- Christianity Today's 2018 Book of the Year Award of Merit - Politics/Public Life
Has the American university gained the whole world but lost its soul? In terms of money, prestige, power, and freedom, American universities appear to have gained the academic world. But at what cost? We live in the age of the fragmented multiversity that has no unifying soul or mission. The multiversity in a post-Christian culture is characterized instead by curricular division, the professionalization of the disciplines, the expansion of administration, the loss of community, and the idolization of athletics. The situation is not hopeless. According to Perry L. Glanzer, Nathan F. Alleman, and Todd C. Ream, Christian universities can recover their soul―but to do so will require reimagining excellence in a time of exile, placing the liberating arts before the liberal arts, and focusing on the worship, love, and knowledge of God as central to the university. Restoring the Soul of the University is a pioneering work that charts the history of the university and casts an inspiring vision for the future of higher education.
Perry L. Glanzer (PhD, University of Southern California) is professor of educational foundations at Baylor University and a resident scholar with Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of several books including Christian Higher Education: A Global Reconnaissance, The Idea of a Christian College: A Rexamination for Today's University, Christianity and Moral Identity in Higher Education: Becoming Fully Human, Christianity and Scholarship in Higher Education, and The Quest for Russia's Soul. His primary scholarly and teaching interests pertain to moral education and the relationship between Christianity and education.
Nathan F. Alleman (PhD, The College of William and Mary) is associate professor of higher education studies at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Alleman studies and teaches about marginal and marginalized groups and institutions in higher education. His research includes sociological studies of faculty sub-groups (non-tenure track, faculty denied tenure, and religious outsiders) and the collegiate identities and experiences of student sub-groups (rural, first generation, undocumented, community college, religious minority, and food insecure). Alleman also writes about Christian higher education and the history of the YMCA student association movement.
Todd C. Ream serves at Indiana Wesleyan University as professor of humanities, executive director of faculty research and scholarship, and a senior fellow for the Lumen Research Institute.
