Biblical Studies in Liberal Arts

Kevin has a great post at Blue Cord

The college where I work is the only liberal arts college in Eastern Europe.  As such, we have to work hard to explain ourselves to potential students and the ministry of education.  Both are used to either professional schools (which is what kolegia means in Lithuanian) that prepare you for a particular job or universities that are research oriented.  As a liberal arts college, neither of these are our main goals.

This year, I am the head of a task force on defining what liberal arts means in this context.  In my understanding, a liberal arts education focuses on…

I encourage you to give your 2¢ on the topic; I have already given mine:

I have been working along parallel lines for a paper I will deliver at SBL http://targuman.org/?p=242. I think you have hit on most of the high points; the question of my paper and the session is how do we teach biblical studies in a secular context. I would simply counter to any critic why do we teach any particular literature? Why do we teach any particular period of history and region?

I suppose that sounds a bit snarky, but the reality is (whether one likes it or not) that the Bible, its stories, morals/mores/ethic, and theology (not to mention politics) has formed the basis for most of Europe and countries we call “western” (although last time I checked a lot of countries that a “eastern” were pretty well impacted as well).

(Via Blue Cord.)

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