Jeffrey Barbeau

The Cultivation of Learning

Jeffrey W. Barbeau, Ph.D.,Professor of Theology

The English poet-philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote convincingly of the “cultivation” of a nation through the work of the academy. He theorized a wide range of educated authorities, from different fields of study, each contributing to the wellbeing of the whole. Coleridge dubbed these figures a national clerisy.

Coleridge’s sweeping description in On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) bears repeating: “The clerisy of the nation . . . in its primary acceptation and original intention comprehended the learned of all denominations;—the sages and professors of law and jurisprudence; of medicine and physiology; of music; of military and civil architecture; of the physical sciences; with the mathematical as the common organ of the preceding; in short, all the so called liberal arts and sciences, the possession and application of which constitute the civilization of a country, as well as the theological.”

Coleridge’s capacious vision of a national clerisy may startle many readers today, but his work had a profound impact on many subsequent thinkers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—not least of all, the Anglican theologian John Henry Newman. Throughout Newman’s The Idea of a University (1852), which is still widely read at Wheaton and other institutions of higher education, we can see the impact of Coleridge’s thoughts about the connective tissue that unites the Christian liberal arts curriculum: “for the universe in its length and breadth is so intimately knit together, that we cannot separate off portion from portion . . . we cannot truly or fully contemplate it without in some main aspects contemplating Him.”

Even if you’ve never read Coleridge or Newman, many readers will remember Arthur Holmes, among the most influential and beloved professors in the history of Wheaton College. Writing in Building the Christian Academy (2001), Holmes recognized the challenges faced by a liberal arts education absent the crucial foundation that Christian faith provides: “Liberal learning without theology lacks the wisdom that comes from an overall vision, a worldview that unifies all branches of learning and elevates them to the contemplation of God.”

Dedication to biblical and theological wisdom is all-too-often set aside in our own day and age. Coleridge’s notion of the clerisy, however, provides a memorable admonition to keep Christian faith at the heart of the liberal arts college: “Theologians took the lead, because the science of theology was the root and the trunk of the knowledges that civilize man, because it gave unity and the circulating sap of life to all other sciences, by virtue of which alone they could be contemplated as forming, collectively, the living tree of knowledge.”

And this, I think, is a key ingredient to fruitful academic discourse at Wheaton College. Rather than a limiting factor that constrains dialogue, Christian faith inculcates opportunities to reflect widely, deeply, and even contentiously at times. Faculty benefit from this freedom (as we often discover in our own deliberations), and students learn to engage critically with their peers as a result.

What must we do? In an age when campuses worldwide are torn asunder by controversy, Christian faith opens vital avenues for charitable dialogue, even amidst real disagreement. Yet such an endeavor requires faith-filled guidance that faculty and administrators dare not neglect.

First, colleges have a responsibility to provide students with opportunities for comprehensive learning. Student flourishing depends on a meaningful education across the curriculum, countering the pervasive temptation to retreat into disciplinary fragmentation or provincial paradigms.

Second, colleges should present opportunities for students to observe others listening well. Disciplinary expertise ought to be complemented with a commitment to hearing, as faculty exemplify learning conducted in a posture of listening.

Finally, colleges must equip students to enter new communities with humility. Unless students move from a place of learning and listening into deeper humility, they will have failed to relate to others in the love that transforms culture.

Nearly two centuries ago, Coleridge warned readers that a nation can never become too cultivated in the love that springs from connected learning, but it can easily become “over-civilized” with temporal attainment. The appearance of educational success marked by power or wealth allures colleges today, but a learning community rooted in faith will flourish in love. In an age of political polarization, we would be wise to know the difference.