My hope for exploring and teaching Christian humanism is that it will revive an interest in the humanities amongst contemporary Christians and transform our understanding of the significant influence Christian humanism has had on Western society.
In the modern world, it is often purported that there is a conflict between the Church and the Academy. Both are intensely suspicious of the other. The Academy consistently views Christianity as mere superstition and opposed to what it believes are real humanistic interests (i.e, scientific progress) while the Church often denigrates the Academy as institutionalized atheism, full of ideology that is “worldly,” “hedonistic,” and “antiChrist.”
Unfortunately, both parties are partially correct in their assumptions about the other, but such animus was not always the case. There was a time when the academy and its humanistic studies were understood as the natural outworking of Christianity in light of the Incarnation. That is, since the Divine (the Second Person of the Godhead) became embodied (human), it meant that God has revealed that he was favorably disposed toward humanity. Reading and discussing great (even Pagan) literature (i.e., humane letters) in light of the Incarnation and the biblical testimony of the God-man was a robust way of engaging the human condition and contemplating what it means to flourish as a human being.
Historically speaking, it was not until the 19th century that atheistic humanism was accepted as a legitimate worldview. And by the mid-twentieth century, Christianity ceased to possess a viable purchase in the humanistic studies of the modern Academy.
Writers like G.K Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, Irving Babbitt, Simone Weil, and so many others challenged these assumptions in the twentieth century. In light of this historical summary, the question I want to pose is: how do we recover Christian humanism in the Post-modern age?
One suggestion I would offer is that we who have a mind for the work, not only work for the recovery of classical education, but that we also seek to reclaim our leisure time by spending time reading the right books and learning to write again.
When Lewis began doing public debates and radio chats, his first efforts to reach the public failed, and ridicule was heaped on him. However, he learned some important lessons about communicating through asking and answering questions, and story telling that communicates big ideas in simple terms. We have much to learn from his engaging people in dialogue and debate. As a former debater and teacher, I always notice new strategies and nuances he utilized, when I read about the broadcasts, debates and the letters he wrote. So many lives were changed through his writing letters to individuals, years of dialogue left for us to learn from. Grasping the big ideas is one part, communicating them effectively is the another. Teaching our children/culture the art of dialogue, critical thinking and debate skills is urgent. Socratic methods of teaching in classrooms might be a good start.