Faith and Knowledge: Mainline Protestantism and American Higher Education. This item is unavailable.Faith and Knowledge: Mainline Protestantism and American Higher Education

Douglas Stone explores the impact that the Protestant theological renaissance (1925-1960) had on colleges and universities. He focuses on the way the churches did, and did not, deal effectively with this faith-knowledge situation.

Sloan concludes that the "faith-knowledge issue" is the most important of the modern age and that "mainline American Protestantism" seems briefly and dimly to have been aware of this. But the conclusion is no more significant than the four overlapping histories by which it is reached: the emergence of the research university; "the Protestant theological renaissance" (1925-60); the engagement of mainline Protestantism with higher education in the U.S. from the beginning of that renaissance until a decade after its end; and the rise of postmodernism. Sloan quotes a state university chancellor who said in 1900 that the religious statistics of his university would lead one to believe that it was "the collegium de propaganda fide for the entire western hemisphere." According to Sloan, the "faith" propagated by the university system is a separation of faith and knowledge not yet adequately addressed by theologians. Most of the book is devoted to making that case, which is important in its own right. But the case and Sloan's reflections will also be of interest to theologians and others seeking "a genuine postmodernism." Steve Schroeder