The American university has embraced a thorough secularism that makes it increasingly marginal in a society that is characterized by high levels of religious belief. The very secularization that was supposed to be a liberating influence has resulted in the university's failure to provide leadership in political, cultural, social, and even scientific arenas.
In The Decline of the Secular University, C. John Sommerville explores several different ways in which the secular university fails in its mission through its trivialization of religion. He notes how little attention is being given to defining the human, so crucial in all aspects of professional education. He alerts us to problems associated with the prevailing secular distinction between "facts" and "values." He reviews how the elimination of religion hampers the university from understanding our post-Cold War world. Sommerville then shows how a greater awareness of the intellectual resources of religion might stimulate more forthright attention to important matters like our loss of a sense of history, how to problematize secularism, the issue of judging religions, the oddity of academic moralizing, and the strangeness of science at the frontiers.
Finally, he invites the reader to imagine a university where religion is not ruled out but rather welcomed as a legitimate voice among others. Sommerville's bracing and provocative arguments are sure to provoke controversy and stimulate discussion both inside and outside the academy.
Industry Reviews
"This intelligent work is essential reading for all who share concern about the quality of higher education and teh secular eroding of its intended purposes."--Journal of Dispensational Theology
"Everyone who cares about the quality of higher education should read this book. It presents the best case I have seen for why the dogged secularism of many universities is undermining the announced purposes of higher education. Secularists may dismiss Sommerville's most telling observations, but they will find them difficult to counter."--George Marsden, author of The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established
Nonbelief and Jonathan Edwards: A Life
"Sommerville's arguments will threaten and infuriate many, but his challenge deserves to be engaged. Many secular, particularly state, universities suffer from a hollowness or duplicity at their core, which ultimately undercuts their intellectual mission. Many within who embrace thicker worldviews simply work around that hollowness and duplicity. Sommerville here takes it all head-on, with a case portending deep transformations of higher education in decades
ahead."--Christian Smith, author of Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture
"John Sommerville's intelligent assessment of the contemporary American research university is part jeremiad, part careful history, part insightful current events, part trenchant criticism, part hopeful dreaming. Particularly in his brief against the mindless drift of secularism and for a thoughtful correction by religious conviction, Sommerville offers sage wisdom that all who value the life of the mind should take seriously indeed."--Mark Noll, author of
America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln
"Universities should really matter. John Sommerville explains why they matter less and less - and how they could again matter by taking up the questions that really matter. "--(The Rev.) Richard John Neuhaus, editor in chief of First Things
"John Sommerville has written a valuable book that calls universities to task for their narrowness in addressing the big questions of what it means to be human, how to understand history, and what to think about difficult moral issues. He suggests as one possibility that academics reconsider the role of religion. This will strike many as a novel idea. They are the ones who especially need to read this book."--Robert Wuthnow, author of American Mythos:
Why Our Best Efforts to Be a Better Nation Fall Short
"Brief, hard-hitting, and often brilliant, this treatise builds the controversial argument that secular universities in America have neglected religion at their peril."--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"Recommended for anyone interested in the relationship between religion and higher education." --Journal of Education and Christian Belief
"The study is an important contribution toward redefining the idea of a university or at least recalling what a university could--and should--be."--"Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies
