Pietism and the Integration of Faith and Learning

Here's another excerpt. This comes from a paper I'm writing on how Pietist virtues can benefit our academic communities. I'm calling it, "Between Kuyper and Comenius: Can Pietist Virtues be Scholarly Virtues?"

Implicit in many of the essays in Confessing History is a critique of one of the most dominant conversations that exists among many CCCU schools. This conversation revolves around the Kuyperian model, which has been simplified into a program for the “integration of faith and learning” along with a strong emphasis on competing World Views. Done well, this Reformed approach has great potential for sophisticated avenues of scholarship, and has undergirded the academic prowess of places such as Calvin College.

However, the worldview approach has been appropriated by those, at a more popular level, who would imbue it with a political agenda (e.g. James Dobson). Others use the worldview model as a means of promoting narrow versions of Christian faith under an umbrella of “biblical integration.” In this context, employing a Christian worldview becomes an exercise in triumphalism, rather than a truly integrated approach. I’m not suggesting that the language of integration or worldview should be abandoned simply because some of our colleagues or those in the Christian Right practice it poorly. Nor am I suggesting that a Pietist approach should replace the Reformed methodology altogether. But I am suggesting that pietist virtues can offer something of an antidote to the triumphalist tendency that is inherent in the Reformed model, at least as it is practiced by some we might call “soft” Reconstructionists...