Kenneth de Jong
Professor of Linguistics

& Cognitive Science
Indiana University









[August 23, 2010] —


So here comes another year.

I’m walking to class with the buzz of the week in the air.  The university town seems like a one-year cicada, going through periods of almost complete dormancy in the stillness of the August siesta, and suddenly bursting out in nervous-looking students.

Parents, too.

But what is it that occupies that little dark corner of my consciousness, that gets me in tune with the nervous energy of the week?  It’s the annual ritual of wrestling with what to say, what to do, that first day appearing before the big format arrangement of undergraduates.

And no, it isn’t the lecture material on what is science and what I’m doing with my life; it’s that little paragraph at the beginning where I say who I am, a Christian.  Every year, it’s a struggle.

Last year, after years of being clever, coy, and respectably counter-cultural, almost without decision, I began in the first paragraph of the whole semester-long dialogue with my intro class by just introducing myself as a Christian, a fact which forms the core of how I think about my discipline, how I think about myself, and how I think about my responsibility to serve them.

I’m sure there were other things in there too, but I don’t remember.

What I do remember was the electric atmosphere of the moment, the eyes all over the room looking at me, and maybe even body-language, were those thumbs ups in the corner?  Then, it was over, and the semester began.

Unlike colleagues of mine who have this same practice and often get drawn into conversations on matters of faith and life, I have no story about the results of starting a class this way; in general, this semester was more or less the same as other ones.  However, some of them and I know that it’s different.

I didn’t know it going into the class, but the room had a higher proportion of first year students than any I’d had before.  This class meeting was the last in the suite of first classes that many of these students experienced, so for their sample, I constituted 20 – 25% of the university faculty community.  Who we are is the face of the university for most students.

So, why the reluctance?

Every year.

I have been blessed as a faculty member in a large state research university.  I have always been treated more or less fairly and with transparency.  I have never felt any pressure concerning the course of my teaching, concerning who I associate with, concerning my identity.   However, somehow I still have in that dark corner of my consciousness a feeling of public shame at being one of Christ’s.

I don’t know if this is common to all social contexts, because it doesn’t seem like it should be a special feature of the university community. People ask me if I feel comfortable as a Christian on a university faculty, and I want to ask them if they feel comfortable as a Christian anywhere.

But  …  it might be a particularly strong mark of academic culture today. I guess if I’m honest with that dark little corner of my consciousness, I know that we, as university faculty, are always swimming against a particular flow that wants to sweep our identity into something else.  Not in our Lord.

So here we go, the semester’s here, and may-be, by His grace, I’ll be able with forethought and kindness, to label myself appropriately.  And may-be, by His grace, it will mean more to those nervous-looking students (and parents) than all the rest of the buzz.

© 2010  Kenneth de Jong