Faith animating learning

Abstract

Near the end of his essay, ''The Meaning of Vocation,'' the theologian A J Conyers (2004) employs the image of the resurrected Lazarus to suggest how the notion of calling-understood as a summons to faithfulness from God-is not something simply chosen, but something that ''happens to us.'' Conyers writes: Lazarus is not merely healed, but raised from the dead. From the isolation of death, he is called by Christ's powerful voice to the community of the living. His grave clothes, in which he is bound, are loosed and he is made free to respond as one living before God and in the power of God. Each of us is so called. Vocation, vocatio, is about being raised from the dead, made alive to the reality that we do not merely exist, but we are ''called forth'' to a divine purpose. (Conyers, 2004: 18) Lazarus is more than healed; he is brought back from the dead. But he also is more than ''no longer dead.'' He is remade, his whole being repurposed to respond to God's calling-free to live out the summons that God has voiced through Christ. When Jesus tells Lazarus to come forth, to be alive again, it is towards something grander and fuller than just living. Lazarus is called to fulfill his God-given vocation, to realize the summons to be as he truly ought to be. Lazarus is quite literally animated by faith. The calling of God summons each of us towards new life. The example of Lazarus, which Conyers so strikingly frames, suggests a different way of describing the task of Christian colleges and universities, especially when the project of Christian learning is envisioned through a vision of vocation. Very often, the task of Christian higher education-which includes the wide scope of teaching, learning, research, mentoring, and student life-is described as the ''integration of faith and learning.'' As Perry Glanzer (2008: 42) observes, the exact origins of the phrase are difficult to trace, though Arthur Holmes and other influential Christian scholars used the term so often and with such great effect that

Thinking theologically about student success: Higher education with a higher calling

“…In short, we worry that administrators responsible for student success at Christian colleges and universities (some of whom were included in the study of Christian student affairs professionals) have yet to allow their faith to fully animate their approach to student success (Davis, 2017;Glanzer et al, 2020;Glanzer and Alleman, 2019). When something is animated, it is brought to life (think of the vision of the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37, Christ's resurrection, or our own necessary experience of being "born again").…”