Institutional Survival, The Chocolate War, and The Weight of Glory

All of us who read the Christian Scholars Review want Christian higher education to survive.  Most of us, anyway, are aware of the growing threats to our survival, both as individual colleges and universities; and to our survival as a collective enterprise.

Where is Eastern Nazarene University today, Barrington, or Nyack—to limit ourselves for the moment to former Christian colleges in the northeast?  How do we sustain our own institutions in a national and cultural climate expressing more and more doubt about the worth of higher education in general? In a climate where there are increasing doubts, in particular, about the value of the liberal arts and humanities that traditionally dominated much of Christian higher education? In a climate where families and students with ever-more specific vocational goals may be less apt to find a particular desired program within the typically smaller range of curricular options at most Christian colleges?

On most of our campuses, we have experienced in recent years shrinking budgets and ever greater competition for students and donors. Institutional attention and energy is increasingly—perhaps disproportionately—consumed in marketing, advancement, and public relations.  Families and students, then are not the only parties who may be pursuing narrowly pragmatic goals. Institutionally and individually, we too want to “earn a living” in an increasingly insecure environment. It is not surprising, then, in such an environment that we may feel tempted to see institutional sustainability as an end in itself, to the potential detriment of clear thinking about why we would want to survive in the first place.

Recently re-reading a classic Young Adult novel—The Chocolate War (1974)—I’m  struck by the topicality of this half-century-old text and its potential relevance for Christian higher education more especially. Set in a Catholic high school for boys, the presenting ‘war’ concerns the annual eponymous fundraising campaign.  Tuition can only be raised so high without losing students.  Administrators are willing to resort to whatever means necessary to ensure the success of the sale—and in turn, ensure the survival of the school.

On the surface, the daily activities of Trinity School carry on as scheduled. A superficial inventory of athletic programs, daily mass and catechetical classes, not to mention daily academic instruction, would all suggest that the school is fulfilling its mission.  Underneath, a heightened campaign to save the institution, among other factors, helps to undermine the very values Trinity ostensibly exists to cultivate.

It is a sobering tale for all of us who work in institutions whose stated mission involves something more than mere survival. There are multiple themes in Chocolate War, clearly, not all of which apply directly to institutional sustainability or to Christian higher education. Moreover, one hopes and trusts that in all of Christian higher education there are no administrators or board members—and no students—quite so manipulative, so nakedly ambitious, so willing to make pacts with the devil and wield power so destructively as those who control, or seek to control, Trinity.

Any hypothetically parallel conditions at our own institutions are at best, then, only metaphorically suggestive.  Literally, at least, faculty and staff at Christian institutions are not being asked to sell our minimum fifty boxes of chocolate, or sell anything else, materially, in order to earn tenure. The text raises nonetheless a number of questions germane to all of us involved in Christian education at any level, with particular regard to possible tensions between our efforts to survive and our daily focus on carrying out the purpose for the institution’s existence in the first place.

Three questions may be especially salient.

First of all, to what extent is the dignity and worth of the individual at the lived, daily center of our institutional life? To what extent is such a value actively cultivated, rather than simply assumed? To what extent do members of the community regularly and intentionally name the care of individuals, to themselves and to one another, as a priority?  Whether or not our own “chocolate sales” are successful—whether we as institutions survive in today’s uncertain climate—is the good of the individual the conscious or unconscious measure of our collective success, celebrated with as much fanfare as the size of our endowments or our moving up in national rankings?  Jerry Renault, the protagonist in Chocolate War, is the target of explicit acts of violence and psychological warfare. His experience of profound alienation and de-humanization, however, is as much or more a function of institutional acts of omission and a failure to focus on the welfare and worth of individuals.  To the extent that there are Jerrys among us in Christian higher education—students, staff, and faculty—experiencing similar alienation, to what extent does our institutional ethos protect against or contribute to such a condition?

Secondly, how as individuals do we guard our own souls in the face of hypothetical institutional priorities or practices that may not safeguard our own dignity as individuals, or the dignity of fellow members of the community in which we are invested? How in the midst of a less-than-ideal ethos do we sustain our own integrity and value commitments?  In the face of what he calls the “rottenness” of Trinity, Jerry’s best friend simply chooses to withdraw—initially and most concretely by quitting the football team, but in the end more emotionally and comprehensively. Much as some of our own disillusioned colleagues in Christian higher education seem to say at times, Jerry’s friend Goober concludes, “I’m not giving anything more to Trinity.  Not football, not running, not anything.” Jerry himself, in contrast, seeks to engage and to live as authentically as possible in the midst of a corrupt and corrupting system. Even in his efforts to resist such a de-humanizing system, however, he finds that he himself comes to resemble those he has attempted to resist.  In our own circumstances, far less damaging (we trust) to the soul than Trinity, how do we advance our institution’s interests and demonstrate due loyalty without being shaped by an institutional ethos or specific practices in tension with our own commitments?

Thirdly, to what extent are we as individual members of an educational institution—or any organization—in a position to shape the ethos of the whole?  In this case, shape the ethos with respect to sustaining a culture acknowledging the supreme worth of the individual? In an era where faculty governance at some institutions has been eroded, a professor, in particular, may feel less empowered than in the past to impact the overall campus culture. Jerry Renault’s power seems limited to claiming his own personhood amidst his circumstances. My students who read Chocolate War in class conclude most often that Jerry—and by extension the individual more generally—has appreciably little power to change the system.  Whether the messages of this text or students’ conclusions about the text apply to our own institutions, we do well to ask ourselves about our potential impact on institutional culture as a whole.  Theoretically, readers of this essay may have more cultural leverage than Jerry, not least within our own classrooms.  But to what extent are we in a position to shape—and by what specific means might we shape—the campus culture as individuals ourselves?

None of these questions, of course, have simple answers. An extended response to each would constitute an essay in itself, well beyond the scope of the present meditation. In this case, however, a heightened awareness of the questions themselves may be to some extent its own tonic—to the degree that the questions implicitly call us to greater moral accountability, both as individuals and institutions.  Further, the questions themselves can be the basis, quite directly, of more of our conversation on campus, formally and informally—with fellow faculty and administrators, as well as board members and even students. The first set of questions about the degree to which the “dignity and worth of the individual [is] at the lived, daily center of our institutional life…a value actively cultivated, rather than simply assumed” might explicitly help to frame one or more of our department and committee meetings, our faculty roundtables or even class devotions. (A group reading of this essay as a whole might even be one starting-point for discussion; a more adventurous circle might wish to tackle The Chocolate War itself.) The questions themselves remind all of us to engage daily in more missional reflection, rather than the merely pragmatic or expedient. Connected in this context to a story of an institution overtly shocking in its depravity, the questions remind us not to underestimate the potential long-term moral gravity of our own situated choices; and remind us daily that there are worse evils than ceasing to exist.

In some of his most-quoted words, the unofficial patron saint of Christian higher education in North America reminds us, in effect, that institutional survival can never be our highest priority.  Neither as individuals, nor as Christian institutions.

“Nations, cultures, arts, civilization…[and perhaps Lewis might be willing to include in this context Christian colleges and universities?]…these are mortal.”

And in the same passage, “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to”….[on a Christian campus or otherwise]… “may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption…Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object present to your senses.”

What would it mean, at every Christian college and university, to conduct our daily business as individuals, or our next discussion about institutional survival, in light of these reminders?