Christian Higher Education: Partnering the Chapel and Laboratory

In 2011 Pepperdine University hosted a conference in which Francis S. Collins offered the keynote address. His credentials are extraordinary: Collins is an accomplished research scientist, physician, director of the Human Genome Project, and subsequently director of the National Institutes of Health for three consecutive United States presidents. A devout Christian believer, he authored The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.¹ In this bestselling book, he references the genetic code as God’s language, and offers scientifically informed observations that led him to Christian belief.

The Pepperdine conference was hosted in the summer when our campus was busy with research students working full-­time with faculty on projects across diverse disciplines. I asked Collins if he might be able to spend some time with the research students in a hastily organized breakfast session the day after his keynote. He agreed to meet for one hour, noting the possibility of being interrupted by calls from Washington regarding budget concerns at the National Institutes of Health. We reserved a dining room, invited our research students, and likewise notified faculty of the special breakfast. I offered one rule, the students would sit at the conference table with Collins and engage in conversation, the faculty would sit at the side of the room and were asked to allow the students to take the lead in this discussion.

The conversation with Collins explored topics of a science-­informed Christian faith, shared interests in research and discovery, and the ups and downs of Collins’s roles in leadership of the Human Genome Project and the National Institutes of Health. One hour stretched into two as the students described their own professional and spiritual journeys and sought advice. Here was one of the most accomplished scientists in the world, fully attentive to the earnest questions of young adults wrestling with professional direction, insecurity, and important questions of faith. As I consider an aspirational vision for the Christian scholar, those two hours paint a defining image.

My Personal Journey

As we explore the vocation of the Christian scholar, I wish to introduce my own personal story as a scientific researcher, college professor, and administrator. My childhood was shaped by church, Vacation Bible School, summer church camp, and by my love for science. Childhood requests for Christmas or birthday gifts were the usual fare, but included a chemistry set, a telescope, model rockets, and a snake cage crafted by my father. Scientists were heroes, and to be one seemed too exciting to imagine.

Even as a child, the big questions of beginnings, endings, and infinites confounded me; the nature of time, a ‘something from nothing’ origin of the universe, the infinite space of the universe in which the heavenly bodies swirl, the beginning of life on earth, and the purpose of my own life. These questions were intertwined with my firm belief that God was the author of all creation. I found confidence in Romans 1:20 (NIV), “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” My personal journey has been one of continued curiosity and wonder with the natural world, and particulary with the amazing complexity of a single living cell.

I received my undergraduate training at Christian colleges and then pursued graduate and postdoctoral training in biochemistry and cell biology at research-­based institutions. This comprised nine years of graduate training within the research community, during which I captured an appreciation for intelligent scientists, whose curiosity and devotion brought hard-­earned discoveries.

The narrative that scientists are predominantly atheistic and dismissive of religious belief was examined by sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund in her book, Religion vs Science: What Scientists Really Think.² In a survey of 1,700 scientists, she found approximately one in three scientists express belief in God, lower than the general population, but surprisingly high relative to the caricature of scientists. I have found the scientific community to be diverse in religious perspectives, and attentive to points of conflict, but rarely outright dismissive of theism.

As a graduate student, those interactions were particularly helpful and encouraging. It is true that most scientists leave any discussion of ultimate purpose or authorship well outside the scope of a valid research question. However, these are important topics both in churches and in academic environments, reaching into the works of influential intellectuals, and attentive to the advancement of scientific discovery.

Purposeful Foundations

Defining the aspirational good brought by the Christian academic vocation is a central consideration of every faculty member at faith-­based institutions. Do alumni of such institutions carry forth distinctive traits that serve both their professional and spiritual lives? What structures and practices define an influential university that effectively supports spiritual maturation? Christian colleges and universities seek to serve students beyond the utilitarian dissemination of knowledge and the certification of the professional; they intentionally integrate an exploration of purpose and meaning into the curriculum.

Students selecting a university home choose a life-­altering path, and their decision is too often influenced by institutional characteristics providing no durable impact upon their personal or spiritual development. In a time of disruption and change in higher education, Christian scholars and universities face pressure to adopt secular approaches to the education of an undergraduate student, with professional training elevated over the spiritual. Refining and clearly communicating the comparative distinctions in institutional purpose between faith-­based and secular universities provides clarity for potential students and for faculty scholars seeking an academic home.

The conviction that scholarly truth is an enhancement of theological understanding has deep roots in higher education. The third English colony in North America was the Massachusetts Bay colony, established in 1630 just after Jamestown and Plymouth. Harvard College was founded in Massachusetts Bay in 1636 with the gift of funding and books from local Puritan pastor, John Harvard. The Puritan college leaders envisioned a school purposed to train Christian ministers, ensuring local churches were not placed in the hands of an “illiterate ministry.” Harvard College was founded on a humble acre of land with a farmhouse on the edge of Cow-­yard Row, now famously named College Yard on the expansive modern campus of Harvard University.

The oldest colleges in the United States share similar Protestant foundations, including William and Mary College (1693), King William’s College/St. Johns (1696), Yale College (1701), and College of New Jersey/Princeton (1746). As these institutions broadened the scholarly expertise of their gathered faculty, their vision for service to community also broadened beyond theology and training of ministers into an array of disciplines that included the increasingly influential study of scientific disciplines or natural theology.

A common critique of top-ranked modern universities is that secular priorities have replaced any faith-­based contextualization of disciplinary study. Despite this concern, the National Center for Education reports that 22% of the 3,893 degree granting colleges and universities in the United States have a Christian affiliation. The continued prevalence of faith-­based institutions is indeed encouraging, and highlights the importance of understanding the vocation of Christian scholars.

Emerson’s American Scholar

The Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society of Harvard University gathered during graduation week in 1837 to hear the American philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson offer a lecture entitled “The American Scholar.” The speech was delivered in the First Parish Meetinghouse to an audience of over 200, which included a United States Supreme Court justice and the Massachusetts governor. The gathered were acutely aware of the historic leadership of European institutions of higher learning and shared the aspirations of Emerson to elevate American scholarly contributions.

The lecture brought forward both a critique of delayed American intellectual life and raised a high standard of expectation for independent scholarly pursuit. Though expressed viewpoints were grounded in his particular transcendentalist convictions, this short speech proved profoundly influential. Emerson began his lecture, “Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close.” His vision of the scholar was grounded in the exploration and study of nature, history, experience, action in the world, and with the application of scholarly contributions to benefit society.

Historian Kenneth Sachs references Emerson’s view of the scholar as actively pursuing new knowledge: “Founded in support of confessional faith, colleges played the role of churches when they used formal ritual to confirm community values. Emerson held Harvard, the nation’s oldest and richest college, not to the standard of confirming values, but to that of investigating them.”³ The American Scholar lecture is noted as the beginning of Emerson’s advocacy for the secularization of American higher education, a call for a less religiously oriented curriculum.

Noting Emerson’s aspirations for the American Scholar as a backdrop for an examination of the Christian scholar in this series of essays, I find the exploration of scholarship within the scientific disciplines to be of particular interest. As such, I will briefly explore the progress of biomedical research leading to the establishment of Johns Hopkins University in 1876, a first example of the secular research university whose success in scientific research provided a model for subsequent universities, and has been influential even in Christian higher education.

Biomedical Research: from Hippocrates to Semmelweiss

The first American medical school was established in 1765 at the College of Philadelphia, founded by two physicians who had trained at the University of Edinburgh. The full medical program consisted of five classes, service as an attendant in a local hospital, an apprenticeship with a reputable practitioner, and a rudimentary examination.⁴ Treatment of patients was guided by historical regional practices with no empirical testing of the efficacy of therapies. Bloodletting was gradually being abandoned despite its remarkable prevalence in medicine dating back to the theory of the four humors from the influential writings of Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen 1,600 years prior.⁵ Disease transmission continued to be assigned to miasma contamination, or the bad air produced by decomposing tissue or human waste. There was little awareness of the microscopic world of bacteria and viruses, nor their capacity to cause disease. Early medical schools provided marginal training in the study of the causation of disease, or evaluation of therapies. Historians note the slow development of medicine as an academic discipline, even referencing medicine as the “withered arm of science.”⁶

The delay in medical progress has been attributed to the challenges of probing human biology, the religious taboo of postmortem dissection, and the slow development of hypotheses regarding the function of bodily systems and the diseases that disrupt those systems. Therapies focused upon external application or ingestion of remedies that were regionally favored and were often rationalized to re-­balance the humors of the body through expelling fluids, including pus and blood.

The first known controlled medical trial was performed in 1747 by James Lind in Edinburgh, revealing the effectiveness of citrus fruit to treat the ancient disease of scurvy.⁷ Understanding the underlying curative effect on cellular biochemistry was not determined for another 200 years, with the isolation and characterization of ascorbate/Vitamin C.⁸

The nineteenth century brought sweeping discoveries and influential change in the life sciences and medical research emerging from Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. Revelation flowed from the analytical approaches of John Snow in the study of disease transmission, Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch in testing the germ theory of disease, and Gregor Mendel as his analysis of plant traits revealed the foundations of genetic inheritance. In 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, proposing a process of genetic change through natural selection—a significant challenge to biblical exegesis.

One remarkable story is that of physician Ignaz Semmelweiss of Vienna. He noted the high rates of childbed fever in a teaching hospital. It was common for medical students to transition quickly from their dissection of cadavers in the morgue to working with patients, including treating mothers in labor. Incredibly, there was no awareness of the risk of cross-­contaminating harmful bacteria from the decomposing dead to the vulnerable bodies of the living during delivery of a child. Semmelweiss hypothesized some kind of contamination beyond miasma; in 1847, he developed a handwashing protocol for medical students and physicians.

He then developed a study to track the rates of childbed fever in patients managed by teams with cleansed hands, and those without. In modern vocabulary, his research design would be defined as a “cluster-­randomized controlled trial with random allocation.”⁹

The results showed a 90% reduction in childbed fever cases in patients managed by personnel who had used the Semmelweiss hand washing protocol. He published and publicized his results. The response by the medical community was offense, rejection, and even ridicule of his research conclusion, and no change in policy was brought to hospitals.

Childbed fever continued to kill new mothers at high rates. The standing of Semmelweiss in the medical community deteriorated, as did his mental health, and he ultimately died in an asylum. His story was sufficiently notable that it reached the ears of proponents of the germ theory of disease. These first steps at applying a clearly reasoned method of intellectual inquiry into medical therapies began to accelerate the advancement of human understanding of disease.

Across the Atlantic, the American Civil War (1861–65) shaped the century with deep political division, mistrust of leaders, cultural change, and economic upheaval. Referred to as the Middle Ages of American medicine, the war exposed the limitations of the trained medical community. The combination of traumatic injury by heavy lead bullets, microbe-­laden soil, and poor sanitary surgical conditions partnered to produce lethal gangrenous infections for many soldiers.

For example, approximately 75% of battlefield surgeries were amputations, with each brutal procedure taking between 2–10 minutes, and were performed with little regard for sterile technique to limit microbial contamination of the exposed muscle, bone, and vasculature.¹⁰ Subsequent infections were common, and approximately 50% of such cases were ultimately fatal. Despite the poor prognosis for battlefield injury, two thirds of military deaths were due to communicable disease moving through armies on both sides of the conflict.¹¹ More than 660,000 deaths are attributed to this war, 2% of the American population. Sharp public criticism of the war included a frustration with poorly educated and ineffective physicians, and an inability to slow the deadly influence of contagion. The public was ready for a new kind of American university, with a clear focus upon biomedical research and the application of discovery.

Johns Hopkins and T. H. Huxley

Johns Hopkins University was founded in 1876 under a German educational model of integrated teaching and research and a diminished attention to theology and philosophy. Named after a benefactor who provided $7 million as part of an estate gift, the university added disciplinary programs over the years, including a medical school in 1893, followed by the first American School of Public Health. At its founding, Johns Hopkins was envisioned to be a university with a clear purpose for contributing scientific discovery to serve both an understanding of the natural world and advancement of medical practices.

Historian John Barry reviewed the beginnings of Johns Hopkins in his bestselling The Great Influenza. He notes conflict in America in 1876 across multiple fronts including the influence and character of higher education. He writes “The war involving the Hopkins . . . would help define one element of the character of the nation: the extent to which the nation would accept or reject modern science and, to a lesser degree, how secular it would become, how godly it would remain.”¹² The inauguration came during a time in American higher education when the prestigious endowed chairs of theology exceeded chairs in medicine 40-­fold.

Preceding this event by a decade was the founding of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Early in his tenure as president of Cornell, Andrew Dickson White gave a lecture entitled “The Battlefields of Science,” defining what he perceived as an ongoing struggle between religious instruction and scientific inquiry.¹³

At the Hopkins inauguration, President Daniel Coit Gilman introduced British scientist Thomas Henry Huxley as the keynote speaker. Choosing Huxley to deliver an inaugural address made a clear statement about the purpose and vision of the university. Huxley was an accomplished naturalist, microscopist, college professor, critic of religious influence, and advocate for scientific progress. He urged the scientific community to approach the world with an open mind and with sleeves rolled up to engage the hard work of experimentation and analysis; to test the natural world and tease out its mysteries. His prior writings and public statements expressed frustration with ineffective approaches to exploration of nature, or for scholars who inappropriately submit to unsupported notions.

A close family friend of Charles Darwin, Huxley was known as an intense public supporter of his friend’s controversial writings on evolution and was referenced as “Darwin’s bulldog.” In 1860, Huxley famously debated evolution by natural selection with the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce. Huxley coined the term “agnostic” in reference to his personal religious position, writing extensively on this topic and noting his lack of support for any objective truth that lacks support by evidence. He celebrated the benefit of open intellectual inquiry and the pursuit of truth through scholarly research rather than political or “ecclesiastical sectarianism.” Huxley’s practice was to exchange letters with influential public figures.

One famous Huxley quote emerges from a letter in 1860, written to Charles Kingsley, an Anglican priest, professor at University of Cambridge, and chaplain to Queen Victoria.

Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.¹⁴

Huxley’s overt critique of the current state of higher education opened his comments at Hopkins; “It is difficult to overestimate the magnitude of the obstacles which are thrown in the way of scientific training by the existing system of school education.” He expressed concern that students pursuing scholarly work in science and medicine should arrive at Johns Hopkins prepared with foundational knowledge, meeting high admission standards. He also encouraged the university to evaluate student progress carefully and to move students without aptitude out of programs. He anticipated an elite and challenging array of scholarly programs at Johns Hopkins, serving the needs of society. Finally, he celebrated that scientific research would be an integral part of the university structure; “I rejoice to observe that the encouragement of research occupies such a prominent place in your official documents.” John Barry notes that nowhere in Huxley’s speech at Johns Hopkins was the word “God” mentioned.

As the influenza pandemic (H1N1) began its devastating journey through the United States and the world in 1918, rapid progress was being made in the life sciences. Researchers at Johns Hopkins and other American universities were now making landmark discoveries in microbiology, genetics, biochemistry, and epidemiology and had captured the attention of scholars internationally. These research universities served as a new model for scholarly productivity and influence, but with a diminished influence of liberal learning and faith-­based considerations in undergraduate education.

The Big Questions

As a new college professor at Pepperdine University, I was invited to serve on a university panel, publicly discussing biotechnology and faith-­based bioethics. My training in genetics involved powerful new techniques in the genetic engineering of mouse embryos to evaluate the influence of specific genetic changes upon mammalian biology. A corollary of this kind of work extended to a type of animal cloning. Researchers had identified a method to remove the full nuclear genome of a one-­celled embryo and replace the genome with one extracted from a cell of an adult organism (somatic-­cell nuclear transfer). With this method, an adult organism could be “cloned” with the generation of a newborn carrying the precise nuclear genome of the adult. The first successful example of this technique was produced in Finn Dorsett sheep, generating a world-­famous cloned lamb named Dolly.¹⁵ Of course, the potential for human cloning was immediately recognized, and ethical debates followed.

This informal panel discussion included Pepperdine colleagues with an audience of mostly students and faculty. A theologian on the panel began introductory remarks, stating that “science has no ability to answer any of the truly important questions being asked by humankind.” Those comments referenced the big “why” questions of existence and moral truth contrasted with the utilitarian “how” questions familiar to scientists. This was a clear response to rising scientism in our culture, which embraces scientific discovery as the primary path to truth and societal progress. I was a bit surprised by those comments but understood the limitations of science in exploring some fundamental questions.

I remarked that all discovery in the sciences is a form of witness. As one example, I highlighted the discovery that the instructions for life are encoded upon the physical structure of long chains of nucleotides in our cells. The ATGC abstraction provides some access for non-­scientists, but this discovery revealed the instructions for all known life as written in a universally coded language upon chemical structures—a truly astounding discovery that cries out for an explanation of authorship/origin. Science moves our understanding of the world forward in exciting ways, and the scholar plays a critical role in interpretation.

Scientific advancement has brought revolutionary change to human health and quality of life. Yet within this rapid advancement are also embedded important ethical and societal issues that require a partnership between the scientific community and communities attentive to policy, theology, and ethics. A classic example is eugenics where increasing awareness of heredity created a movement to protect and advance the human genome. Over time, this movement shifted into social policy, reproductive rights, forced sterilization of those deemed unfit, and the relative worth of human lives. In Germany of the Second World War, eugenical arguments were used to justify discrimination, imprisonment, and ultimately genocide.

In modern times, the capacity to edit the genome of an adult human being has become an exciting possibility. This opens a door toward curing some forms of genetic disease, though releasing a DNA editing enzyme into the human body has significant risk for creating harmful mutations. The medical community navigates new technology with thoughtful attention to minimizing risk for patients. The importance of partnering scientific and bioethical training has become increasingly clear, and the foundations of bioethics are both theological and philosophical.

To What We Aspire: Christian Higher Education

The aspirations of Christian scholars and their universities are captured in the words of Christ as he defines the first and second greatest commandments. To develop a learning community that loves the Lord with all of its heart, soul, and mind; and to love one’s neighbor as much as one’s self.¹⁶ This distills what we aspire to accomplish as a missional university and requires continual institutional reflection, attention to the voices of community members, evaluation of programs and policies for effectiveness, and clear communication of this identity to prospective students.

The faithful university remains highly committed to the life of the mind and the spiritual quest. Reference to the “mind” resonates with Paul’s message in Romans 12:2, where we are instructed to avoid conforming to the world, and rather to be “transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Universities write mission statements and strategic plans to cast a clear vision, share it publicly, and to hold themselves accountable to service to that vision. I encourage students looking for a university to read such documents closely, to consider the structures that serve their vision, and to ask direct questions about what opportunities are provided for students to connect with this vision.

Institutions, even those with a historic foundation in faith, can fall into a rather generic and poorly defined identity with limited exploration of the larger questions of meaning and purpose. Spiritual mission can become limited to chapel programming, a few required courses in the curriculum, and peripheral opportunities to engage the campus spiritual life. Christian mission should be highly influential in institutional decisions and strategy, purposefully integrated into the curriculum and co-­curriculum, and should be foundational to all aspects of university life. It should be at the center of campus life and not pushed to the corners.

Faith-­based universities have moved to integrate mission into faculty development programs. The practices that provide an effective integration of faith in the classroom are explored in exceptional books and several research journals focused specifically upon this topic.¹⁷ Campus life includes robust opportunities for student fellowship, attention to biblical study, opportunities to serve, and regular gatherings of the campus community for communal worship.

The undergraduate years should be more than the transaction of readying a student for a particular professional opportunity. A Christian university must be about the care and development of the whole person, “cura personalis.” This integrates spiritual life, a broad and integrated academic education, physical/mental health, and a philosophy of life that will support the student through the storms of life.¹⁸

At our institutional founding, George Pepperdine expressed a desire to provide traditional academic training, but noted this goal was insufficient to justify the founding of another university in Los Angeles. His additional directive was for the university to support the development of a “foundation of Christian character and faith which will survive the storms of life,” and this directive continues to be highly influential in the strategic planning of our academic environment.

The Vocation of the Christian Scholar

As Pepperdine’s provost, I engage across the full landscape of institutional form and function. Our schools seek to train students in an academic environment that enables the maturation of the young scholar, with expertise in a particular area of study, but with a broad educational foundation of disciplinary considerations and Christian mission. As I consider deliberations and decisions that define the effectiveness of our university, there is nothing more essential to our mission than to attract and retain excellent faculty scholars. In the complex array of institutional voices that speak into the lives of our students, that mentor their spiritual life, and that guide them through challenges, faculty are by far the most powerful. Faculty will carry that mission into the classroom, where students are intellectually alert and engaged.

In our hiring, we pursue exceptional national scholars and teachers who are drawn to investing in students and walking beside them in a Christ-­tuned educational environment. These are uncommon individuals, and we sometimes refer to them as ‘unicorns,’ exceptionally difficult to find. We enthusiastically celebrate their arrival and are attentive to supporting their progress towards finding balance in their teaching and scholarly work.

In 2023, The Chronicle of Higher Education offered a sobering article noting indicators of universities devaluing teaching, with stronger faculty scholars teaching less, and measures of teaching effectiveness being less influential in tenure decisions. Historically national collegiate rankings have paid little attention to teaching effectiveness.¹⁹ This runs against the priorities of the public, more than 80% of whom express that the best universities will provide “professors who are excellent teachers.”²⁰

A new faculty colleague once described living a dichotomous life as a research scholar who carries a strong faith, but with joining a Christian university, anticipated a better “marriage of my faith with my science.” NASA astrophysicist and accomplished scholar, Jennifer Wiseman, offers the following from her own story;

. . . you don’t study about God in church and Bible study one day and then think only about your science on a different day. These are not necessarily separate activities. God is just as interested in my understanding of Scripture as he is in my ability to understand the science that I’m doing, and to relate these discoveries to other people is an act of service.²¹

The Christian scholar is a true scholar, engaged within the full research community and invested in the life of the mind. These scholars require the freedom to pursue research questions in their discipline without limitation, recognizing that such work will bring forward challenging conversations. To use our intellect fully, to move our understanding of self and the world forward, and to apply that understanding to serve is the work of the scholar. This is difficult work, and at times controversial and disruptive. Even the universalism toward which Emerson was gravitating prompted him to contend, “God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please—you can never have both.”²² Universities develop important stances on the provision of academic freedom for faculty, and these are critical policy decisions that sustain a healthy academic environment.

Christian scholars are mentors, giving their time and energy to the next generation of young scholars. Research has shown “high-­impact practices” in educational environments as influential in student success, especially populations that are at high risk for abandoning college. For scientists, the research laboratory is a sacred space of difficult but rewarding work.

With that end in mind, Pepperdine initiated a Students as Scholars (SAS) first-­year seminar program in 2015, during which new students could enroll in one of several research-­focused seminar classes. Changing majors can happen for many reasons, but unfortunately in STEM majors this can result from students becoming disillusioned in large introductory classes and struggling to connect with the difficult content. As a result, these classes were built around a vocational theme and with integrated components of faith, purpose, and building a skillset consistent with collegiate success. The inclusion of research was experimental, assessing whether first semester biology majors were more likely to be retained in scientific disciplines with effortful engagement in research.

In each class, students were divided up into research groups and the professor integrated the basics of their research expertise into the lecture content of the class. Students then began the process of project design, data collection/analysis, and by the end of the semester they prepared a poster summary of their experimental results. We hosted a poster session and celebration event for the community, inviting administrators, faculty colleagues, and other undergraduate students. Faculty mentors expressed an excitement in the work and tangible benefit they witnessed in student engagement and behavior. Students were doing hard things together, and they were learning about the challenge of gathering trustworthy data.

As we progressed through successive iterations of this annual program, we assessed student retention in sciences (Figure 1). We compared retention in STEM disciplines in two groups of students each year, new biology majors who participated in our SAS program compared with non-­SAS biology students. Attrition from the biology major to non-­STEM majors during the first year is typically 30% or higher. During years where we were able to compare SAS to non-­SAS student populations, we noted that SAS participants were approximately 50% less likely to change to a non-­STEM major. This was truly shocking data, showing such a strong benefit for students who were welcomed into the research community through the challenge of research exploration, and with the partnership of a devoted faculty mentor. This displayed the tangible benefit of student opportunities to engage in their very first semester of college, and the importance of seasoned faculty scholars in that work.²³

Christian scholars are ambassadors for their disciplines, both in academics and in the public eye. The communication of discovery is practiced most easily with communities of experts, but it is also essential in the public arena. There are remarkable communicators within the scientific community whose voices resonate with the public in celebrating exciting new discoveries. These voices are needed within communities of faith, celebrating the majesty of creation as witness of God’s power. English philosopher Francis Bacon is considered a central voice in the establishment of an empirical approach to the study of nature, the scientific method. He stated that God had written two books, one being scripture and the other creation.²⁴ The natural world has proven to offer compelling beauty and majesty across broad fields of consideration. A close colleague in physics teaches an astronomy course at Pepperdine, with field trips that include stargazing on a Malibu mountainside. To look upon the stars, whose light takes thousands (or many more) years to reach earth is humbling. You are looking back into time. I once asked my colleague about stargazing with students and the questions that arise. He noted it was rare for the conversation not to reach into belief, humility, and awe. I am thankful for a colleague who is attentive to the importance of those conversations.

To conclude this essay, I return to the example of Francis Collins, who has recently published a new book entitled, The Road to Wisdom.²⁵ In this book he explores the challenging dynamics of our culture, focusing upon four topics; truth, science, faith, and trust. His compassionate appeal is for a reasonable and scientifically-­informed approach to our culture and community, honoring God with our behavior toward the other, and a rejection of divisive ideology. Collins is an ambassador from the highest ranks of the scientific community, who has chosen to use his platform to serve the public well, and to bring an improved conversation about the natural world to communities of faith. He is a defining example of the Christian scholar. The Christian scholar sees the world through a lens of faith, embracing the belief that there is purpose and meaning in this life, and who believes discovery brings us closer to the author of that purpose.

1. Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free Press, 2006).
2. Elaine Howard Ecklund and Christopher P. Scheitle, Religion vs. Science: What Religious People Really Think (Oxford University Press, 2018).
3. Kenneth S. Sacks, Understanding Emerson: “The American Scholar” and His Struggle for Self-­Reliance (Princeton University Press, 2003), 3.
4. Elizabeth Fee, “The First American Medical School: The Formative Years,” The Lancet 385, no. 9981 (2015): 1940–41.
5. Vivian Nutton, “The fatal embrace: Galen and the history of ancient medicine,” Science in Context 18, no. 1 (2005): 111–121.
6. Richard H. Shyrock, “Trends in American medical research during the nineteenth century,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 91, no. 1 (1947): 58–63.
7. Arun Bhatt, “Evolution of clinical research: a history before and beyond James Lind,” Perspectives in Clinical Research 1, no. 1 (2010): 6–10.
8. J. L. Svirbely and Albert Szent-­Györgyi, “The chemical nature of vitamin C,” Biochemical Journal 27, no. 1 (1933): 279–85.
9. Didier Pittet and Benedetta Allegranzi, “Preventing sepsis in healthcare – 200 years after the birth of Ignaz Semmelweis,” Euro Surveillance 23, no. 18 (2018): 18–22.
10. Robert F. Reilly, “Medical and surgical care during the American Civil War, 1861–1865,” Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, 29 no. 2 (2016): 138–42.
11. Máire A. Connolly and David L. Heymann, “Deadly comrades: war and infectious diseases,” supplement, Lancet 360 no. 1 (2002): s23-­s24, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-­6736(02)11807-­1/fulltext.
12. John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History (Viking, 2004).
13. eorge M. Marsden, The Soul of the American University Revisited: From Protestant to Postsecular, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2021), 101–102.
14. K. H. S. Campbell, J. McWhir, W. A. Ritchie, and I. Wilmut, “Sheep Cloned by Nuclear Transfer from a Cultured Cell Line,” Nature 380, no. 6569 (1996): 64–66.
15. K. H. S. Campbell, J. McWhir, W. A. Ritchie, and I. Wilmut, “Sheep Cloned by Nuclear Transfer from a Cultured Cell Line,” Nature 380, no. 6569 (1996): 64–66.
16. “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:36–40 (NIV).
17. David Smith and James K. A. Smith, Teaching and Christian Practices: Reshaping Faith and Learning (Eerdmans, 2011).
18. Steven Mintz, “Can—and should—colleges educate the whole person?,” Inside Higher Education, November 2, 2022, https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-­ed-­gamma/can%E2%80%94and-­should%E2%80%94colleges-­educate-­whole-­person.
19. Beth McMurtrie, “Why the science of teaching is often ignored,” The Chronicle of Higher Education 68, no. 10 (January 21, 2022).
20. Corbin M. Campbell and Jonathan Gyurko, Great College Teaching: Where It Happens and How to Foster It Everywhere (Harvard Education Press, 2023).
21. Ruth Bancewicz, Test of Faith (Wipf & Stock, 2010), 26.
22. Ralph W. Emerson, Intellect (Cosimo,1841).
23. Leah T. Stiemsma, Stephen D. Davis, and Jay L. Brewster, “Analysis of Microbial Water Contamination, Soil Microbial Community Structure, and Soil Respiration in a Collaborative First-­Year Students as Scholars Program (SAS),” Frontiers in Microbiology 11 (2020): 590035.
24. Francis Bacon, Of the proficience and advancement of learning, Divine and Human (J. F. Dove, 1828), 53.
25. Francis S. Collins, The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust (Little, Brown, 2024).