Privatizers vs. evangelicals

I dropped my car off this morning for an oil change and walked to the UNC campus to do some reading, writing and researching. I am currently sitting in an undergraduate economics lecture at Carroll Hall. Carroll Hall was featured in the movie Patch Adams. It is also the building that housed Kenan-Flagler until July, 1999.

 

The most popular professor at UVA gave a talk at Abilene Christian University last month. The focus of his talk was on what should be expected by institutions of Christian academia but his comments on Christian professors in secular universities is interesting. He divides these educators into two categories, one he calls privatizers and the other evangelicals.

Privatizers are Christian professors but you would never know about their faith from the way they conduct themselves on campus. As Ken (students who have taken his upper level class on anti-trust get to call him by his first name) so eloquently puts it:

“Their Christian faith is private and apart from their jobs. These professors live in two worlds, not simultaneously, but sequentially: one is secular; that’s the campus; the other is sacred; that’s their church.”

Evangelicals are those that are more vocal about their faith. While members of this group are careful to maintain a welcoming environment for students of all faiths in the classroom, they are active in supporting student Christian groups and providing spiritual mentoring for Christian students.

                                                

I have noticed that Ken’s categorization is appropriate not only for Christian professors but also for Christians in general. For example, I know Christians who are so secretive about revealing their faith to co-workers to the point where they will shy away from saying that they go to church on Sundays. There is one professor who teaches a core class at Kenan-Flagler who is an excellent example of a privatizer. I have seen him in church yet the way he conducts himself (and I am not saying this in a judgmental or critical way) inside McColl does not indicate in anyway that his worldview is any different than that of his secular colleagues.

 

This past Friday I was at a meeting of the graduate student Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship group and a retired UNC professor referred to Ken as (paraphrasing) “the best example of a Christian mentor at a secular university.” Members of the Inter-Varsity group will find out why that is later this month when Ken stops by to speak at our next meeting.