Abstract

This introductory begins by discussing the proposal that mainstream American higher education should be more open to explicit discussion of the relationship between religious faith to learning. It argues that scholars who have religious faith should be reflecting on the intellectual implications of that faith and bringing those reflections into the mainstream of intellectual life. The chapter then sets out the purpose of the book, which is to provide some positive guidelines for what the author has in mind when he urges that Christian perspectives and the perspectives of other religious groups be accepted as legitimate in the mainstream academy. It seeks to explain how, without resort to dogmatism or heavy-handed moralizing, Christian faith can be of great relevance to contemporary scholarship of the highest standards. A subtheme is that such scholarship is an alternative not only to the hollow secularism that dominates mainstream academia but also to the simplistic “fundamentalisms” that present themselves as the only alternatives.