reservoirs of some of the available knowledge. What anybody knows, is so small compared to what is not known.

And so a great part of education is learning how to think. A good deal of college training comes in the category of how to think; acquaintance with all sorts of ideas, good and bad, highly beneficial and virulently evil; and the development of ability to choose rightly among them. A good deal of this training involves venture in ideas, reaching into the unknown, in order that more may become known. And no one does this without a faith.

Those who work at scientific research have a faith that reaches eagerly beyond what they already know into what they wish to know and believe can possibly be known. And an important faith is the conviction that God is the creative force in which one best trusts as he does his searching. Some truth seems to be perceived by concentrated attention and able work. Some seems to be revealed by God in flashes of inspiration.

And so there is a necessary place for Christian higher education in the whole learning picture. One of the eastern colleges has deposited in its cornerstone a Bible, on the flyleaf of which a founding soul has written, “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” [Psalm 127: 1]. That Scriptural quotation is much more than a pen-and-ink statement sealed up in a cornerstone. It is one of those things that has been tested in the lives of countless people, and found relevant to the search for truth.

Those who face the unknown future best are those who enter it with the studied assurance that the Lord has built the universe; that there is a living, loving God into whose hand one can commit his future. And one does not just commit his future to God while he goes off and plays at what strikes his fancy. He keeps his mind useable by using it. He commits his future to God only as he does his own best.

A copy of the Farmers’ Almanac dated 1875 contains the anecdote about Mohammed who overheard one of his followers saying, “I will loose my camel and commit it to God.” On which Mohammed is said to have advised, “Friend, tie thy camel and commit it to God.”

The need for education, for constant learning, -- lots of it -- is easily apparent. And thoughtful folk are seeing, more and more, that the disciplines of learning must be acquired in a setting of positive faith. So it is not amiss, but rather is necessary, to speak of Christian higher education; not as some limited, or narrow type of learning, but as the broadened base of learning.

The opportunity to learn in the future --- even in the immediate future --- is not assured, however. For even the opportunity to learn is going to take vision and planning and giving by us who live right now in the present.

Here is the story of a young couple who are parents of small children now. We will call them Dan and Laura. Their children are pre-school age. Both Dan and Laura are active in the Congregational Church of their neighborhood. Laura sings in the choir and Dan is an active adviser to a youth group. They are beginning the religious training of their own two children, both at home and in cooperative understanding of the Beginners department of the church school where the little folk are enrolled.

They look at little Steve and Betty playing on the floor. Dan drops his newspaper and says to Laura, “I’ve been reading that more than 45 million boys and girls are enrolled in all of the nation’s schools this year, and nearly 3 and one-half million of that number are college students. That is about 2 million more now enrolled in colleges and universities than in 1940. I wonder,” says Dan, “what it will be like when Steve and Betty go to school? What will it be like when they are old enough to go to college?”

Laura smiles and says, “That will be 15 years from now. there’s time enough to worry about that.” “No, there isn’t,” muses Dan. “There isn’t time enough at all. ‘15 years,’ you say. That would be 1974. Do you know how many students the United States Education Office in Washington expects will be enrolled in higher education in 1970 --- only 11 years off? Almost 6 and one-half million!”

“Why that’s almost double,” says Laura. And it is. They both realize that it is not too early to think about educational opportunity for their children, beginning now. And this is true for hosts of young parents, of young folk who plan to marry and have families, and for grandparents who want to help plan a future opportunity for their grandchildren.

The problem is going to be not alone, what colleges will be available, but what kind of colleges they will be. What kind of training can the children receive when they have grown to that age? We’ll continue to have state-supported universities and other schools of higher learning. And we will have to allocate the necessary amounts from tax funds to keep up their growth -- and to pay those taxes. But what of the private schools, the church-related colleges? About one quarter of the total number of higher education institutions in the US are supported, in part, by Protestant churches. Suppose these churches failed their colleges. Suppose that Congregational-Christian churches turned their back on all their church-related colleges and seminaries and mission schools around the world?

If that should happen, the churches would be turning their backs on one of the most vital of human concerns at exactly the moment when the needs and opportunities in this realm are the greatest in history! And so it ill behooves Dan and Laura to be complacent, or for any of us to remain complacent, about the matter. Our deepest concern, and our very best efforts may not be enough to care for the need. It is going to take millions of dollars to provide the facilities and many thousands of teachers to meet the growing need. We may keep up with the need for facilities, though some experts doubt it. But the need for good teachers --- for almost any kind of teachers --- is going to be more and more acute.

And the whole environment of education should increasingly be Christian in spirit. When we say “Christian environment” we do not mean creedally dogmatic, nor ecclesiastical. But a Christian environment means associating with people who demonstrate by their behavior that they have a strong Christian background and interest. The Christian environment of a school may be expressed in courses in religion on some campuses. On all campuses it should be expressed in a strong, well-supported campus ministry.

If we want to have a free world, governed by Christian principles, we will have to have an educated world strengthened by bulwarks of Christianity in our colleges and universities, through improved and growing facilities, more and better-paid teachers, and stronger campus ministries. And this must be supplied not only to the schools of higher education in our own country, but to the Christian schools of other lands as well. It will be only a few years before the thinking of people in Asia and Africa will be determinative of world destiny.

This is why we must be concerned now with academic values and Christian motives, and that these be available, as needed, to generations coming soon. This is a responsibility of Christian people and of informed churches. Millions of us need to give some thought to it and some support to it.

The real battle of life today is a battle for the minds of youth, here and abroad. One half the population of Asia is under 21 years of age! That is the intellectual leadership of the world. It is tremendously important how it is educated -- by one system or another, for good or ill. The ideas adopted by those young people, and the young people of this part of the earth, remain the most powerful force in human history.

A lot of young folk are asking themselves basic questions. Coming from a secular type of thinking and background, they want to find an honestly-discovered answer to the questions: “Who am I? Why am I here?” And they will search the field of religion, as well as other areas, for the answers.

Now it is apparent that higher education is in some trouble. Partly, this is because of tremendous population growth. And partly it is because forces that have been education-minded in the past have become luxury-minded in the present, and have turned their backs on the earlier tradition.

The New England colonists thought so highly of education that they put all they could endure through taxation into the founding of a college that has since become Harvard University. Great sacrifices of willing support went into the schools of higher learning.

The college in South Dakota from with I was graduated is a church-related college. A former student, now elderly in years, writes of his entry into that school. He said that the students, fewer in number then than now, were invited to gather at the president’s home. That home was no mansion, and the few chairs had to be supplemented by wooden boxes for some of the fellows to sit on. But the president, and his fellow faculty members never failed to hold up high standards of academic work and good character.

There is still a good deal of sacrifice involved in teaching. An Eastern university has raised its tuition to $1,250 a year. It still finds the actual cost of education, per student, to be nearly twice that much or $2300 per student. And the university’s president grimly remarks that a lot of the difference represents a kind of scholarship from the faculty. “They pay for it out of their hides,” he says.

America has never been as ready to pay for educational services as to request them. At present rates, only one in eight college professors can ever hope to earn more than $7500 per year. It would cost colleges and universities around a half billion dollars a year to raise faculty salaries 50%. But can we afford not to train, and offer a living to, the teachers of today and tomorrow?

Comparisons become odious and must be made sparingly. But Sputnik has dramatized at least the technological revolution we are passing through. And it should dramatize that the trained mind is a nation’s most important asset! We are informed that, in Russia, the top professors’ total salary is in the range of $35,000 to $50,000 per year at the official rate of exchange. Add to this low taxes, low rent, free health service, free education for his children (if they make the academic grade). And add, further, that the Soviet professor is looked up to!

Contrast this with the American college faculty member’s salary which is not much more than the average factory worker’s income. In actual purchasing power, the faculty member’s salary of today will buy about 70% of what the comparable professor’s salary of 1940 would buy. The average factory worker’s income will get about 150% of what the comparable worker could buy in 1940.

The incentive for a college professor, or almost any teacher in America today, lies in his love of teaching as a service vocation, for it is not otherwise highly compensated. And for even the salary he does get, the average college teacher is dependent on the contributions that givers make to help make up the difference between tuition receipts and the cost of pupil training in the college.

Congregational churches have had an enviable record of starting good colleges in the early times of our nation and especially in the 19th century. But Congregational churches have largely cut the colleges loose to shift for themselves in the 20th century. We do not adequately support the colleges founded by our spiritual fathers and we have not established any 4-year colleges in this century in this country, though our American Board of Missions has established some new schools abroad.

To meet the need for some encouragement to church related colleges, and to expand campus ministries, needed at all colleges and universities, we are to be given an opportunity to contribute, during the next two years, to a denominational fund of 7 and one-half million dollars called the “Christian Higher Education Fund.” We shall hear more of it during the months ahead, as have already our delegates to Conference, Association and Council meetings. It is a modest amount in reference to the need, and it should be worthily met.

For the children of today -- right now -- as well as the children of tomorrow, will depend on the efforts we make to see that there is an opportunity to learn. And their opportunity depends on the quantity and the quality of teaching to become available. It should be venturesome in discovery of the truth. And it should be Christian in support of the dignity of the individual person.

“A college,” said Professor Steiner of Grinnell, “is not built of mere sticks and stones. A college is built of faith in God, ideas from God, and character for God.” The real college is what the student feels while he is there on its campus and when he projects its training into his world.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, April 19, 1959.