Moral Education in the Christian Tradition: Contemporary Exemplars

Abstract

Throughout this book, we have argued that the education undertaken in most colleges and universities relies upon less than human frameworks. We should not be surprised at this development. We should not expect to find many state-sponsored universities with common moral ideals in pluralistic liberal democracies (except perhaps at military academies and other unique forms of institutions). Instead, we would offer that such common moral ideals are best cultivated within educational communities keenly aware of and well-defined by comprehensive humanistic moral traditions. Their common metanarratives springing from their comprehensive identity supply ends, virtues, practices, principles, wisdom, mentors, and models that stretch beyond restricted identity boundaries.

… people may have different commitments behind [their] common enterprises, and thus they need to wrestle with those differences that take account of each other’s distinct identity. Christians will never meet this challenge better seeking to be less specifically Christian. They will meet it better if they take it on faith that Christ is Lord over the powers, that Creation is not independent of Redemption.

—John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom¹