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Book Review
Higher Education
Lutheran Identity
Vocation

In Search of a Calling: The College's Role in Shaping Identity

K

Karla G. Bohmbach

Susquehanna University

Intersections No. 4 · Winter 1998

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Buford, Thomas O. In Search of a Calling: The College’s Role in Shaping Identity. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1995.

The term “calling” has long been a favorite among Lutheran educators. And though its precise meaning invites debate—indeed, perhaps partly because of that very fact—it continues to be utilized even today in efforts to formulate and refine what it means to be a Lutheran college or university. In such ongoing efforts Thomas O. Buford’s In Search of a Calling: The College’s Role in Shaping Identity would seem to be a promising participant, not least because it makes use of the term “calling” in its title. What, more precisely, does this book offer towards our thinking about tasks, challenges, and promises facing Lutheran colleges and universities as they move into the twenty-first century?

Like others who have also been writing about higher education (e.g., Mark Schwehn, Page Smith, Bruce Wilshire), the author asserts that colleges and universities are in trouble. What sets Buford’s work apart, though, is both his perspective as a philosopher and his assessment that the fundamental cause of this trouble is a crisis of meaning among students.

One of the first tasks Buford sets for himself is determining the causes of this meaning-crisis; his strategy is to examine the historical background in, through, and against which American higher education has developed. Here the concept of “calling” is central, giving shape and focus to the discussion. In the process, Buford also more specifically identifies and explicates what he sees as two aspects of calling. One involves the spiritual, religious, or moral identity of a person (all three terms are variously used). It refers, fundamentally, to that which God has ordained one to do; its roots are in the Hebrew Bible; and it is strongly communitarian. The second has to do with the so-called practical identity of a person. This aspect is much more individualistic; its roots are in the Renaissance; and it centers on the humanists’ assertion that individuals have the right and ability to determine their own lives, to discern their particular gifts, talents, and interests and then choose a life and career based on them.

For Buford, both aspects of calling are necessary in order to achieve full personhood. The crisis facing students is that these two are deemed irreconcilable and so have been largely split asunder by the educational system. Moreover, the practical aspect—under the influence of our technological society—has been given priority, with the concomitant neglect of the moral or theological one. Buford seeks both to reconnect and balance the two sides.

In order to do so, Buford revisits the two historical traditions—the biblical and the Renaissance humanist—that, according to him, have fundamentally shaped the moral/theological and practical aspects of calling. His goal is to find some common ground by which he can reconcile the two traditions—and the two aspects—into some sort of coherent whole. Thus, in looking again at the Renaissance humanist tradition, he “corrects” for its rampant individualism, stressing the social and cultural contexts within which an individual’s choices and decisions are made and shaped. (His position here is actually akin to a type of postmodernism called affirmative (Rosenau), as well as feminist theoretical work focused on the concept of positionality (Alcoff).) In other words, while retaining a degree of individualism in the Renaissance humanist tradition, Buford balances it by also arguing for its somewhat contingent nature.

In Buford’s re-examination of the biblical tradition, he rethinks the meaning of imago dei, the idea that we are created in the image of God. Traditionally, according to Buford, “image of God” has meant “copy of God,” with that which is copied being, most notably, God’s rationality. For humans to be copies, though, implies considerable limitations, for it is then God, understood as the original, who determines human identities. Buford suggests instead that the imago dei in humans be understood not as a copy, but rather as a representation. He further suggests that what is most fundamentally represented about God in humanity is not rationality, but rather imagination. Since imagination implies a certain amount of freedom, human individuality and a certain degree of independence is maintained. Thus, while retaining the biblical assertion that human identity is grounded in God, a certain space—the space of the imagination—is opened up for human initiative and free play.

In Buford’s reconstructions the humanist and biblical traditions come together insofar as they both allow for human freedom, while also both placing limits on that same freedom. One’s calling, then, is to be worked out within the horizon of this tension between freedom and limitation. According to Buford, the task of colleges is to encourage the students’ creative use of their imaginations, helping them to exercise a “new” freedom that they have in college to develop their own life stories (i.e., their “callings”), over against the stories about themselves which they have inherited from their parents, hometowns, friends, schools, and/or churches. Equally, however, it is the duty of colleges to support, indeed, make known, the limitations that exist for students as they begin to take advantage of the possibilities in imaginatively re-writing their stories (i.e., “finding their callings”).

Buford’s book is extremely beneficial in tracing out the broad historical contexts that inform the ideals and interests of the present-day system of American higher education. And he teases out well the complicated intertwining relationships of the biblical and Renaissance humanist traditions—particularly their somewhat distinct perspectives on calling. His breadth is also impressive, for though his professional training is in philosophy, he also makes forays into such diverse fields as biblical studies (in an exegesis of Genesis 1–2), Christian theology (while considering Augustine’s view of personhood), educational psychology (in a review of William Perry’s theory of the developmental stages of students), and business management (in order to summarize and critique the reengineering system proposed by Michael Hammer and James Champy). What is both puzzling and problematic, however, is his final chapter, in which his practical recommendations to colleges are presented.

Although he has earlier affirmed the need to work for a balance between freedom and limitation, his focus here is much more on the idea of maintaining limitations than enhancing freedoms. And, regarding the maintenance of limitations, he identifies two main interrelated obstacles that need to be countered: the canon and multiculturalism. His discussion of the canon is rather puzzling. On the one hand, he pleads for an open canon, because going back to the fixed canon of earlier generations is neither feasible nor desirable (p. 185). On the other hand, he is extremely wary of special-interest groups (i.e., multiculturalists, supporters of women’s rights), which he views as desiring to take over the canon in order to impose their own political agenda onto everyone else. The solution he offers, instead, is to refer back, and utilize again, the biblical and Renaissance humanist traditions, after both have been appropriately reconstructed to suit present-day needs and circumstances. (Buford is not forthcoming on the specifics of what this reconstruction might look like.) His justification for the reappropriation of these two traditions is that they would make the most sense to our students, given their backgrounds.

The problems here are several-fold. First, Buford caricatures so-called special-interest groups. Far from wishing to “take over,” most such groups see themselves, instead, as working to redress an identified imbalance in the canon, wherein its interests, concerns, and viewpoints are weighted towards a relatively narrow band of persons (i.e., white, male, educated, middle-to upper-class, heterosexual). Second, even though he admits that the ideals of the Bible and the Renaissance are no better or worse than those of any other traditions, his appeal to them as the best option (even if they are reconstructed), leads one to suspect—whatever his disclaimers—that he desires a return to an earlier, narrowly-defined, and fixed canon.

The most serious problem, though, seems to be his argument that these two traditions are to be preferred because they would be the most familiar, and thus the easiest, for students. Regarding their familiarity, Buford consistently operates with the notion that every student on campus is equally invested in and/or sympathetic to—not to say knowledgeable of—the ideals of the Bible and the Renaissance. He simply assumes the existence of a homogeneous student body, one in which all students have the same backgrounds and share equally in the same historical/cultural contexts. But that has never been quite the reality in American colleges, whatever the “myth” has been, and is even less so today.

But even if college students are most familiar with the Renaissance and biblical traditions, should we as educators necessarily just accommodate ourselves to their familiarity? Easy is not always the best. One of the reasons Buford gives for concentrating on the Biblical and Renaissance traditions centers on the limited nature of a college’s resources. “To expect an American college to teach every culture and language that students demand, as if those students will live out their calling in those cultures, is beyond the capability of the college…” (p. 190). I am not gainsaying the challenge facing colleges in educating our students in a way that informs them and fosters in them an appreciation of the multiple cultures of the world in which they live. It is a task that requires all the imagination and effort we can possibly marshal. It is, nevertheless, necessary. Our world is becoming ever smaller; the interconnections across political and social boundaries are becoming increasingly numerous and marked. Despite Buford’s disclaimer, it is, in fact, highly likely that a significant number of our students will live out their callings in a culture far different from the one in which they were raised!

We, as educators, need to think harder, and even more imaginatively than Buford advocates, in order to see our way to an education for our students that will satisfy the demands of the 21st century.

Works Cited

Alcoff, Linda. “Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory.” In Feminist Theory in Practice and Process, ed. Micheline R. Malson, Jean F. O’Barr, and Mary Wyer, 305–12. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.

Rosenau, Pauline Marie. Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.

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