The Essence of a Christian Education

Embracing the enduring question of humanity.

By Joshua Carpenter ’24

Questions. Some people ask more than others, but everyone, at some point in their life, has asked themself what the meaning of life is, and if to die is to die at all. What if there is an afterlife? Is there a God and does He love me? These questions are profoundly human, and since the dawn of creation, humanity has been wrestling with itself to arrive at the truth.

“Perhaps the most important thing Christians can learn from studying the humanities is a humility sadly needed in our loud, proud, arrogant culture,” says Professor Emerita of English, Dr. Linda Mills-Woolsey ’74.

When Mills-Woolsey entered Houghton as a student in the fall of 1970, the college had a set of core requirements focused on humanities, arts, and sciences that included two semesters of history, or “Western Civilization,” two semesters of writing, a two-semester survey of English and American literature, Old Testament Survey, New Testament Survey, and a course in ethics along with requirements in math, science, and social studies.

“It was basically a Christian version of the core curriculum pioneered by Harvard and other Ivy League Universities,” says Mills-Woolsey.

The origins of Houghton’s humanities program date back to the earliest days of Houghton Seminary but developed into prominence in the early 20th century. It emerged as part of the university’s broader commitment to a liberal arts education that fostered a well-rounded understanding of the world and effectively prepared the Seminary for college accreditation in the 1920s. The program was initially conceived as a means of providing students with a strong grounding in the essential areas of literature, philosophy, history, and the arts.

In 2017, Houghton switched to a new general education sequence, which was strongly influenced by the success of the London Honors Program.

“We [the faculty] all thought the [London Honors Program] was pretty good and did good things for students,” says Dr. Peter Meilaender, Houghton’s Dean of Religion, Humanities, and Global Studies and Professor of Political Science. “So, when the occasion came up to revise the [general education] curriculum, we deliberately decided to build something that was patterned after the London model and offer a version of it to students on the main campus.”

The current humanities core program is a three-course sequence combining the areas of literature, philosophy, history, the arts, and presenting them in chronological order throughout three eras of history. HUM (humanities) 101: Enduring Questions: Ancient & Medieval World, the first course, focuses on the period from ancient Greece up to about 1450 before the Renaissance Reformation; HUM 102: Enduring Questions: Early Modern World, explores roughly 1450 to 1800, the Renaissance Reformation up to the French Revolution; and then HUM 201: Enduring Questions: The Modern World, focuses on the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Faculty from history, philosophy, and English take turns teaching different sections of the sequence. Syllabi are developed collaboratively across course sections and the overall sequence.

Each course in the humanities sequence is accountable for three credit hours and is one part of the general education program. Other general education requirements include three Biblical and Theology courses (ex: BIBL 101: Biblical Literature), one Abstract and Quantitative Reasoning course (ex: STEM 140: Reason & Abstraction), two Natural Science courses (ex: STEM 141: Science as a Human Endeavor), two Writing courses (ex: WRIT 101: Writing in the Liberal Arts), a Transitions course (ex: INTS 102: Transitions: Succeeding at Houghton University, an Art and Music course (ex: ART 115: Foundations of Digital Communication), a Wellness course (ex: SRWM 105: Wellness for Life), two courses in Global Competence (ex: HEBR 101: Beginning Hebrew Level 1), and two courses in Social Sciences (ex: POLS 205: In Search of Justice). At least 124 credit hours are required for students to graduate, and general education requirements account for approximately one-third of those credit hours.

“The Humanities,” says President Emerita Shirley Mullen ’76, “particularly when they are done in a Christian context, remind us of the shared humanness that grounds our experience as children of God, and ultimately, are going to bring us all together at the throne in heaven.”

“These enduring questions [such as why bad things happen to babies] are ones that we wrestle with regardless of our faith,” says Professor of Psychology, Dr. Paul Young ’76, “and I’ve particularly benefited from seeing similarities in the ways that people of faith and people without faith try to wrestle with the same questions as well as the differences.”

One of the differences that stands out to Young is that people of faith who address these questions tend to see the limits in how human beings can answer them. This realization then inspires a dependence on trusting a sovereign God to work things out or trusting a loving God to ensure that even if someone may answer incorrectly, that God’s love is not contingent on them being a good student.

Houghton University is committed to helping students learn to ask the right questions, ones that not only unite us as men and women of humanity, but also as brothers and sisters in our Holy Father. In each humanities classroom lies endless opportunities for students to challenge themselves in the search for truth, shaping not only their intellectual, moral, and ethical development but the very way we come to understand the Creator as He presents himself in life’s enduring questions.