The Christian University - An Education Enlightened By Faith

According to Auguste Comte (1798-1857), the founder of the field of sociology, true science precludes religious considerations, and empirical investigation is the only reliable way to truth. In the late 1870s, William Graham Sumner, a Yale University professor in political science, adopted Herbert Spencer's The Study of Sociology as a textbook, despite the book's characterization of Christianity as a superstition that true scientists needed to be rid of. "Mr. Spencer's religious opinions seem to me of very little importance," he wrote. "When I was looking for a book on sociology, the question whether it was a good or available book in a scientific point of view occupied my attention exclusively." Religion, according to Professor Sumner, was at best irrelevant to the subject of sociology.

Religiously affiliated universities such as my own Hardin-Simmons University take the opposite position. They define knowledge and reason in relation to God. Faith informs their views of ethics and law and justice. In business schools, faith can give future businesspeople a calling, a vision of finding better ways to feed the poor and clothe the naked and give drink to the thirsty.

It is a worthy calling. Today most poor Americans are better housed and better fed and own more personal property than the average American throughout much of the twentieth century. Total spending in the lowest-income one-fifth of households is greater than the spending of the average household in the early 1970s, even after adjusting for inflation. The creative energies of businesspeople are in part responsible.

It is the mission of the religious university to instill in its students a sense of calling. It is the mission of the university's business school to give students the technical skills to make fulfill that calling.

Article Source: http://www.content.onlypunjab.com

Michael Monhollon is the dean of the business school at Hardin-Simmons University. His novel based on the adult career of Jesus Christ is being serialized at www.bookserial.com

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