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Christianity and Moral Identity in Higher Education

Previous Publications
Perry L. Glanzer
Christian Faith and Scholarship: An Exploration of Contemporary
Developments (2007)
Readings in American Educational Thought: From Puritanism to
Progressivism (Ed. 2004)
The Quest for Russia’s Soul: Evangelicals and Moral Education in Post-
Communist Russia (2002)
Todd C. Ream
Christian Faith and Scholarship: An Exploration of Contemporary Debates
(2007)

Christianity and Moral Identity
in Higher Education
Perry L. Glanzer
and
Todd C. Ream

CHRISTIANITY AND MORAL IDENTITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Copyright © Perry L. Glanzer and Todd C. Ream, 2009.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2009 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Glanzer, Perry L. (Perry Lynn)
Christianity and moral identity in higher education / Perry L.
Glanzer and Todd C. Ream.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Education, Higher—Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Moral education
(Higher) 3. Education, Higher—Religious aspects—Christianity.
I. Ream, Todd C. II. Title.
LB2324.G53 2009
378'.014—dc22 2009023757
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: December 2009
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-61240-2
ISBN 978-1-349-37728-2 ISBN 978-0-230-10149-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230101494

This page intentionally left blank

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: The Turn to Less than Human Moral
Education: The Moral Reservations of
Contemporary Universities 1
Part I The Story of Moral Education in
Higher Education
One: Love in the University: Moral Development
and Moral Orientation 11
Two: Searching for a Common, Tradition-Free
Approach to Moral Education: The Failed Quest 31
Three: The Rise of Less than Human Moral Education 57
Four: The Quandary Facing Contemporary
Higher Education: Moral Education in
Postmodern Universities 75
Part II A More Human Education: Moral
Identity and Moral Orientation
Five: Who Are We? The Identities Universities Use
To Provide Moral Orientation 97
Six: Searching for a More Human Moral
Education: Three Approaches 113
Seven: Moral Education in the Christian
Tradition: Contemporary Exemplars 131
Eight: Moral Identity, Moral Autonomy, and
Critical Thinking 159

Contents
viii
Part III Strengthening the Moral Tradition of
Christian Humanism
Nine: Christian Humanism and Christ-Centered
Education: The Redemptive Development of
Humans and Human Creations 181
Ten: A More Human Christian Education: Cultivating
and Ordering the Great Identities 201
Conclusion: Transforming Human Animals into Saints 221
Notes 225
Select Bibliography 259
Index 271

Acknowledgments
The older we have become, the more we realize that any labor, partic-
ularly labors of love, are far more communal endeavors than individ-
ual. Ideas do not merely come to us in isolation but through the
relationships we are fortunate enough to share with others. As a
result, any list of acknowledgements will prove to be insufficient.
Persons in our past and present have helped shape our passion for see-
ing how colleges and universities can fulfill their rightful duties as
instruments of character formation. We have encountered some of
these persons through more theoretical work. They made their pres-
ence known to us through their words both spoken and in print. To
this end, we are deeply indebted to figures past and present such as
Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Stanley Hauerwas,
and Charles Taylor. We have encountered some of these persons
through more practical work. They made their presence know to us
through administrative decisions that needed to be made. Although
confidentiality demands that we must protect their anonymity, we
think of students we have driven to rehabilitation centers, sat with in
court and even suspended hoping and praying that they would decide
to return to campus with the virtues more firmly pressed upon their
hearts and minds.
The communities of Baylor University and Indiana Wesleyan
University provided us with places to live out our commitments to the
academic vocation. This project started several years ago with a
Horizons Grant offered by the Baylor’s Institute for Faith and
Learning. Both Baylor University and Indiana Wesleyan University
were also generous in their subsequent provision of additional travel
funds and summer sabbaticals. For the gracious support we received
from both universities, we thank Jade Avelis, Michael D. Beaty,
Ronnie L. Fritz, Douglas V. Henry, David Lyle Jeffrey, Jerry Pattengale,
and Alleta Tippey. We would also thank The Louisville Institute and
its Executive Director, James W. Lewis, for providing us with the
funding needed to expand the breadth and depth of this effort. Finally,
we would like to thank the research assistants we have had the plea-
sure to work with over the course of the last couple of years, Brian C.
Clark, Edith Davis, Konstantin Petrenko, and Pedro Villarreal. This

Acknowledgments
x
project is much improved as a result of their keen eyes, critical minds
and gracious spirits.
Throughout the course of this project, we visited campuses across
the country. The hospitality alone that we received was impressive. In
addition, we were overwhelmed by their willingness to take time out
of their very busy schedules to talk with us about their institutions.
We believe that their voices make a unique contribution to this work.
We only hope that we represent their voices with charity and integ-
rity. We thus would like to thank representatives from the following
schools for their time and for their hospitality: Bethel University
(MN), Calvin College, Colorado State University, Eastern Mennonite
University, George Fox University, Hampden-Sydney College,
Hillsdale College, Mary Baldwin College, St. Olaf College, Seattle
Pacific University, the United States Air Force Academy, University of
Dallas, the University of St. Thomas (MN), Xavier University (OH),
and Yale University.
Julia Cohen, her colleagues at Palgrave Macmillan, and a number
of anonymous reviewers encouraged us to think beyond our initial
inclination to hide behind data. They saw something in our proposal
that we, at first, did not see. They encouraged us to go beyond the
data and offer not only an overview of what we taking place on par-
ticular campuses but also offer a vision for what many of these cam-
puses could become if they only embedded themselves more deeply in
their respective traditions. Without their encouragement, this book
would be much smaller in terms of not only its aspirations but what it
can offer those who take the time to read it.
Original portions of this book were previously published in aca-
demic journals and magazines. Parts of chapter four first appeared as
Perry L. Glanzer and Todd C. Ream, “Addressing the Moral Quandary
of Contemporary Universities: Rejecting a Less than Human Moral
Education,” Journal of Beliefs and Values 29.2 (2008): 113–23.
Portions of chapter seven appeared in Todd C. Ream and Perry L.
Glanzer, “The Moral Idea of a University: A Case Study,” Growth:
The Journal of the Association for Christians in Student Development
(Winter 2009): 2–14. Parts of chapter nine were taken from Perry L.
Glanzer and Todd Ream, “Whose Story? Which Identity? Fostering
Christian Identity at Christian Colleges and Universities,” Christian
Scholars Review 35 (2005): 13–27 and Perry L. Glanzer, “Course
Correction,” Touchstone, September 2007, 18–19. Finally, parts of
chapter ten were taken from Perry L. Glanzer, “Why We Should
Discard the Integration of Faith and Learning: Rearticulating the
Mission of the Christian Scholar,” Journal of Education and Christian

Acknowledgments xi
Belief 12.1 (Spring 2008): 41–51 (Copyright © 2005 by Christian
Scholar’s Review; reprinted by permission). We thank the respective
editors, William S. Campbell, Skip Trudeau and Tim Herrmann, Don
King, James Kushiner, and David Smith for allowing us to edit and
reprint some of that material in this book.
Our deepest gratitude goes to our respective families and to our
churches, First Baptist Church in Woodway Texas and Jerome
Christian Church in Jerome/Greentown, Indiana. In these two con-
texts, we have learned not only about the virtues in theory but also
have been fortunate enough to also see them in practice in ways our
imaginations may otherwise envision. Our children, Bennett and
Cody Glanzer and Addison and Ashley Ream, help us each day to see
how their embodiment of the virtues can transform each and every
person around them. Finally, we thank our wives for their love, their
support, and for their embodiment of the virtues. Our work and more
importantly our lives have been transformed through their willing-
ness to walk alongside us. To them, Rhonda Glanzer, and Sara Ream,
we dedicate our efforts in these pages. We hope, in some way, that
this book returns to them a small measure of what they have so gra-
ciously given to us.
Hewitt, Texas & Greentown, Indiana
Lent 2009

Introduction
The Turn to Less than Human Moral
Education: The Moral Reservations of
Contemporary Universities
If trees or wild beasts grow, men, believe me, are fashioned...If this
fashioning be neglected you have but an animal still.
—Desiderius Erasmus, 15291
We bring all of you here, brim full of needs and desires and hormones,
let you loose on each other like so many animals in a wildlife sanctu-
ary and hope for the best.
—Professor Andrew Abbott to the University of
Chicago’s Class of 20062
National Lampoon’s Animal House, a well-known 1978 movie
about college life, now appears quite outdated. The reason why has
nothing to do with the wild members of the Delta Tau Chi fraternity
depicted in the film. For 800 years students have always posed moral
challenges to university leaders and these leaders have always grum-
bled about the moral lives of students. Even from the thirteenth to
the fifteenth centuries, Rainer Schwinges tells us university leaders
complained:
Students are bawling and brawling, carousing and whoring, singing
and dancing, playing cards and chess, are addicted to dice and other
games of chance, are up and about town day and night, are swanking
around in inappropriate, fashionable clothing, are behaving provoca-
tively to burghers, guild members, and town law-and-order forces, are
carrying arms, and are even making use of them.3
Life at American universities proved no different. In 1849, soon after
the creation of fraternities, University of Michigan professors com-
plained about this “monster power” that threatened to bring “debauch-
ery, drunkenness, pugilism, dueling...disorder and ravigism.”4

Christianity, Moral Identity, Education
2
Complaints about the moral conduct of students and the negative
influence of their organizations have always existed.
Of course, a few things have changed regarding what constitutes a
moral problem. Colleges now sponsor clubs related to singing, danc-
ing, and chess and some now have majors related to the design of
fashionable clothing. The most significant change in university life,
however, is a university’s sense of responsibility for the overall moral
lives of students. Even in Animal House, one finds the dean (however
incompetent) making various unsuccessful attempts to control the
hedonism of the “animals” in the fraternity house.
Throughout history, university leaders usually made efforts to take
the young “animals” brim full of needs, desires, and hormones and
make them more fully human. The university leadership sought to
humanize students, because they shared the perspective of Erasmus
quoted above. They believed that men (and later women) needed to be
formed or fashioned according to some particular moral ideal. The
natural growth or even the choices of young people did not produce
this ideal. Humans were created and not born. In fact, many of the
disciplines now comprising the humanities were even justified at one
point for this very reason.5
Today, college administrators and faculty may take a different
approach. Professor Abbott’s quote in the opening may be seen as an
extreme, but one can find a similar attitude among other university
leaders. For example, in an Atlantic Monthly article about Princeton
University, David Brooks found that Princeton does not “go to great
lengths to build character” and one of its administrators claimed,
“We’ve taken the decision that these are adults and this is not our
job....There’s a pretty self-conscious attempt not to instill character.”6
Princeton administrators appear to believe that the students admitted
should already be considered humans and will likely not revert to
being animals. Thus, the university does not need to shape character.
Such comments would appear to reinforce Harry Lewis’ claim in
Excellence without a Soul that “the university has lost, indeed, has
willingly surrendered, its moral authority to shape the soul of its
students.”7
It would be more accurate to say that most universities have surren-
dered the moral authority to shape the whole soul of students. Our
central argument in this book is that most universities have shifted
from what we call fully human approaches to moral education to less
than human approaches. When universities lack agreement about the
overall human purpose and function, they must find partial agree-
ments about the purpose and function of particular aspects of human

Introduction 3
identity. They search for agreement about what it means to be a good
professional or good citizen instead of what it means to be a good
human being. Outside of these areas, the vast majority of universities
largely leave students to their own autonomy and freedom until they
pose a legal liability to the university or to its students.
What accounts for this transformation? The change, we argue,
cannot be chalked up merely to “guns, germs and steel.”8
The histor-
ical reason, we will argue, stems from the failed quest to find a
nonsectarian or universal form of humanism as a basis for moral
education. When universities were birthed in medieval Europe, agree-
ment existed regarding a common moral tradition, particularly what
it would mean to be fully human. Although it would be foolish to say
that disagreements did not exist, there was greater consensus regard-
ing the basic metaphysical narrative that shaped an understanding of
human nature and purpose. Christian humanism served as the
foundation for moral formation in early European and American uni-
versities and colleges.
As religious pluralism increased and consensus broke down regard-
ing our views about what it means to be a good human being or what
a good society would look like, Enlightenment thinkers believed that
reason alone could solve our moral disagreements. Thus, a quest
began that still continues to this day. Scholars embarked on a search
to find and implement a common approach to moral education. They
hoped for a tradition-free humanism. Usually, they based their
approach on a broad and inclusive vision of individual and social
good by relying upon methods or foundations that they deemed to be
universal and free from sectarian moral traditions. Nonetheless, par-
ticular thinkers and communities have always risen up to point out
the particular problems with these universal visions. In a world that
rests on the precipice between modernity and postmodernity, scholars
now recognize that reason has also failed to provide significant agree-
ment about what it means to be fully human. As a result, debate now
reigns over the nature of moral education that should be offered in
universities or whether moral education should even be included as a
purpose of higher education.
Some contemporaries argue that in light of the failed search for a
universal humanism, universities should merely stick to professional
forms of moral education. Others, however, want to continue the
search. We argue that neither option should be promoted. Instead,
academe needs to recognize and accept a whole range of less than
human and fully human approaches to moral education. It should
also understand how moral identity proves to be a crucial category by

4
which to understand these various approaches. In his forthcoming
book, What Is a Person?, Christian Smith sets forth the importance
in this way:
Are we simply self-conscious animals improbably appearing for a
moment in a cosmos without purpose or significance? If so, that has
implication for life, which even ordinary people can work out. Or are
we rather illusions of individuality destined to dissolve in the ultimately
real Absolute? That would make a difference. Are we instead really
materially acquisitive hedonists or carnally desiring sensualists who
have nothing higher to which to aspire than the gratifications of
possessions and physical sensations that we can use our money and
relations to consume? Or mainly only bodies with the capacities to
define by means of the exercise of will and discourse our identities
through self-description and re-description? Or perhaps are we chil-
dren of a personal God, whose perfect love is determined to rescue us
from our own self-destructive brokenness, in order to bring us in to the
perfect happiness of divine knowledge of worship? Or maybe some-
thing else? The differences matter for how life ought to be lived, how
we ought to live.9
The differences also matter for how universities shape their moral
order and education.
Because anyone seeking to understand, critique or defend a partic-
ular approach to moral education will need to speak from within a
specific tradition, we will address our own moral tradition of
Christianity, although we will also examine secular approaches as
well. Thus, in the second half of this book we will set forth our
research regarding moral education in the Christian tradition,
describe some of the weaknesses we found, and defend the model
against some common critiques. For example, whether universities
that set forth a more comprehensive humanist vision are truly univer-
sities is a question some would answer in the negative. We think dif-
ferently. Thus, we will defend the importance of universities and
colleges committed to a moral tradition that can set forth a compre-
hensive moral ideal for the university and its students about human
well-being. This book explains our argument, offers examples from
various institutions of higher education, and then responds to possi-
ble criticisms about how moral education in a comprehensive human-
ist moral tradition may short-change diversity, autonomy, and critical
thinking. We conclude with ways of strengthening Christian univer-
sities and colleges that espouse and implement visions for a more
human moral education.

Introduction 5
Audience
In terms of audience members for this book, we hope to address three
groups. First, since colleges and universities contribute in significant
ways to what it means to be human, our book hopes to address stu-
dents and scholars in a variety of disciplines interested in this debate.
Conversations occur around this topic in general in disciplines such as
anthropology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and theology.
Second, our book obviously intersects with work being done by
higher education scholars. For too long, discussions concerning the
moral identity of students in higher education have revolved around
theories generated by scholars in developmental psychology. Many
believe these discussions have now run their course and have left us
with perhaps fewer answers than we had when we started. Regardless
of whether such scholars prove interested in how Christianity can
inform the moral identity of students, such interest may come via our
argument that particular traditions inform the moral fabric of a cam-
pus and thus the moral identity of its students.
Finally, we believe our work will be of interest to faculty members
and administrators serving Christian colleges and universities. Too
often, these individuals have forsaken their respective strands of the
Christian tradition to foster appeal to a larger constituency.
Nonetheless, a fine line exists between parochialism and an apprecia-
tion for a tradition that can grant both a sense of form and direction
to an otherwise amorphous community. Given the research we con-
ducted, campuses which exhibit the deepest respect for practices such
as hospitality and academic freedom are also campuses which have
been granted the deepest sense of identity by their particular Christian
tradition.
Summary of Contents
Part I—The Story of Moral Education
in Higher Education
Our book begins in chapter one by providing a framework by which
we can understand the conversations about moral education in
higher education that are currently taking place. In chapter two, we
provide the major historical background to our argument. We con-
tend that while university leaders in early European and American

6
colleges clearly had their differences, they still shared enough com-
mon views about the essential human purposes and functions,
because they generally agreed upon a common meta-identity and a
common metanarrative arising from that identity—the Christian
identity and story. However, as disagreements emerged over how to
interpret that story, a quest began within the university. University
leaders and scholars attempted to search for a nonsectarian approach
to moral education. The underlying reason why, by the 1950s, uni-
versity administrators and faculty made fewer attempts to shape stu-
dents’ character is that after nearly 200 years of the quest, the
academy stood further away from agreeing upon what it means to
be fully human than ever before. The third chapter then describes
how events in the 1960s revealed dissatisfaction with the marginal-
ization of ethics. Efforts began to be made to bring ethics back from
the margins. Ironically, the attempts actually fostered what we call
less than human approaches to moral education. Finally, this part
concludes with a chapter that critically examines the various pro-
posals contemporary scholars have made for addressing the current
situation.
Part II—A More Human Education:
Moral Identity and Moral Orientation
In part II, we open by distinguishing between what we call less than
human and more human approaches to education. In chapter five, we
then discuss the various ways that colleges and universities attempt to
find moral agreement that stems not from our common humanity but
from the functional commonalities associated with being a citizen or
person of a particular ethnic or gender group. In chapter six, we then
move to a discussion of how various versions of humanism can and do
inform the moral vision in place at particular institutions. Chapter
seven offers a typology of how different Christian traditions inform
the moral ideals and practices at several colleges and universities we
deem significant, as well as an in-depth discussion of how two of
those traditions inform campuses we deem exemplary in terms of
their efforts. In chapter eight we explore the possibility that too many
colleges and universities understand what it means to be human as a
cognitive endeavor. In the end, we contend that what we call more
human institutions of higher learning can aid in the development of

Introduction 7
critical thinking in ways that institutions which refrain from setting
forth specific visions of human flourishing cannot.
Part III—Strengthening the Moral
Tradition of Christian Humanism
In the final two chapters we offer a vision for how Christian colleges
and universities can go about strengthening their distinctive moral
visions and practices. In chapter nine we argue that one of the key
components of any approach to moral formation involves the forma-
tion of a person’s identity. In essence, we propose a Christian under-
standing of identity and identity formation that can assist Christian
colleges and universities in shaping the moral character of their stu-
dents. In chapter ten we offer a robust vision for how Christian col-
leges and universities can go about offering a balanced and
comprehensive vision of moral education for the curricular and co-
curricular arenas. In both chapters we seek to expand the Christian
community’s theological imagination regarding this topic while
grounding our discussion in the concrete realities of current practices
of Christian colleges and universities.
Overall, we hope to provide ways that colleges and universities can
draw upon the moral resources of particular traditions to help stu-
dents realize their full humanity. For while the animals may be taking
over the moral culture at many universities, there is hope that colleges
and universities can still try to form humans. Such efforts can prove
immensely more important than an education undertaken for acquir-
ing job skills and information or even moral education that attempts
to create good professionals or good citizens. As Erasmus reminds us,
if moral education “be contrived earnestly and wisely, you have what
may prove a being not far from a God.”10
At least perhaps, one may
fashion a moral education that helps humans bear that image.

Part I
The Story of Moral Education in
Higher Education

Chapter One
Love in the University: Moral
Development and Moral Orientation
There is a threshold question, then that every college needs to debate.
Should moral development be merely an option for students who are
interested (and for college authorities when it is not too costly or con-
troversial)? Or should it be an integral part of undergraduate education
for all students and a goal demanding attention, effort, and on occa-
sion, even a bit of courage and sacrifice from every level of the college
administration. After so many years of neglect, surely it is time to
address this question with the care and deliberation it deserves.
—Derek Bok, former Harvard president1
Should moral education be an integral part of undergraduate
education? Although we agree with Derek Bok that every college
needs to debate this question, we do not believe it should be the
threshold question. Before we talk about whether moral development
should be an option for students or an integral part of the university,
we need to answer the prior question. Do we even agree about what
“moral development” means or what fostering it entails? Although
higher education scholars often assume that we do, we contend that
we do not.
In this first chapter we explore some of the reasons higher educa-
tion scholars assume common agreement about the concept of moral
development and suggest more disagreement about the concept exists
than these scholars often acknowledge. This disagreement stems from
the existence of what John Rawls terms “reasonable comprehensive
doctrines”2
or what we call different moral traditions. Due to this
reality, we must abandon the pretence of talking about moral devel-
opment from some objective, universal standpoint since we can only
talk about moral development and other associated concepts (e.g.,
moral education, moral formation3
) from within a particular moral
tradition.Consequently,weoutlinetheparticularconceptualapproach
we will use when we talk about moral development and moral
education.

12
What Is Moral Development?
Discussions about growth or development are quite different when
discussing physical versus moral development. Unlike the physical
realm, where a parent can go to the doctor and ask, “How is my child
developing?” and receive reports about the child’s weight, height,
word usage, et cetera in percentage terms that indicate the child's sta-
tus in relation to others, we have tremendous disagreement about the
empirical markers for human flourishing in regard to the good life.
We do not use the average moral characteristics of the population to
designate whether someone’s moral development is at the fiftieth or
the seventieth percentile marks.
We tend to use two general types of markers which reflect two dif-
ferent dimensions of the term “moral development.” First, there are
those in the social sciences, particularly developmental psychology,
who point to reasoning changes in individuals as they (hopefully)
move through particular stages of a universal developmental process.
Scholars such as William Perry, Lawrence Kohlberg, Carol Gilligan,
Mary Belenky et al., and James Rest fall into this category.4
In fact,
James Davison Hunter notes that this “psychological regime” has
dominated our conceptions and understandings of moral develop-
ment.5
The job of the person engaged in moral education, according
to those who employ these theories, is to help students move through
different stages of cognitive, moral development. According to this
view, various forms of socialization linked to various philosophical or
theological visions of the good life should not be considered moral
education. In fact, Kohlberg went so far as to say that the stimulation
of development as understood within cognitive-developmental frame-
work “is the only ethically acceptable form of moral education.”6
Thus, the important end of moral education involves encouraging
someone to reason from moral principles as opposed to demonstrat-
ing a particular “bag of virtues” or learning various “‘irrational’ or
‘arbitrary’ cultural rules and values.”7
Much of the scholarship and practice of moral education in
American higher education subscribes to this outlook. Derek Bok
articulates this dominant view, although he demonstrates more open-
ness to virtue theory and encouraging students to acquire certain
virtues than Kohlberg did. Bok believes we can discover a tradition-
neutral understanding of particular means and ends of moral devel-
opment with which “no reasonable person can disagree”8
that can
then be employed in colleges and universities to improve students’
moral reasoning and perhaps even their character.

Love in the University 13
We remain less optimistic than Bok. For example, parents who ask
a college administrator or faculty member how their child is develop-
ing morally could hear from an administrator that the student is now
reasoning at a higher level according to some cognitive structural
scale. However, such a response would probably mean little to par-
ents who believe their student may be declining in virtues such as
self-control, responsibility, and compassion or rebelling against their
moral ideals and principles. Both would be talking to each other using
different conceptions of moral development. The parents understand
moral development as a life increasingly lived more consistently with
a particular understanding of the good life or the good society. The
two are using different paradigms for understanding moral develop-
ment which are rooted in different narrative conceptions of the moral
life. Of course, one could understand why the parent might use this
language, since the marketing material of universities, if it says any-
thing about morality at all, usually discusses moral development in
this manner.
Thus, we need to recognize a second conception of moral develop-
ment with roots in the Aristotelian tradition but one that takes many
forms. According to this view, a person develops morally when they
demonstrate the thinking, affections, and behavior associated with a
particular ideal of the good life grounded in a particular understand-
ing of the moral order. Because a plurality of views about the good life
and the moral order exist, a plurality of moral traditions have
developed around the diverse ways to conceptualize the process,
means and ends of moral development. Although descriptive cogni-
tive structural theories can be helpful in outlining some common
ground found among moral traditions of the good, we believe we
must turn to the second understanding of moral development to
understand institutional missions related to moral ends in higher edu-
cation. Within this understanding, moral exemplars are not those
who reason at a certain level.9
To help us understand the difference between these views, we find
it helpful to consider the example of a well-known six-year-old girl
named Ruby Bridges. In the early 1960s, Ruby Bridges participated in
a school desegregation effort in New Orleans. Robert Coles, a
Harvard psychiatrist, became fascinated by the moral heroism that
Ruby demonstrated during the months she walked to school through
heckling mobs. One teacher related to Coles how Ruby smiled at her
antagonists and even prayed for them. When Coles asked Ruby why,
she said, “I go to church every Sunday, and we’re told to pray for
everyone, even the bad people, and so I do.”10
Perhaps, according to a

14
scale of moral reasoning, Kohlberg might find Ruby at a level one
obedience orientation. Yet, Coles probed further and found more
than simple obedience. Ruby stated reasons for her actions: “The
minister says if I forgive the people and smile at them and pray for
them, God will keep a good eye on everything and He’ll be our pro-
tection.” When asked if she believed the minister, she replied, “Oh
yes...I’m sure God knows what’s happening. He’s got a lot to worry
about; but there is bad trouble here, and He can’t help but notice. He
may not rush to do anything, not right away. But there will come a
day, like you hear in church.”11
For those who hold to the second view
of moral development, even a child can reach moral heights not
reached by adults who may be level six moral reasoners according to
Kohlberg’s scale. Christians, for instance, may contend that Ruby
imitated Christ-like love by praying for and forgiving her racist
antagonists.
Moreover, the reasons behind the actions of a child may be deeply
influenced by a moral tradition in ways not captured by broad stage
theory generalizations. Why did Ruby Bridges react this way? Coles
sought to understand where and how she found the strength to under-
take her moral actions:
Although from a poor family, she had somehow managed to obtain:
strength to integrate a southern school; strength to be a young activist
in the face of extreme hostility and plenty of danger; strength to believe
not only in a social and political effort but also in herself as someone
able and worthy to take part in it; and strength to maintain her high
hopes, to keep her spirits up, no matter the serious obstacles in her
way. Whence such strength—in a child whose parents were illiterate,
unemployed, with few prospects?12
Coles admits that his psychiatric frameworks did not help him under-
stand the moral courage of Ruby Bridges and others like her. Instead,
he turned to a different sort of explanation rooted in a particular
social context and moral tradition:
If I had to offer an explanation, though, I think it would start with the
religious tradition of black people, which is of far greater significance
than many white observers, and possibly a few black critics have tended
to allow. In home after home I have seen Christ’s teachings, Christ’s
life, connected to the lives of black children by their parents.13
Coles’ questioning reveals that Ruby’s courage and mercy stemmed
from the Christian teaching that she received at home and church.

The moral reasoning she used (appealing to God’s justice and not
merely an abstract form of fairness), the moral practices she
demonstrated (praying for her antagonists) and her hopeful heart for
ultimate justice from God were all reflections of living within a
Christian conception of the moral order. In a similar manner, to
appreciate and help conceptualize a university’s role in contributing
to this second view of moral development, we will also need to pay
more attention to social context and moral traditions than stages of
moral reasoning.
Moral Development and Moral Order
Bok’s quote at the beginning of this chapter also contains a second
assumption that we find problematic. Bok poses his question as if the
university has a choice about whether to engage students in moral
development. We contend that universities, by the very way they struc-
ture student learning and life, cannot help but be involved in promot-
ing a particular tradition of moral development.
The reason why we talk as if the university has a choice about
moral development is that the scholarly community in higher educa-
tion has been enamored with the cognitive structural approaches to
moral development described above. The problem with this approach,
as James Davison Hunter notes, is that it tends to “view the sequence
of moral development in terms that are highly individualistic and
psychological as though the process is simply a dynamic of the
isolated personality alone.”14
Again, while we should not abandon
the insights provided by this approach, we believe that we must
abandon its pretence of objective neutrality, its overly cognitive
approach to moral development, as well as its overly individualistic
tendencies.
If we want to examine the social dimension of moral education in
universities, sociologist Christian Smith’s, Moral, Believing Animals
provides a better starting place. As our introduction revealed, the
language of “animal” and “human” often infiltrates works that
address moral education.15
The reason why is that to discuss moral
development at all, we need to discuss the question of who we are, or
as Smith frames the question at the beginning of his book, “What
kind of animals are human beings?” Smith’s answer is that we
humans are unique because we possess “the ability and disposition
to form strong evaluations about our desires, beliefs, and feelings
that hold the potential to transform them.”16
In other words, humans

16
have the capacity not only to love and hate but to think about, judge
and evaluate those desires in light of some higher moral ideal. We are
moral lovers and dreamers and we have the ability to evaluate our
loves and dreams that have implications for their possible
transformation.
We also create institutions that embody this characteristic. In fact,
Smith argues that the best way to theorize about human culture,
including universities, is to conceive “of humans as moral, believing
animals and human social life as consisting of moral orders that con-
stitute and direct social action.”17
By moral, Smith means “an orien-
tation toward understandings about what is right and wrong, good
and bad, worthy and unworthy, just and unjust, that are not estab-
lished by our own actual desires, decisions or preferences but instead
believed to exist apart from them, providing standards by which our
desires, decisions, and preferences can themselves be judged.”18
The
order to which Smith refers penetrates the social and psychological
world of humanity and is “thickly webbed with moral assumptions,
beliefs, commitments and obligations.”19
Or as Don Browning obs-
erves, “[O]ur practices are always surrounded by—always assume—
some story about the meaning of life.”20
We would go one step farther than Smith and argue that not only
are humans moral dreamers and evaluators, we are also worshippers.
James K.A. Smith describes us in this way, “We humans are liturgical
animals.”21
Our social gatherings also reflect this fact. As Philip
Kenneson observes:
Indeed, all human gatherings are a kind of worship to the extent that
they presuppose and reinforce certain ascriptions of worth. For this
reason, human gatherings are inevitably formative, not least because
such gatherings construct an imaginative landscape (a “world”) within
which all future action and reflection upon it will take place. People
come to have a world as they gather together and share stories about
the shape and meaning of that world, as well as their place and role
within it. People come to have a world as they gather together and
engage in common practices that only “make sense” with a world so
understood. People come to have a world as the above activities pre-
suppose, instill, and intensify certain desires and dispositions, and as
certain virtues are commended and instilled as being requisite for
flourishing in this kind of world. People come to have a world as they
construct and maintain institutions that order and support ways of life
that are congruent with the ways they understand the world and their
place within it.22

In brief, we all worship and create social groups and institutions to
foster that worship—a particular ordering of our desires and affec-
tions toward particular beings and objects.
Cognitive structural theorists, such as Lawrence Kohlberg, have
tended to downplay this part of moral formation as merely aspects of
external socialization. Yet, it is important to note that the moral order
created in such situations is not merely something external to indi-
viduals or institutions. As Christian Smith writes,
These morally constituted and permeated worlds exist outside of peo-
ple, in structured social practices and relationships within which peo-
ple’s lives are embedded. They also exist “inside” of people in their
assumptions, expectations, beliefs, aspirations, thoughts, judgment,
and feelings.23
Thus, when discussing moral development in higher education, we
must recognize that universities already represent a particular moral
order or way of shaping our social world. As Smith observes, “All
social institutions are embedded within and give expression to moral
orders that generate, define and govern them.”24
According to this
theory and understanding of culture, universities cannot escape from
both representing and transmitting a particular understanding of the
moral order. As Smith points out,
Universities are more fundamentally stable configurations of resources
(buildings, personnel, budgets, reputations, and so on) grounded in
and reproducing moral order. American universities, for instance, are
expressive incarnations of certain moral narratives, traditions and
commitments concerning the good, the right, and the true regarding
human development, student character, the nature of knowledge, the
purposes of education, equality and merit, academic freedom, liberal
arts and technical training, racial justice, gender relations, socioeco-
nomic background, collegial decision-making, the place of the arts, the
limits of religion, the informed consent of human subjects, the value of
sports, and so on. And these, of course, are themselves rooted in even
deeper moral traditions and worldviews about the nature of human
personhood, epistemologies, historical progress, liberty and equality,
legitimate authority and more.25
In light of Smith’s point, identifying and understanding these deeper
moral traditions that shape the moral ideals and identity of the uni-
versity will prove vital to understanding moral education within the

18
context of higher education. In these respects, Smith’s argument here
echoes philosopher Charles Taylor’s claim that we cannot dismiss the
importance of ontological frameworks when discussing how we think
and talk about the moral life.26
Moral Identities within the Moral Order
Charles Taylor begins his well-known work, The Sources of the Self:
The Making of Modern Identity, with the simple observation that if
one wants to explore the topic of the good, one must begin by
examining the topic of identity. This approach is necessary because,
“Selfhood and the good, or in another way selfhood and morality,
turn out to be inextricably intertwined themes.”27
The reason why he
contends these themes are important is due to the fact that, “To know
who you are is to be oriented in moral space, a space in which ques-
tions arise about what is good or bad, what is worth doing and what
is not, what has meaning and importance for you and what is trivial
and secondary.”28
There is certainly some truth to this point.
Contemporary scholars find that the underlying reason many indi-
viduals move from moral understanding to action emanates from
a sense of identity.29
Colby, Ehrlich, Beaumont, and Stephens
summarize the findings this way, “Most explanations of the psycho-
logical constructs and processes that mediate moral judgment and
action have converged on the important role of the individual’s sense
of moral identity. In this view, moral understanding acquires
motivational power through its integration into the structures of the
self.”30
While our identities orient us morally, they also confuse us. After
all, our identities are complex. We may be at the same time a Christian,
a Democrat, a Coloradan, a woman, an American, a daughter, a
mother, and more. These identities may all carry with them certain
normative expectations, and we may experience a conflict between
what we perceive as the moral obligations with being a good Christian
and being a good Democrat or a good woman and a good mother. In
truth, what orients us are not only our identities, but our ascription of
value to a particular meta-identity or metanarrative that can help us
order our other identities, loves, and responsibilities. The same holds
true for the social institutions we create, such as universities.
In general, early university leaders believed their institutions
should help shape young “animals” into “men” or “humans.” This
view stemmed from the classical Aristotelian tradition, in both Greek

and medieval versions, which understood men or humans as having
an essential nature and purpose. Since universities grew and pros-
pered during the time the Thomistic expression of this Aristotelian
tradition gained influence, it is no surprise that this tradition domi-
nated the university’s approach to moral education. As Alasdair
MacIntyre has demonstrated, the strength of this approach is that it
helps one overcome what later became labeled the naturalistic fal-
lacy. According to one version of the naturalistic fallacy, we cannot
derive moral conclusions from factual premises. In other words, we
cannot derive an “ought” from an “is.” Identity labels and the func-
tions we associate with them, as MacIntyre and others have shown,
provide a way around this problem. MacIntyre writes, “[F]rom the
premise ‘He is a sea-captain,’ the conclusion may be validly inferred
that ‘He ought to do whatever a sea-captain ought to do’”31
Identities
serve as functional concepts that carry moral content. Of course,
there is always some debate about the skills, habits, attitudes, et cet-
era of a good sea-captain or any other normative identity label, but
there are clearly many elements on which those debating can find
agreement.
If agreement also exists about the nature and function of
humans, we can also derive ought statements based on our agreement
about what a good human ought to do. As MacIntyre writes, “Within
this tradition moral evaluative statements can be called true or false
in precisely the way in which all other statements can be called.”
However, when disagreement about essential human purposes or
functions occurs, a problem emerges, “[I]t begins to appear implau-
sible to treat human judgments as factual statements.”32
With the
development of the Enlightenment tradition, as MacIntyre recounts,
the functional view of humanity was indeed discarded and agreement
about the essential nature and essential purpose of humanity
dissipated.
What this development has meant for moral education in universi-
ties and colleges will be the subject of this book. Basically, universities
shifted from attempting to form humans to what we will call less than
fully human forms of moral education. In other words, despite books
discussing the moral decline of the university or even the marginaliza-
tion of morality, universities have never given up moral formation.
Universities and colleges continue to encourage students to adopt
particular normative identities and seek to enrich students’ under-
standing of those identities and to encourage beliefs, affections, and
practices that would involve the perfection of those identities. The key
difference involves the type and range of human identities universities

20
attempt to form and the identities used to provide moral orientation
to moral education. By placing moral education in more limited iden-
tity contexts, the task of moral education shrinks.
The Levels and Elements of
Identity Formation
In this book, we will discuss three general levels of identity formation
that take place in the university. First, there exists the most basic level
of identity formation that is common to every university. Universities
attempt to form good students and good professionals. In other words,
universities ask students to make a vocational choice and commit-
ment and then engage in an intellectual and morally formative pro-
cess to help a student become a good historian, biologist, psychologist,
et cetera. Second, most residential colleges and universities also
attempt to form additional aspects of student identity. They may seek
to shape good citizens, neighbors, et cetera. Finally, but also increas-
ingly rarely, they may seek to shape good human beings. And since
our views of what a good human being is varies greatly, this shaping
will always be linked to a particular moral tradition that helps inform
and shape all of our different identities. We will expand upon all these
types of formation throughout this book and give numerous exam-
ples. Nonetheless, before we begin, we will need to provide some
explanation of the elements of the moral formation involved in shap-
ing any of these identity types.
First, the perfection of identities, such as professional, civic or
human identities, always involves both technical dimensions and
moral aspects that cannot be easily separated. In fact, to separate fact
from values and talk solely about values transmission obscures what
universities actually do when trying to form an aspect of a student’s
identity. The best way to think about this task is to think about the
most basic form of identity formation in which universities engage—
that related to professional or vocational identity. If leaders at an
institution want to help a student become a good teacher, accountant
or nurse, they do not merely transmit facts and discuss values. They
motivate, teach, train, and coach them similar to how an athletic
coach might coach or train an athlete. As Isaac Kandal noted many
years ago, there is:
One part of our educational system, secondary and higher, in which
there is no compromise with standards, in which there is rigid selection

both of instructors and students, in which there is no soft pedagogy,
and in which training and sacrifice of the individual for common ends
are accepted without question. I refer, of course, to the organization of
athletics.33
In fact, the athletic example provides a more concrete illustration. For
example, basketball coaches may tell their students stories about what
it is like to play on a Pan American, an Olympic, an NBA, or a WNBA
championship team. Of course, they also teach them the rules. They
help them practice the virtues/skills of dribbling, shooting and pass-
ing. They encourage them to think critically about their practices,
habits, and strategy. They cultivate team work and help them under-
stand the relationship between a good player and a good team. They
want the player to understand the “pure” end of basketball is not
entertaining the crowd (although like the Harlem Globetrotters, bas-
ketball can be used for such ends), but it is scoring the most points to
win. They also help them find coaches and role models (e.g., Michael
Jordan, Lebron James, Cheryl Miller, Candace Parker) who inspire
them and give them wisdom about all the above aspects.
The same is true when universities attempt to form good profes-
sionals (e.g., musicians, engineers, historians, accountants, etc.), good
citizens or good human beings. Universities are always perpetuators
of moral identities and transmit complex forms of moral order that
involve:
1. Telling narratives that inspire and shape views about ends;
2. Teaching skills or virtues acquired by habituation and refined
through critical thinking and practice;
3. Transmitting rules, general principles and wisdom;
4. Cultivation of the above by studying role models, listening to
mentors, continual practice, and communal participation in
those things associated with the perfection of the functional
identity;
5. Teaching the learner to think critically and independently about
his or her performance in light of all of the above.
We can and do speak about this singular form of formation within a
particular identity as a type of moral tradition. For instance, we may
mention that a particular school has a long tradition of developing
good lawyers, historians, teachers, psychologists, et cetera. While
professional training influences other spheres of life, it remains
focused upon one sphere of a human’s life.

22
Beyond Professional Moral Formation
As mentioned above, one of the major dilemmas facing universities is
how comprehensive they should be about the formation of a student’s
identity. Universities always attempt to form and educate good pro-
fessionals in a particular professional tradition. Few question this
function. Other missions receive more debate. Should they also seek
to form additional identities such as what it means to be good
American citizens, global citizens, ladies or gentlemen, et cetera?
Those in favor of any one of these approaches support multiple iden-
tity education.
Even if universities deny that they engage in moral formation or
education beyond professional formation, they usually cannot escape
other forms of moral formation. For instance, in the introduction, we
quoted a Princeton university administrator who claimed that at
Princeton, “There’s a pretty self-conscious attempt not to instill
character.”34
Of course, such a comment ignores the variety of ways
Princeton attempts to shape the professional identity of students. We
doubt Princeton would deny it is neglecting the moral aspects of what
it means to be a good biologist, historian or psychologist. Furthermore,
a more honest appraisal of Princeton as a place that builds and trans-
mits a particular order would acknowledge that Princeton engages in
additional forms of moral formation outside of professional identity.
John Wright observes:
While Princeton may consciously attempt not to instill character, such
a concerted attempt across a community most certainly forms the
character of its members. Princeton communally forms the character
of its students to believe that they are individuals with the power of
their own self-determination—i.e., students have the ability to steer
themselves. The community naturalizes a political order of a morally
neutral, technical, public realm of knowledge and an individual realm
of values. Morality belongs to the private realm of the individual, not
subject to the communal oversight of the university. Such an under-
standing fundamentally embodies liberal political presuppositions.
Princeton disciplines its students to a character made to assume and
perpetuate the liberal democratic political order of the U.S. In this way
Brooks is absolutely correct in stating, “Princeton doesn’t hate America.
It reflects America.”35
In other words, far from being morally neutral Princeton seeks to
form both good American citizens, as described by Wright, as well as
good professionals.

Recently, Anne Colby, Thomas Ehrlich, Elizabeth Beaumont, and
Jason Stephens, in their book Educating Citizens: Preparing America’s
Undergraduates for Lives of Moral and Civic Responsibility provide
detailed examples of the perspectives and practices various schools
use “when educating citizens is a priority.”36
Not surprisingly, they
found that colleges and universities that address moral and civic edu-
cation typically engage in the types of moral formation we have iden-
tified above. For example, they note that colleges and universities
promoting ideals of good citizenship teach certain skills or virtues
acquired by habituation and refined through critical thinking and
practice. They also encourage communal participation in these skills
or virtues. Such universities typically identify a common range of
moral and civic competencies (e.g., moral consciousness raising)
although they also set forth “a distinctive quality to their vision of
these goals.”37
They summarize these distinctive qualities into three
general themes: (1) the community connections approach, which
focuses upon “connections with and service to particular communi-
ties”; (2) the moral and civic virtue approach, which uses an “empha-
sis on personal virtues and values” such as integrity, courage and
responsibility; and (3) the social justice approach, which they describe
as a concern with “systematic social responsibility.”38
While we believe this categorization is helpful at identifying the
types of virtues and skills prized in forming citizens, these authors do
not emphasize that these approaches are undertaken with the liberal
democratic moral tradition that has a particular liberal democratic
narrative, particular procedural rules and principles, views about
mentors and moral heroes and a particular community that is politi-
cally defined. In other words, Colby et al.’s categorization tells us only
about some general virtues and skills and little about the substantive
moral identity and tradition guiding different approaches.
The tendency to discuss virtues, skills and other elements of the
moral life apart from an orienting identity often characterizes discus-
sions in higher education. Derek Bok provides a good example of a
proponent of this sort of method. Bok claims that universities should
focus upon ends such as the ability to communicate, critical thinking,
moral reasoning, preparing citizens, living with diversity, living in a
more global society, providing a breadth of interests, and preparing
them for work.39
Bok’s list combines both skills and general ideas
related to identities (e.g., good worker, citizen). Yet, skills or virtues
only gain meaning when oriented within a particular identity. We
think and reason differently based on whether we prioritize our
human, professional, democratic, or Christian identity. Therefore, we

24
must take into consideration both individual and institutional identi-
ties when examining the moral ends of the university.
How Will Universities Handle
Identity Conflicts?
If universities do choose to engage in multiple types of identity forma-
tion and enrichment, they must address two questions: (1) How will
they deal with conflicts within moral identities? (2) How will they
prioritize the identities and the multiple moral traditions associated
with those identities when conflicts occur between traditions?
The first question proves important when undertaking single-
identity moral formation. For instance, there are different traditions
of thought regarding what it means to be a good citizen. These tradi-
tions have different moral heroes and different conceptions of the
good citizen which will always influence understandings of moral
development. Democrats and Republicans may think differently about
this type of moral development, but so do those who may think and
live outside the democratic political tradition. In the former Soviet
Union, for instance, the models of communist virtue were Lenin,
Stalin and those who died for their country (heroes of the Great
Patriotic War). A teacher from Kiev shared during one of our qualita-
tive studies of communist moral education, “The children were taught
about the moral life of Lenin, great historical leaders like Stalin and
other people. So they taught us the example of their lives and we were
supposed to imitate their lives....In every class we have the portrait
of Lenin, in the very front above the blackboard.”40
This example
points to the role that our identities, those aspects about ourselves
which define who we are and link us to larger moral traditions, play
when understanding larger concepts such as moral development or
particular virtues such as patriotism. There is no ideal of good citi-
zenship or the virtue of patriotism associated with citizenship on
which we all can agree that is divorced from our particular moral
traditions.
Second, there may be conflicts between our various identities. We
may face conflicts between being a good historian, a good athlete, a
good liberal democrat, a citizen of the world, or even a good husband
or wife. How do we order our loves? The most obvious identity ten-
sion in this area in universities today involves student-athletes. While
two types of formation may coexist, there are bound to be tensions
and conflicts that will have to be resolved in favor of one identity.

Universities always answer these questions in multiple ways both
through their practices and official literature. For instance, when an
institution such as Princeton University chooses as its motto, “In the
nation’s service, in the service of all nations,” it perpetuates a partic-
ular view of which identity or identities should be prized or promoted.
Of course, the prioritization of a particular identity poses problems
with other identities. The virtues associated with being a good
American or a citizen of the world may conflict. They may also be
different than those associated with being a good mother or a good
Christian. Few mothers want their sons to go to war, something
Benjamin Rush found problematic41
or as the movie Chariots of Fire
recounts, a Christian may view the demands of a nation-state to
impinge upon his or her moral conscience. Of course, universities can
merely leave students to sort out these conflicts themselves, which
actually reflects adherence to liberal individualism, or they can intro-
duce another level of moral identity formation. They cannot be mor-
ally neutral. “The university is not only, and maybe not even primarily,
about knowledge,” observes James K. A. Smith, “It is...after our
imagination, our heart, our desire. It wants to make us into certain
kinds of people who desire a certain telos, who are primed to pursue
a particular vision of the good life.”42
What More Human Universities Add
As mentioned above, there are universities that seek to embody a
humanistic approach to moral education. They forthrightly attempt
to provide some overall enrichment and ordering of human identities
within a particular understanding of the moral order as interpreted
by a particular tradition. These types of moral traditions contain the
following additional elements that they use to help inform and order
various human identities and their concept of the good life and
society:
A Meta-identity and Metanarrative
A meta-identity takes first priority over one’s other identities. These
identities usually link to larger metanarratives. By metanarrative we
mean a story which provides individuals with a guiding identity by
which to order and understand their other identities, purpose and
the overall story of the world.43
This knowledge then becomes the

26
basis by which they discover what qualities or virtues a person
should acquire to be fully human and what characteristics should be
associated with an ideal society. These metanarratives can be sacred,
secular or both. For instance, in America some of these metanarra-
tives may be associated with colleges identified as Catholic, African-
American, tribal, women’s, military or Jewish. Political philosophies,
such as liberal democracy or communism could supply this
metanarrative. Since moral traditions with different metanrratives
compete with each other for social and individual supremacy, we
should realize as ethicist James McClendon observes: “We exist as
in a tournament of narratives” or as we would describe them,
metanarratives.44
A Moral Orientation by Which to
Understand and Prioritize
One’s Identities
Both individuals and institutions understand their identities in light of
these larger stories. Alasdair MacIntyre writes, “[T]he story of my
life is always embedded in the story of those communities from which
I derive my identity....What I am, therefore is what I inherit, a spe-
cific past that is present to some degree in my present.”45
The same is
true for institutions. The communities associated with an institution’s
identity tell, write, and live stories that shape an institution’s identity
and become bearers of living traditions.
The understanding of identity these stories provide proves crucial
for how one understands moral issues. As Charles Taylor observes,
“Our identity is what allows us to define what is important to us and
what is not.”46
Although Taylor is speaking about individuals, the
same can be said for institutions such as colleges and universities.
Colleges and universities, by their identity as colleges and universities,
as well as their other identities (e.g., liberal arts, service academy,
state—liberal-democratic, Catholic, Jesuit, etc.) locate themselves
within an intellectual and moral order tied to various moral traditions
and their associated narratives. Moreover, since the narratives associ-
ated with various identities supply social and individual ends, they
help order an individual’s or institution’s identities. This identity
ordering proves vitally important since identity conflicts are usually
at the root of various disagreements. Does one serve one’s self, one’s
family, one’s country, one’s religion, one’s ethnic group, one’s
profession, or humanity first? What should be the most important

constituency for a university or college? What are the limits of aca-
demic freedom or religious freedom at a college or university? The
answer, of course, will depend on the situation but also upon the
moral tradition that informs and guides an individual’s or institu-
tion’s understanding of his, her, or its identity and the priority of
various identities. For example, one finds this type of moral orienting
occurs in the 1940 Statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure. The
Statement highlights the following identities as the basis for under-
standing moral obligation in this area, “College and university teach-
ers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an
educational institution.”47
It then seeks to outline the moral obliga-
tions of professors, citizens, and university employees in light of these
three identities. The orientation stems from the originators of the
statement, such as John Dewey, who largely understood moral knowl-
edge and obligations in light of professional and political (democratic)
practices and identity. Nonetheless, such an approach clearly down-
plays other identity commitments that could stem from the prioritiz-
ing of one’s faith, family, ethnicity, or humanity. To only single out
these three identities shapes the humanity and moral orientation of
those involved. This ordering of identities also proves crucial for how
one understands and orders the virtues in one’s life.
A Means of Prioritizing and Defining
Individual and Social Virtues and Vices
A group’s or individual’s primary narrative or narratives will have a
tremendous influence on the priority and understanding of various
virtues and vices, because it explicitly or implicitly contains a concep-
tion of the individual and the communal telos. This understanding of
the human telos will then influence which virtues are prized and
which vices are shunned.48
A university concerned with creating good
professionals may focus on developing virtues necessary for achieving
high standards within a particular profession. Similarly, universities
concerned with creating good citizens may prize different virtues. For
example, Soviet educators wanted to develop in students certain qual-
ities (patriotism, discipline, a strong work ethic, etc.) that would help
them reach “the new socialist future.” Since the specific virtues
imparted advanced society toward a communist ideal, one did not
find forgiveness, love for one’s enemy or mercy among The Moral
Code of the Builders of Communism that Soviet teachers were
expected to present each year.49
A survey of virtues that U.S. state
laws require or suggest that public schools teach American school

28
children demonstrates a similar bias toward virtues that sustain lib-
eral democracy instead of virtues central to other moral traditions.
While only one state requires the teaching of forgiveness, almost all of
the twenty-four states with virtue lists require the teaching of respect
and responsibility.50
Furthermore, even if a school attempts to teach students virtues
such as responsibility and respect, obscurities will remain regarding
the definitions or understandings of these virtues based on one’s tra-
dition. Tim Stafford tells of one such difference in understanding:
At the annual back-to-school night, our principal took a few minutes
to explain the theme (“Respect and Responsibility–We Can Do It
Together”) to us parents, then turned the program over to the cheer-
leaders. They illustrated respect by lip-synching a bump-and-grind
rendition of Aretha Franklin’s song of the same name. At the final
beat, they turned around, bent over, flipped up their cheerleader’s
skirts, and displayed the word RESPECT, spelled out on pieces of
paper pinned to their bottoms. I nudged my wife: “I don’t think they’ve
completely grasped the concept.”51
Some of these different understandings about virtues will not always
be so comical to those in different traditions.
Kohlberg observed this sort of difference and derided what he
called the “bag of virtues” approach because it appeared quite arbi-
trary.52
What Kohlberg failed to acknowledge was the important role
of metanarratives and moral traditions in setting forth different justi-
fications for and understandings of virtue at different levels of iden-
tity. Aristotle or Aquinas may believe the virtues perfect one’s soul
while other virtue advocates, such as the author the 1923 “Children’s
Morality Code,” may see them as having a particular social utility for
the nation (e.g., “Good Americans Control Themselves”).53
If the vir-
tues are considered apart from a particular understanding of what it
means to be fully human the virtues appear to be quite arbitrary. One
can only understand the different “bags of virtues” by tracing them to
the larger metanarrative used to prioritize and define them.
Unique Practices and Unique Moral
Principles for Common Practices
Every moral tradition develops particular rituals and practices54
that
seek to reinforce the ends, virtues, and identity prized by the tradition.

Numerous colleges and universities may use an opening orientation to
instill an understanding and reverence for the honor code. There may
even be an explanation of the practices associated with the honor
code and a ritual signing of the code by all freshmen. Similarly, both
lower and higher educational institutions employ certain rituals to
encourage the development of good citizenship. In the United States,
children in most educational settings open the day by placing their
hands over their hearts and reciting the pledge of allegiance. Attendees
at college sporting events begin such events with playing of the “Star
Spangled Banner.” Such practices reinforce the understanding that
the loyalty of all participants is intended to serve the larger collective
needs of the nation-state in which they exist. Universities with attach-
ments to particular metanarratives will also have unique practices
and rituals. For examples, religious traditions may have distinct prac-
tices that cultivate the tradition such as prayer, confession, partaking
in particular sacraments, singing worship songs, et cetera.55
In addition to creating unique rituals and practices, a moral tradi-
tion with a meta-identity and metanarrative usually provides various
rules and moral principles that guide common social practices.
Courtship, marriage, and sex are perhaps three of the practices about
which traditions disagree upon both the ends and the principles or
rules that should govern it. Thus, we should not be surprised to find
tremendous disagreement among diverse moral traditions about such
practices. Similarly, professional ethics classes are also filled with
textbooks and discussions about the goods internal to the practice of
law, business, medicine, journalism, et cetera, and the rules and prin-
ciples that should govern the practice. Some educators attempt to sep-
arate these discussions from the tournament of moral traditions but
such a separation always proves impossible.
The History of American Higher
Education: Seeking Escape from
Sectarian Humanism
As we have laid out the options for moral education in higher educa-
tion, we have not included what might be called a form of nonsectar-
ian humanism—an approach to moral education to which all
universities could possibly subscribe. The reason is that we believe no
such approach is possible. In fact, moral education in American higher
education today can be described as a tournament of moral identities,

30
narratives, and traditions in which the universities and colleges
become instruments through which individuals and communities seek
to reproduce an understanding of and commitment to a particular
understanding of the moral order (or even the nonexistence of such an
order). This reality means that humanist approaches to moral educa-
tion will always take place within a particular conception of the moral
order that others deem “sectarian.” As our next chapter will show,
various individuals and groups within colleges and later universities
have struggled against this reality and sought to overcome it. Thus,
college, and later university, leaders began the quest or search for an
elusive ideal. They dreamed of an inclusive vision of moral education
that overcomes the particularity and diversity of American thought
and practice regarding the good life and what it means to be a good
human and good society.

Chapter Two
Searching for a Common,
Tradition-Free Approach to Moral
Education: The Failed Quest
There is no “public” that is not just another particular province.
—John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom1
“Is, then, anything settled in respect to university education?” Daniel
Coit Gilman asked at his 1876 inaugural address as the first president
of the Johns Hopkins University.2
In the midst of the dramatic changes
taking place in American higher education in the late-nineteenth
century, including the development of the research university, Gilman
reassured his audience that they could find general agreement on some
issues. One of twelve settled points Gilman outlined related to the
moral task of the university. He confidently proclaimed that “the
object of the university is to develop character—to make men. It
misses its aim if it produced learned pedants, or simple artisans, or
cunning sophists, or pretentious practitioners.”3
At another opening ceremony over 131 years later, at a different
research university, another academic leader made a very different
point with equal assurance. John Mearsheimer told entering freshmen
that the University of Chicago “makes little effort to provide you with
moral guidance. Indeed it is a remarkably amoral institution. I would
say the same thing, by the way, about all other major colleges and
universitiesinthecountry.”4
OnecriticlatertriedtorefuteMearsheimer
by pointing to the various elective courses at the University of Chicago
addressing ethics.5
Mearsheimer countered that this claim missed his
central point. The basic feature of the university is that “faculty
invariably leave it to students to figure out their own answers to moral
questions.”6
As Mearsheimer pointed out, “We all might wish that
this were not the case, but universities would have to undergo far-
reaching structural changes for moral education to become central to
their mission.”7

32
The contrast between Gilman’s confident assertion of the universi-
ty’s moral purpose and Mearsheimer’s observation about the lack of
moral guidance provided by the postmodern university illuminates
one dimension of the historical changes that have taken place in
American higher education. However, Mearsheimer’s observations
about the contemporary situation are not entirely accurate. As this
book makes clear, Mearsheimer clearly overlooks numerous colleges
and universities that do make moral education central to their mis-
sion. Moreover, Mearsheimer fails to acknowledge the way in which
all universities, even his University of Chicago, perpetuate a particu-
lar moral order. Within this moral order, faculty may leave “students
to figure out their own answers to moral questions” in certain areas,
but there are also clearly areas where faculty do not. After all, univer-
sities require that students not cheat, falsify scientific results, or sexu-
ally harass other students. Clearly, we need to think about both
contemporary moral education and the history of moral education in
more sophisticated ways than the simplistic narrative Mearsheimer
proposes.
The story of moral education in American higher education would
be better understood, we argue, as a tournament of moral traditions
in which the universities and colleges become instruments through
which individuals and communities seek to reproduce an understand-
ing of and adherence to a particular moral order. Various individuals
and groups within colleges and later universities, however, have strug-
gled against this reality. They have continually fought against attempts
to provide moral education linked to a particular conception of the
moral order that seemed “sectarian.” Thus, college, and later univer-
sity, leaders began the quest or search for an elusive ideal. To appeal
to a wider audience they needed an inclusive vision of moral educa-
tion that could overcome the particularity and diversity of American
thought and practice regarding the good life. Throughout the history
of higher education, various thinkers have proposed and various insti-
tutional leaders attempted to teach and implement these inclusive
visions. Usually, they relied upon methods or foundations that they
deemed to be universal and free from a particular moral tradition.
Nonetheless, particular thinkers and communities have always risen
up to challenge these universal visions.
This chapter will briefly outline this failed quest from early
American history to the mid-1900s and it will identify some of the
historical factors that played a role in this story. Obviously, the
chapter will not be an exhaustive history. Instead, it will merely try to
illuminate the failed quest for a common, nonsectarian moral

An Approach to Moral Education 33
tradition. It also pays particular attention to how changes in the moral
identities and traditions guiding colleges and later universities altered
the focus of moral education throughout this period.
The Christian Traditions of Moral
Education in Colonial American Colleges
In 1716, Cotton Mather wrote in his diary a note to himself that he
needed to give public testimony to a subject that agitated him. The
son of former Harvard president Increase Mather ruminated that the
colonial colleges, by which he probably meant Harvard and Yale,
were spending too much time on a particular subject. He fumed
about “the employing of so much Time upon Ethicks in Colledges. A
vile Peece of Paganism.”8
One might expect this conservative Puritan
to affirm the colleges for teaching ethics. After all, the Puritan
founders of Harvard understood college, first and foremost, as a
place to shape students’ souls and character in order to form their
vision of the good life—“a life of discernment and piety, shaped by
the example of the great men of the past and enlivened by a deep and
unassailable love of God.”9
In other words, the founders of Harvard,
and later Yale and Princeton, undertook moral education primarily
in the Christian tradition. Such an education started from the pre-
mise that “every one shall consider the mayne End of his life and
studies, to know God and Jesus Christian which is Eternall life.”10
To help students fulfill this purpose, the colleges required courses in
theological ethics, chapel services, attendance at prayer times, and
various other rules related to Christian practices. Of course, Puritan
views of human nature would not have led them to be optimistic
about the results of these efforts.
What Mather ruminated about though did not pertain to the
success of their endeavors. It had to do with the challenge of how to
handle competing moral traditions. Underneath his distress lay the
question of how the Christian tradition should respond to the Greek
and Roman, or what Mather termed the “pagan,” moral traditions.
Puritan intellectual leaders did not agree about how to approach
the issue.
Actually, the Puritans were not alone in their disagreement. From
the early beginnings of universities, the relationship between Christian
and classical moral traditions often created controversy. When
the universities originated in the late-twelfth and early-thirteenth

34
centuries, ethics, or what later became known as moral philosophy,
did not exist as a separate discipline. Professors taught the subject as
part of theology (moral theology) or within grammar or rhetoric clas-
ses using classical works.11
After the rise in popularity of Aristotle’s
ethics during the medieval period, however, moral philosophy began
to receive additional attention in the curriculum. This change precip-
itated an important curricular controversy because it remained
unclear what relationship Aristotelian moral philosophy should have
to moral theology. In essence, how should the moral traditions of
Athens relate to those of Jerusalem?
Two basic types of responses to classical moral philosophy can be
found in the writings of Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther. Aquinas’
famous Summa Theologica incorporated Aristotle’s thought into his
work as incomplete truth.12
He still believed that one needed to add
the theological virtues (faith, hope, and love) and theological perspec-
tives to complete Aristotle’s work. Nonetheless, he contended and
demonstrated how Aristotle’s views could be successfully integrated
into a Christian worldview. Martin Luther took the opposite view. In
his address To the Christian Nobility he wrote:
What are [the universities] but places where loose living is practiced,
where little is taught of the Holy Scriptures and Christian faith and
where only the blind, heathen teacher Aristotle rules far more than
Christ?...his book on ethics is the worst of all books. It flatly opposes
divine grace and all Christian virtues, and yet is considered one of his
best works. Away with such books! Keep them from Christians.13
Luther’s views, it should be noted, did not characterize Protestants
as a whole. In fact, Luther’s suspicions about pagan authors and the
possibility of natural revelation were not held by his successor Philip
Melanchthon, but they would find expression in the Anabaptist tradi-
tion and in other Protestant and even Catholic thinkers.
John Calvin, the father of the Reformed movement that influenced
many Puritans, tended to follow Aquinas’ approach. He believed that
Christians could glean truth from pagan philosophers such as
Aristotle. Calvin essentially agreed with Aquinas that in creation God
bestowed humans with reason and moral capacities that allow humans
to advance in moral discoveries and knowledge without special or
supernatural grace from God. Nonetheless, both thinkers still saw
certain limits to human reason. As Fiering notes of this approach,
“...explicitly incorporated in this theory was the reservation that
recta ratio, or that ‘right reason’ by which Natural Law is known, is

inadequate, without the aid of scriptural revelation, to attain com-
plete moral truth”14
The exact nature of the limitations of Natural
Law or Common Grace also diverged among scholars within the
Puritan tradition.
At Harvard College, the most influential Puritan thinkers tended
toward Luther’s position of completely rejecting ethical teaching from
pagan traditions outside Christianity. Peter Ramus, a professor at the
Collège de France and one of the most respected thinkers in Puritan
New England, spoke harshly against teaching Aristotle’s ethics to stu-
dents, since he believed it contained falsehoods “such as that the
sources of happiness are found within oneself and that all the virtues
are in our power and may be acquired by natural means.”15
William
Ames, the most quoted Puritan thinker read at Harvard shared
Ramus’ view about Aristotle as well as a distrust of natural reason
apart from divine revelation. He argued:
The sole rule in all matters which have to do with the direction of life
is the revealed will of God....When the imperfect notions about hon-
esty and dishonesty found in man’s mind after the fall are truly under-
stood, they will be seen to be incapable of shaping virtue....Therefore,
there can be no other teaching of the virtues than theology which
brings the whole revealed will of God to the directing of our reason,
will and life.16
Ames instead proposed that ethics should be studied under the disci-
pline of theology.
Despite Ramus’ and Ames’ intellectual influence in New England,
Harvard’s first designers apparently rejected their ethical views for
something closer to Calvin’s outlook. Students not only studied theol-
ogy (which included theological ethics) and practical ethics (“a prac-
tical exposition of what the Word of God did and did not permit,
illustrated by concrete cases”)17
, but early documents indicate that
faculty taught Aristotle’s ethics and that they devoted one-third of the
second year to “Ethicks and Politicks.”18
From 1687 to 1751, ethics or
moral philosophy disappeared as a separate subject in Harvard com-
mencement theses, but moral philosophy texts, including Aristotle’s
ethics, still served as part of the curriculum.19
Thus, twelve years after
Cotton Mather’s diary entry one still finds him ruminating about
Aristotle’s ethics and the teaching of moral philosophy as a separate
subject in a way reminiscent of Luther. He complained:
It presents you with a Mock-Happiness; It prescribes to you Mock
Vertues for the coming at it: And it pretends to give you a Religion

36
without a CHRIST, and a Life of PIETY without a Living Principle: a
Good Life with no other than Dead Works filling of it....Study not
other Ethics, but what is in the Bible.”20
Mather would likely have been even more disturbed by later develop-
ments in Harvard and the other new American colleges. Moral phi-
losophy as a separate area of study eventually began to make a
comeback at Yale (1733) and later at Harvard (1751).21
The Rise of Two Additional Moral
Traditions in Early American Colleges
1. The Enlightenment Moral Tradition22
The revival of interest in moral philosophy that began to infiltrate
the colleges did not grow out of fondness for the Aristotelian ethics
criticized by Luther, Ames, and Mather. Throughout educational
institutions in the West, Aristotle’s dominance in various fields,
including natural philosophy, began to be replaced by a new “scien-
tific” moral philosophy. The new ethics, derived in part from the
new science, suggested that physical phenomena could be explained
by universal laws accessible and understood by human reason. This
new scientific view resulted in the growth of natural theology. Those
who subscribed to natural theology believed, as did almost all
Christians, that God had designed and ordered the world. What
made proponents of natural theology different was their belief that
humans who studied the laws of nature without the aid of Scripture
could still gain insight into God’s nature and will. As Julie Reuben
notes, “According to natural theology, studying ‘the tiniest of
insects’ or ‘the most significant atom of dust could ultimately lead to
greater spiritual and moral truths.”23
Therefore, the study of nature
now had supreme moral significance and could help people lead
moral lives.
The teaching of natural theology spread to moral philosophy
through thinkers such as Samuel Clarke, Francis Hutcheson, and the
third Earl of Shaftsbury. They propounded the belief that moral truth
existed as a part of a larger moral order that could be discovered by
reason. In other words, with regard to moral epistemology reason
could prove nearly sufficient to Biblical revelation. The development
of both natural theology and an independent branch of moral

philosophy would prove to be two of the most significant changes in
eighteenth century American colleges.24
Critics of these two new developments soon emerged. Yale presi-
dent Thomas Clap and eventual Princeton president Jonathan Edwards
expressed concern about how this new approach to moral philosophy
resulted in a subtle theological shift. Whereas Puritans understood
that humans had a greater need to rely and depend upon God’s reve-
lation for insight into moral truth because of our fallen human nature,
this new approach to moral philosophy rested upon a more optimistic
attitude toward the ability of human reason to discover God’s moral
truths through the study of human nature and the natural world. It
also rested upon a more optimistic understanding of the ability of
humans to choose the good.
Despite the concerns of critics, this new approach to ethics contin-
ued to grow in popularity because it satisfied most sides in that time
period’s tournament of moral traditions. For influential Deists and
Unitarians such as Thomas Jefferson, it meant religious revelation
could be understood as superfluous. Likewise, minority Christian
sects that opposed moral teachings tied to the dominant Christian
sect’s theology appreciated this common ground approach.25
Even for
the dominant Christian confessions this method did not appear to
threaten their identity, community, and tradition. As George Marsden
remarks, “This audacious yet plausible project seemed entirely com-
plementary to Christianity, since most of the moralists assumed that
such a rationally discovered ethic had to originate with the creator,
and so could not contradict truly revealed religion.”26
This new moral philosophy, in fulfillment of the fears of its critics,
soon took over the place held by theology. Frederick Rudolph claims
that “between 1700 and 1850 [the moral philosophy course] took its
place in the curriculum as ‘the semisecular way station between the
great era of theological dominance’ of the Middle Ages and the twen-
tieth century, when objective science presses so hard on all other
modes of experience”27
Harvard, Yale, William and Mary, and other
new colleges adopted the practice of making a moral philosophy
course the capstone of the required curriculum. The course, usually
taught by the college president, focused less on abstract questions and
more on practical matters concerning one’s obligation to God and fel-
low humans.28
Or as D.H. Meyer remarked in his study of such
courses that proliferated in the early eighteenth century, “It was
intended to produce not the analytical mind but the committed intel-
lect, the pious heart, and the dedicated will.”29
Such courses fit under
what we today would label moral or character formation. “The most

38
important end to be secured in the education of the young,” Francis
Wayland, the president of Brown in the early 1800s wrote, “is moral
character. Without this, brilliancy of intellect will only plunge its pos-
sessor more deeply in temporary disgrace and eternal misery.”30
Wayland himself would write one of the first American texts on moral
philosophy, The Elements of Moral Science, which would sell over
100,000 copies.31
The attempt to downplay certain contentious elements of the
Christian tradition did not necessarily involve its abandonment. “The
basis of moral authority,” Norman Fiering notes, “shifted slowly to
‘reason’ and ‘nature’ from Scripture and revelation, but it was a
Christianized reason and a Christianized nature that came to the
foreground, albeit well camouflaged.”32
When reason appeared to
show particular limitations, these thinkers often referred to Scripture
or God’s moral law. Meyer concludes his study of these American
moral philosophers by noting, “Although they dealt dutifully with the
logic of ethics, and realized that God’s naked will is not a proper basis
for a rational theory of duty, they all relied ultimately on their faith
that God’s will and the moral law coincide.”33
In other words, the
moral philosophy presented in most American colleges still drew from
the Christian tradition and was considered compatible with it.
Of course, the moral philosophy course was meant to serve only as
one part, albeit the capstone, in the overall character formation of
students. Other parts of the curriculum, such as the study of classics,
the mental discipline of studying Latin and mathematics, the evidence
of God’s design in nature presented in science classes, were meant to
foster moral formation. Likewise, college chapels, daily prayers, and
moral rules that enforced in loco parentis served to moral ends as
well. As Douglas Sloan notes, “The entire college experience was
meant, above all, to be an experience in character development and
the moral life as epitomized, secured, and brought to a focus in the
moral philosophy course.”34
2. The Democratic Identity and
Moral Tradition
Another advantage of the new approach to ethics exemplified in the
moral philosophy course is that it proved consistent with another
emerging source of moral guidance, America’s democratic tradition
of political thought. The creation of America and the Constitution
produced a national identity, communal narrative, a new political

community, and a set of moral ideals and particular practices that not
only supported a political arrangement, but also began to be used as
the justification for various forms of moral education. Noah Webster
agreed with Montesquieu that “the laws of education ought to be rel-
ative to the principles of the government.”35
He argued for an educa-
tion more suited to a democracy than a monarchy and suggested an
approach to education that would “...implant in the minds of the
American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire
them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable
attachment to their own country.”36
Understandably, the founders of
the new nation were quite concerned with the arrangement of stu-
dents’ identities and loves. Benjamin Rush would likewise argue,
“Our country includes family, friends and property, and should be
preferred to them all.”37
The emerging emphasis upon natural, rational ethics had already
proved quite compatible with the new democratic tradition. It helped
provide a source of moral authority and knowledge in an increasingly
diverse set of colonies that had different religious establishments and
even some colonies without an established religion. After the American
Revolution, the new country rejected the establishment of a national
church. As a consequence, many of the intellectual leaders sensed that
Americans needed to find common moral beliefs held by all groups.38
Views of Biblical authority differed among Christian traditions. Non-
Christians would not draw upon the Bible for their moral views. As a
result, the Bible could no longer be counted upon to provide a com-
mon source of morality in America. Finding common moral beliefs
through nature or universal reason instead of revelation avoided con-
troversial sectarian arguments about Biblical interpretation and pro-
vided a common moral foundation upon which democracy could be
built. In particular, what we call character education, but what at that
time would be labeled education in virtue, became a common moral
language and focus in the new republic.
3. The Plurality and Mixture of
Moral Traditions
Which of the three traditions, Christian, Enlightenment, or
Democratic, might be emphasized and prioritized at various American
colleges, of course, varied depending on the college and the faculty.
At Harvard and Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia, one finds
less emphasis upon the Christian tradition and more focus on the

40
other two traditions while Yale demonstrated more commitment
to the Christian tradition. Princeton, under the influence of John
Witherspoon, gave emphasis to all three with Christianity or “true
religion” serving as the foundation.39
The Princeton pattern would
prove the dominant one in the early eighteenth century colleges. In
William Smith’s study of forty-eight teachers of moral philosophy
courses, he noted that almost all of them shared a belief that God’s
moral law served as the foundation of a moral order that demanded
duty and righteousness from us.40
Second, Smith found these teachers
also looked to Scottish common-sense philosophy, propounded by
Witherspoon, for the belief that we all possess a moral sense or con-
science that could guide us even apart from revelation. Third, Smith
found a “common ground of discussion, even exhortation, until inun-
dated by the tides of extreme sectionalism, was an aggressive yet pli-
able nationalism.”41
Despite these agreements, however, various
differences always lurked underneath. As Smith notes, “Theology
was the heart of the college professor’s ethical assumptions” and sec-
tarian theological differences colored moral philosophy teachers’
views of cosmology, human nature, and history.42
The attempt to find
a “common” moral tradition only proved successful for a time until
moral conflicts and disagreements would expose its weaknesses.
The Demise of Natural Theology and
American Moral Philosophy
The merging of the Christian Natural Law, Enlightenment, and
Democratic traditions in early American colleges, especially as found
in the moral philosophy course, lasted for most of the nineteenth cen-
tury. The decades surrounding the end of the nineteenth and early-
twentieth centuries, however, saw a radical transformation in
American higher education as well as approaches to moral education.
Scholars have traced these changes as they relate to moral education
at both the curricular level and at the larger institutional level.43
What
we will point out in this brief overview is how the synthesis of the
three above mentioned traditions of moral education, especially as
combined in the moral philosophy course, deteriorated due to a num-
ber of internal and external challenges. Although reformers holding
to these traditions hoped, according to Reuben “to create new institu-
tional forms that would embody their belief that truth incorporated
all knowledge and was morally relevant, and also provide the basis for
scholarly progress,” they ultimately failed to do so.44

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instruments, and Purdy's performances are crack. I've taken down
one of Rigby's with me, as I have some idea of experimentalising;
Rigby is a very safe maker. I expect to do some damage to-day,
friend Smithe."
What a laughing-stock I should be, when this man unfolded the tale
of his being decoyed into the country by a fellow who bragged about
his preserves, upon which there wasn't a feather! Would I make a
clean breast of it? would I say that—
While this struggle was waging beneath my waistcoat, we arrived,
and there was nothing for it but to trust to luck and Billy Doyle.
When we alighted, I asked Simpson into the drawing-room, as his
bed-chamber had not yet been allotted to him. My wife was still
sulky and did not appear, so I had to discover her whereabouts.
"Simpson has arrived, my dear."
"I suppose so," very curtly.
"He is a very agreeable entertaining fellow."
"I suppose so," she snapped.
"Where have you decided on putting him?"
"In your dressing-room."
"My dressing-room?"

"Yes, your dressing-room. I wouldn't disturb the children for the
Prince of Wales."
Now this was very shabby of my wife. My dressing-room was my
sanctum sanctorum. There were my papers, letters, pipes, boots,
knick-knacks, all laid out with a bachelor's care, and each in its own
particular place. To erect a bedstead meant an utter disturbance of
my effects, which weeks could not repair, especially as regards my
papers. I expostulated.
"There is no use in talking," said my wife; "the bed is put up."
Tableau.
Whilst my guest was engaged in washing his hands before luncheon,
I held a conference with Billy Doyle with reference to the shooting,
our line of country, and the tactics necessary to be pursued.
"Me opinion is that he is a gommoch. He doesn't know much. Av he
cum down wud an old gun-case that was in the wars, I'd be
peckened; but wud sich a ginteel tool, ye needn't fret. We'll give him
a walk, anyhow. He'll get a bellyful that will heart scald him."
"But the honour of the country is at stake, Billy. I asked Mr Simpson
to shoot, promising him good sport, and surely you are not going to
let him return to Dublin to give us a bad name."
This appeal to Billy's feelings was well timed. He knew every fence
and every nest in the barony, and it was with a view to putting
things into a proper training that I thus appealed to his better
feelings.
Billy scratched his head.
"Begorra, he must have a bird if they're in it; but they're desperate
wild, and take no ind of decoyin'."

Simpson's politeness to my wife was unbounded. He professed
himself charmed to have the honour of making her acquaintance,
took her in to luncheon with as much tender care as though she had
been a cracked bit of very precious china ware; invited her to
partake of everything on the table, shoving the dishes under her
chin, and advising her as to what to eat, drink, and avoid. He
narrated stories of noble families with whom he was upon the most
intimate terms, and assured my wife that he was quite startled by
her extraordinary likeness to Lady Sarah Macwhirter; which so
pleased Mrs S. that later on she informed me that as Blossie was so
much better, she thought it would be more polite to give Mr Simpson
the blue bedroom.
I found this ardent sportsman very much inclined to dally in my
lady's boudoir, in preference to taking the field, and I encouraged
this proclivity, in the hope of escaping the shooting altogether, and
thus save the credit of my so-called preserves. But here again I was
doomed to disappointment. Mrs S., who now began to become
rather anxious about the domestic arrangements, politely but firmly
reminded him of the object of his visit, and insisted upon our
departing for the happy hunting-grounds at once. And at length,
when very reluctantly he rose from the table, he helped himself to a
stiff glass of brandy-and-water, in order, as he stated, to "steady his
hand."
I must confess that I was rather startled when he announced his
intention of shooting in his ulster. The idea of dragging this long-
tailed appendage across ditches and over bogs appeared outré,
especially as the pockets bulged very considerably, as though they
were loaded with woollen wraps; but I was silent in the presence of
one who had sought his quarry in the jungle, and shoved my old-
fashioned idea back into the fusty lumber-room of my thoughts. Billy
Doyle awaited us with the dogs at the stable gate. These faithful
animals no sooner perceived me than they set up an unlimited
howling of delight; but instead of bounding forward to meet me, as

was their wont, they suddenly stopped, as if struck by an invisible
hand, and commenced to set at Simpson.
This extraordinary conduct of these dogs—there are no better dogs
in Ireland—incensed Billy to fever heat.
"Arrah, what the puck are yez settin' at? Are yez mad or dhrunk?
Whoop! gelang ow a that, Feltram! Hush! away wud ye, Birdlime!"
"Take them away; take them away!" cried Simpson, very excitedly. "I
don't want them; I never shoot with dogs. Remove them, my man."
Billy caught Feltram, but Birdlime eluded his grasp; and having
released Feltram and captured Birdlime, the former remained at a
dead set, whilst the latter struggled with his captor, as though the
lives of both depended on the issue.
"May the divvle admire me," panted Billy, "but this bangs Banagher.
Is there a herrin' stirrin', or anything for to set the dogs this way?—it
bates me intirely."
I naturally turned to my guest, who looked as puzzled as I did
myself.
"I have it!" he cried; "it's the blood of the sperm-whale that's
causing this."
"Arrah, how the blazes cud the blood av all the whales in Ireland
make thim shupayriour animals set as if the birds were foreninst
them?" demanded Billy, his arms akimbo.
"I will explain," said Simpson. "Last autumn I was up whaling off the
coast of Greenland. We struck a fine fish; and after playing him for
three-and-twenty hours, we got him aboard. Just as we were taking
the harpoon out, he made one despairing effort and spurted blood;
a few drops fell upon this coat, just here," pointing to the inside
portion of his right-hand cuff, "and I pledge you my veracity no dog

can withstand it. They invariably point; and I assure you, Smithe,
you could get up a drag hunt by simply walking across country in
this identical coat, built by John Henry Smalpage."
This startling and sensational explanation satisfied me. Not so my
factotum, who gave vent in an undertone to such exclamations as
"Naboclish! Wirra, wirra! What does he take us for? Whales,
begorra!"
The riddance of the dogs was a grand coup for me. In the event of
having no sport the failure could be easily accounted for, and I
should come off with flying colours.
"I make it a point" observed Simpson, "to shoot as little with dogs as
possible. I like to set my own game, shoot it, and bag it; nor do I
care to be followed by troublesome and often impertinent self-
opinionated game-keepers" (Billy was at this moment engaged in
incarcerating Feltram and Birdlime). "These fellows are always spoilt,
and never know their position."
I was nettled at this.
"If you refer to——"
"My dear Smithe, I allude to my friend Lord Mulligatawny's fellows,
got up in Lincoln green and impossible gaiters, who insist upon
loading for you, and all that sort of thing. You know Mulligatawny, of
course?"
I rather apologised for not having the honour.
"Then you shall, Smithe. I'll bring you together when you come to
town. Leave that to me; a nice little party: Mulligatawny, Sir Percy
Whiffler, Colonel Owlfinch of the 1st Life Guards—they're at Beggar's
Bush now, I suppose—Belgum, yourself, and myself."

This was very considerate and flattering; and I heartily hoped that
by some fluke or other we might be enabled to make a bag.
When we arrived upon the shooting-ground, I observed that it was
time to load; and calling up Billy Doyle with the guns, I proceeded to
carry my precept into practice. My weapon was an old-fashioned
muzzle-loader, one of Truelock & Harris's; and as I went through the
process of loading, I could see that Mr Simpson was regarding my
movements with a careful and critical eye.
"I know that you swells despise this sort of thing," I remarked; "but
I have dropped a good many birds with this gun at pretty long
ranges, and have wiped the eyes of many a breech-loading party."
"I—I like that sort of gun," said Simpson. "I'd be glad if you'd take
this," presenting his, with both barrels covering me.
"Good heavens, don't do that!" I cried, shoving the muzzle aside.
"What—what—" he cried, whirling round like a teetotum—"what
have I done?"
"Nothing as yet; but I hate to have the muzzle of a gun turned
towards me since the day I saw poor cousin Jack's brains blown
out."
"What am I to do?" exclaimed Simpson. "I'll do anything."
"It's all right," I replied; "you won't mind my old-world stupidity."
My guest's gun was a central-fire breech-loader of Rigby's newest
type, which he commenced to prepare for action in what seemed to
me to be a very bungling sort of way. He dropped it twice, and in
releasing the barrels, brought them into very violent collision with his
head, which caused the waters of anguish to roll silently down his
cheeks and on to his pointed moustache. If I had not been aware of
his manifold experiences in the shooting line, I could have set him

down as a man who had never handled a gun in his life; but
knowing his powers and prowess, I ascribed his awkwardness to
simple carelessness, a carelessness in all probability due to the
smallness of the game of which he was now in pursuit. I therefore
refrained from taking any notice, and from making any observation
until he deliberately proceeded to thrust a patent cartridge into the
muzzle of the barrel of his central-fire.
"Hold hard, Mr Simpson; you are surely only jesting."
"Jesting! How do you mean?"
"Why, using that cartridge in the way you are doing."
"What other way should I use it?"
"May I again remind you that I am utterly averse to facetiousness
where firearms are concerned, and——"
"My dear Smithe, I meant nothing, I assure you. I pledge you my
word of honour. Here, load it yourself;" and he handed me the gun.
"There'll be a job for the coroner afore sunset," growled Billy.
"What do you mean, sir?" exclaimed Simpson, rather savagely.
"Mane! There's widdys and lone orphans enough in the counthry, sir
—that's what I mane," and Billy started in advance with the air of a
man who had to do or die.
Mr Simpson was silent for some time, during which he found himself
perpetually involved in his gun, which appeared to give him the
uttermost uneasiness. First, he held it at arm's length as if it was a
bow; then he placed it under his arm, and held on to it with the
tenacity of an octopus; after a little he shifted it again, sloping it on
his shoulder, ever and anon glancing towards the barrels to ascertain
their exact position. He would pause, place the butt against the

ground, and survey the surrounding prospect with the scrutinising
gaze of a cavalry patrol.
"Hush!" he suddenly exclaimed. "We lost something that time; I
heard a bird."
"Nothin', barrin' a crow," observed Billy.
"A plover, sir; it was the cry of a plover," evasively retorted the other.
"Holy Vargin! do ye hear this? A pluvver! Divvle resave the pluvver
ever was seen in the barony!"
"Silence, Doyle!" I shouted, finding that my retainer's observations
were becoming personal and unpleasant.
"Troth, we'll all be silent enough by-an'-by."
We had been walking for about half an hour, when Mr Simpson
suggested that it might be advisable to separate, he taking one
direction, I taking the other, but both moving in parallel lines. Having
joyfully assented to this proposition, as the careless manner in which
he handled his gun was fraught with the direst consequences, I
moved into an adjacent bog, leaving my guest to blaze away at what
I considered a safe distance. I took Billy with me, both for company
and for counsel, as my guest's assumed ignorance of the
fundamental principles of shooting had somewhat puzzled me.
"It's a quare bisniss intirely, Masther Jim. He knows no more how to
howld a gun nor you do to howld a baby, more betoken ye've two av
the finest childre—God be good to them!—in Europe. I don't like for
to say he's coddin' us, wud his tigers an' elephants an' combusticles,
but, be me song, it luks very like it. I'd like for to see him shootin',
that wud putt an ind to the question."
At this moment, bang! bang! went the two barrels of my guest's
gun. Billy and I ran to the hedge, and peeping through, perceived

Simpson running very fast towards a clump of furze, shouting and
gesticulating violently. I jumped across the fence, and was rapidly
approaching him, when he waved me back.
"Stop! don't come near me! I'm into them. There are quantities of
snipe here."
"Arrah, what is he talkin' about at all at all?" panted Billy. "Snipes!
Cock him up wud snipes! There ain't a snipe——"
Here Simpson, who had been groping amongst the furze, held up to
our astonished gaze two brace of snipe.
Billy Doyle seemed completely dumbfounded. "That bangs anything I
ever heerd tell of. Man nor boy ever seen a snipe in that field afore.
Begorra, he's handy enough wud the gun, after all."
I was very much pleased to find that our excursion had borne fruit,
and that my vaunted preserves were not utterly barren.
"That's a good beginning, Simpson," I cried. "Go ahead; you'll get
plenty of birds by-and-by."
"I'll shoot at nothing but snipe," he replied. "Here you, Billy, come
here and load for me."
"Let's look at the birds, av ye plaze, sir," said Billy, who began to
entertain a feeling akin to respect for a man who could bring down
his two brace at a shot. "I'll be bound they're fat an' cosy, arter the
hoighth av fine feedin' on this slob."
"They're in my bag. By-and-by," replied Simpson curtly. "Now, my
man, follow your master, and leave me to myself;" and my guest
strode in the opposite direction.
Bang! bang!

"Be the mortial, he's at thim agin. This is shupayriour," cried my
retainer, hurrying towards the place whence the report proceeded.
Simpson again held up two brace of snipe, and again plunged them
into his bag; nor would he gratify the justifiable longings of our
gamekeeper by as much as a peep at them.
"This is capital sport. Why, this place is swarming with snipe," cried
my guest, whilst his gun was being reloaded. "Depend upon it, it's a
mistake to take dogs. The birds smell them. I'll try that bit of bog
now."
"Ye'll have to mind yer futtin'," observed Billy. "It's crukked an' crass
enough in some spots; I'd betther be wid ye."
"Certainly not," said my guest. "I always shoot alone."
"Och, folly yer own wish, sir; only mind yer futtin'."
Mr Simpson disappeared into the hollow in which the bog was
situated, and, as before, bang! bang! we heard the report of both
barrels.
"Be jabers, I'm bet intirely. Thim snipes must have been dhruv from
the say, an' have come here unknownst to any wan. Ay, bawl away!
Whisht! be the hokey, he's into the bog!"
A dismal wailing, accompanied by cries for help, arose from out the
bog, where we found poor Simpson almost up to his chin, and
endeavouring to support himself by his elbows.
"Ugh! ugh! lift me out, for heaven's sake! My new clothes—this coat
that I never put on before" (his whaling garment)—"why did I come
to this infernal hole. Ugh! ugh!"
We dragged him up, leaving his patent boots and stockings behind
him. Billy bore him on his back to the house, where he was stripped

and arrayed in evening costume.
From the pockets of his ulster, which it was found necessary to turn
out for drying purposes, Mr William Doyle extracted no less than six
brace of snipe. Unfortunately for Mr Simpson the bill was attached to
the leg of one of the birds. They had been purchased at a poulterer's
in Dublin.
Mr Simpson did not remain to dine or to sleep. He pleaded a
business engagement which he had completely overlooked, and left
by the 4.50 train.
"Av all th' imposthors! and his tigers an' elephants no less, an' bears
an' algebras! An' goin' for to cod me into believin' there was snipes
growin' in a clover-field, an' thin never to gi' me a shillin'! Pah! the
naygur!" and Billy Doyle's resentment recognised no limits.
It is scarcely necessary to observe that I was not invited to meet
Lord Mulligatawny, Sir Percy Whiffler, and Colonel Owlfinch of Her
Majesty's Guards, and that my wife holds Simpson over me
whenever I hint at the probability of a visit to the metropolis.
PODGER'S POINTER
I am not a sporting man—I never possessed either a dog or a gun—
I never fired a shot in my life, and the points of a canine quadruped

are as unknown to me as those of the sea-serpent. The 12th of
August is a mystery, and the 1st of September a sealed book. I have
been regarded with well-merited contempt at the club by asking for
grouse in the month of June, and for woodcock in September. I think
it is just as well to mention these matters, lest it should be supposed
that I desire to sail under false colours. I am acquainted with several
men who shoot, and also with some who have shooting to give
away. The former very frequently invite me to join their parties at
the moors, turnip-fields, and woods; the latter press their shooting
on me, especially when I decline on the grounds of disinclination and
incapacity.
"I wish I had your chances, Brown," howls poor little Binks, who can
bring down any known bird at any given distance. "You're always
getting invitations because you can't shoot; and I cannot get one
because I can. It's too bad, by George!—it's too bad!"
One lovely morning in the month of September I was sauntering
along the shady side of Sackville Street, Dublin, when a gentleman,
encased in a coat of a resounding pattern, all over pockets, and
whose knickerbockers seemed especially constructed to meet the
requirements of the coat, suddenly burst upon, and clutched me.
"The very man I wanted," he exclaimed. "I've been hunting you the
way O'Mulligan's pup hunted the fourpenny bit through the bonfire."
"What can I do for you, Mr Podgers?" I asked.
"I want a day's shooting at O'Rooney's of Ballybawn," responded
Podgers.
Now, I was not intimate with Mr O'Rooney. We had met at the club;
but as he was a smoking man, and as I, after a prolonged and
terrific combat with a very mild cigar (what must the strong ones
be!), had bidden a long farewell to the Indian weed, it is scarcely
necessary to mention that, although Mr O'Rooney and myself were

very frequently beneath the same roof, we very seldom encountered
one another, save in a casual sort of way.
"I assure you, Mr Podgers, that I——"
"Pshaw! that's all gammon," he burst in anticipatingly. "You can do it
if you like. Sure we won't kill all the game. And I have the loveliest
dog that ever stood in front of a bird. I want to get a chance of
showing him off. He'll do you credit."
I was anxious to oblige Podgers. He had stood by me in a police-
court case once upon a time, and proved an alibi such as must have
met the approval even of the immortal Mr Weller himself; so I
resolved upon soliciting the required permission, and informed
Podgers that I would acquaint him with the result of my application.
"That's a decent fellow. Come back to my house with me now, and
I'll give you a drop of John Jameson that will make your hair curl."
Declining to have my hair curled through the instrumentality of Mr
Jameson's unrivalled whisky, I wended my way towards the club,
and, as luck would have it, encountered O'Rooney lounging on the
steps enjoying a cigar.
After the conventional greetings, I said, "By the way, you have some
capital partridge shooting at Ballybawn."
"Oh, pretty good," was the reply, in that self-satisfied, complacent
tone in which a crack billiard-player refers to the spot-stroke, or a
rifleman to his score when competing for the Queen's Prize.
"I'm no shot myself—I never fired a gun in my life; but there's a
particular friend of mine who is most anxious to have one day's
shooting at Ballybawn. Do you think you could manage to let him
have it?"
I emphasised the word "one" in the most impressive way.

"I would give one or two days, Mr Brown, with the greatest
pleasure; but the fact is, I have lent my dogs to Sir Patrick
O'Houlahan."
"Oh, as to that, my friend has a splendid dog—a most remarkable
dog. I hear it's a treat to see him in front of a bird."
I stood manfully by Podgers' exact words, adding some slight
embellishments, in order to increase O'Rooney's interest in the
animal.
"In that case, there can be no difficulty, Mr Brown. I leave for
Ballybawn on Saturday—will you kindly name Monday, as I would, in
addition to the pleasure of receiving you and your friend, like to
witness the performance of this remarkable dog; and I must be in
Galway on Wednesday."
Having settled the preliminaries so satisfactorily, I wrote the
following note to Podgers:—
"Dear Podgers,
"It's all right. Mr O'Rooney has named Monday. Be sure to
bring the dog, as his dogs are away. Come and breakfast
with me at eight o'clock, as the train starts from the King's
Bridge Terminus at nine o'clock.—Yours,
"Benjamin B. Brown.
"P.S.—I praised the dog sky high. O'R. is most anxious to
see him in front of the birds."
I received a gushing note in reply, stating that he would breakfast
with me, and bring the dog, adding, "It's some time since he was
shot over; but that makes no difference, as he is the finest dog in
Leinster."

Knowing Podgers to be a very punctual sort of person, I had ordered
breakfast for eight o'clock sharp, and consequently felt somewhat
surprised when the timepiece chimed the quarter past.
I consulted his letter—day, date, and time were recapitulated in the
most businesslike way. Some accident might have detained him.
Perhaps he preferred meeting me at the station. I had arrived at this
conclusion, and had just made the first incision into a round of
buttered toast, when a very loud, jerky, uneven knocking thundered
at the hall door, and the bell was tugged with a violence that
threatened to drag the handle off.
I rushed to the window, and perceived Podgers clinging frantically to
the area railings with one hand, whilst with the other he held a
chain, attached to which, at the utmost attainable distance, stood, or
stretched, in an attitude as if baying the moon, the fore legs planted
out in front, the hind legs almost clutching the granite step, the eyes
betraying an inflexible determination not to budge one inch from the
spot—a bony animal, of a dingy white colour, with dark patches over
the eyes, imparting a mournfully dissipated appearance—the
redoubtable dog which was to afford us a treat "in front of the
birds."
"Hollo, Podgers!" I cried, "you're late!"
"This cursed animal," gasped Podgers; "he got away from me in
Merrion Square after a cat. The cat climbed up the Prince Consort
statue. This brute, somehow or other got up after her. She was on
the head, and he was too high for me to reach him, when I got the
hook of this umbrella and——"
At this moment the hall-door opened, and the dog being animated
with an energetic desire to explore the interior of the house,
suddenly relaxed the pull upon the chain, which utterly unexpected
movement sent Podgers flying into the hall as though he had been
discharged from a catapult. My maid-of-all-work, an elderly lady with

proclivities in the direction of "sperrits," happened to stand right in
the centre of the doorway when Podgers commenced his
unpremeditated bound. He cannoned against her, causing her to reel
and stagger against the wall, and to clutch despairingly at the
nearest available object to save herself from falling. That object
happened to be the curly hair of my acrobatic friend, to which her
five fingers clung as the suckers of the octopus cling to the crab. By
the aid of this substantial support she had just righted herself, when
the dog, finding himself comparatively free, made one desperate
plunge into the hall, entwining his chain round the limbs of the lady
in one dexterous whirl which levelled her, with a very heavy thud, on
the body of the prostrate Podgers. Now, whether she was animated
with the idea that she was in bodily danger from both master and
dog, and that it behoved her to defend herself to the uttermost
extent of her power, I cannot possibly determine; but she
commenced a most vigorous onslaught upon both, bestowing a kick
and a cuff alternately with an impartiality that spoke volumes in
favour of her ideas upon the principles of even—and indeed I may
add, heavy-handed justice.
I arrived upon the scene in time to raise the prostrate form of my
friend, and to administer such words of consolation and sympathy
as, under the circumstances, were his due. His left eye betrayed
symptoms of incipient inflammation, and his mouth gave evidence of
the violence with which Miss Bridget Byrne (the lady in the case) had
brought her somewhat heavy knuckle-dusters into contact with it.
"Bringin' wild bastes into a gintleman's dacent house, as if it was a
barn, that's manners!" she muttered. "Av I can get a clout at that
dog, I'll lave him as bare as a plucked thrush!"
At this instant a violent crash of crockery-ware was heard in the
regions of the kitchen.

"Holy Vargin! but the baste is on the dhresser! I'll dhress the villian!"
and seizing upon a very stout ash stick which stood in the hall, she
darted rapidly in the direction from whence the dire sounds were
proceeding.
"Hold hard, woman!" cried Podgers. "He's a very valuable animal. I'll
make good any damage. Use your authority, Brown," he added,
appealing to me. "She's a terrible person this; she'd stop at
nothing."
Ere I could interpose, a violent skirmishing took place, in which such
exclamations as "Take that, ye divvle! Ye'll brake me chaney, will ye?
There's chaney for ye!" followed by very audible whacks, which, if
they had fulfilled their intended mission, would very speedily have
sent the dog to the happy hunting-grounds of his race. One well-
directed blow, however, made its mark, and was succeeded by a
whoop of triumph from Miss Byrne and a yell of anguish from her
vanquished foe.
"Gelang, ye fireside spaniel! Ye live on the neighbours. How dar' ye
come in here? Ye'll sup sorrow. I'll give a couple more av I can get at
ye."
Podgers rushed to the rescue, and, after a very protracted and
exciting chase, during which a well-directed blow, intended by
Bridget for the sole use and benefit of the dog, had alighted on the
head of its master, succeeded in effecting a capture. This, too, was
done under embarrassing circumstances; for the dog had sought
sanctuary within the sacred precincts of Miss Byrne's sleeping
apartment, beneath the very couch upon which it was the habit of
that lady to repose her virgin form after the labours of the day; and
her indignation knew no bounds when Podgers, utterly unmindful of
the surroundings, hauled forth the dog.
"There's no dacency in man nor baste. They're all wan, sorra a lie in
it!"

At this crisis Podgers must have developed his pecuniary resources,
for her tone changed with marvellous rapidity, and her anger was
melted into a well-feigned contrition for having used her fists so
freely.
"Poor baste! shure it's frightened he is. I wudn't hurt a fly, let alone
an illigant tarrier like that. Thry a bit o' beefsteak in regard o' yer
eye, sir. Ye must have hot it agin somethin' hard; it will be as black
as a beetle in tin minits."
Podgers uttered full-flavoured language. I looked at my watch and
found that we could only "do" the train. Having hailed an outside car,
the breakfastless Podgers seated himself upon one side, whilst I
took the other, and after a very considerable expenditure of hard
labour and skilful strategy, in which we were aided by the carman
and Miss Byrne, we succeeded in forcing Albatross (the pointer) into
the well in the middle. I am free to confess that I sat with my back
to that animal with considerable misgivings. He looked hungry and
vicious, and as though a piece of human flesh would prove as
agreeable to his capacious maw as any other description of food. It
was his habit, too, during our journey, to elevate his head in the air,
and to give utterance to a series of the most unearthly howlings,
which could only be partially interrupted, not by any means stopped,
by Podgers' hat being pressed closely over the mouth, whilst
Podgers punched him a tergo with no very light hand.
"That's the quarest dog I ever seen," observed the driver. "He ought
to be shupayrior afther badgers. He has a dhrop in his eye like a
widdy's pig, and it's as black as a Christian's afther a ruction."
"He's a very fine dog, sir," exclaimed Podgers, in a reproving tone.
"He looks as if he'd set a herrin'," said the cab-man jocosely.
"Mind your horse, sir!" said Podgers angrily.

The driver, who was a jovial-tempered fellow, finding that his
advances towards "the other side" were rejected, turned towards
mine.
"Are you goin' huntin' wid the dog, sir?" he asked.
"We're going to shoot," I replied, in a dignified way.
"To shoot! Thin, begorra, yez may as well get off the car an' fire
away at wanst. There's an illigant haystack foreninst yez, and—but
here we are"—and he jerked up at the entrance to the station.
The jerk sent Albatross flying off the car, and his chain being
dexterously fastened to the back rail of the driver's seat, the luckless
animal remained suspended whilst his collar was being unfastened,
in order to prevent the not very remote contingency of strangulation.
Finding himself at liberty, he bounded joyously away, and, resisting
all wiles and blandishments on the part of his master, continued to
bound, gambol, frisk, bark, and yowl in a most reckless and idiotic
way. It would not be acting fairly towards Podgers were I to
chronicle his language during this festive outbreak. If the dog was in
a frolicsome mood, Podgers was not, and his feelings got
considerably the better of him when the bell rang to announce the
departure of the train within three minutes of that warning.
Finding that all hopes of securing the animal in the ordinary way
were thin as air, Podgers offered a reward of half-a-crown to any of
the grinning bystanders who would bring him the dog dead or alive.
This stimulus to exertion sent twenty corduroyed porters and as
many amateurs in full pursuit of Albatross, who ducked and dived,
and twisted and twined, and eluded detention with the agility of a
greased sow; and it was only when one very corpulent railway
official fell upon him in a squashing way, and during a masterly
struggle to emerge from beneath the overwhelming weight, that he
was surrounded and led in triumph, by as many of his pursuers as
could obtain a handful of his hair, up to his irate and wrathful master.

Each of the captors who were in possession of Albatross claimed a
half-crown, refusing to give up the animal unless it was duly
ransomed; and it was during a fierce and angry discussion upon this
very delicate question that the last bell rang. With one despairing
tug, Podgers pulled the dog inside the door of the station, which was
then promptly closed, and through the intervention of a friendly
guard our bête noire was thrust into the carriage with us.
Having kicked the cause of our chagrin beneath one of the seats, I
ventured to remark that in all probability the dog, instead of being a
credit to us, was very likely to prove the reverse.
"It's only his liveliness, and be hanged to him," said Podgers. "He
has been shut up for some time, and is as wild as a deer."
He would not admit a diminished faith in the dog; but his tone was
irresolute, and he eyed the animal in a very doubting way.
"His liveliness ought to be considerably toned down after the rough
handling he received from my servant, and——"
"By the way," Podgers went on, "that infernal woman isn't safe to
have in the house; she'll be tried for murder some day, and the
coroner will be sitting upon your body. Is my eye very black?"
"Not very," I replied. It had reached a disreputable greenish hue,
tinged with a tawny red.
At Ballybricken Station we found a very smart trap awaiting us, with
a servant in buckskin breeches, and in top-boots polished as brightly
as the panels of the trap.
"You've a dog, sir?" said the servant.
"Yes, yes," replied Podgers, in a hurried and confused sort of way.
"In the van, sir?"

"No; he is here—under the seat. Come out, Albatross!—come out,
good fellow!" And Podgers chirruped and whistled in what was
meant to be a seductive and blandishing manner.
Albatross stirred not.
"Hi! hi! Here, good fellow!"
Albatross commenced to growl.
"Dear me, this is very awkward!" cried Podgers, poking at the animal
in a vigorous and irritated way.
"Time's up, sir," shouted the guard, essaying to close the door.
"Hold hard, sir! I can't get my dog out!" cried Podgers.
"I'll get him out," volunteered the guard; and, seizing upon the whip
which the smart driver of the smart trap held in inviting proximity, he
proceeded to thrust and buffet beneath the seat where Albatross lay
concealed. The dog uttered no sound, gave no sign.
"There ain't no dog there at all," panted the guard, whose exertions
rendered him nearly apoplectic, proceeding to explore the recesses
of the carriage—"there ain't no dog here."
A shout of terror, and the guard flung himself out of the carriage,
the dog hanging on not only to his coat-tails, but to a portion of the
garment which their drapery concealed. "Take off your dog—take off
your dog. I'll be destroyed. Police! police! I'll have the law of you!"
he yelled, in an extremity of the utmost terror.
Podgers, who was now nearly driven to his wits' end, caught
Albatross by the neck, and, bestowing a series of well-directed kicks
upon the devoted animal, sent him howling off the platform, but
right under the train.

The cry of "The dog will be killed!" was raised by a chorus of voices
both from the carriages and the platform. Happily, however, the now
wary Albatross lay flat upon the ground, and the train went puffing
on its way; not, however, until the guard had taken Podgers' name
and address, with a view to future proceedings through the medium
of the law.
"I had no idea that the O'Rooneys were such swells," observed my
companion as we entered, through the massive and gilded gates, to
the avenue which sweeps up to Ballybawn House. "Somehow or
other, I wish I hadn't fetched Albatross, or that you hadn't spoken
about him;" and Podgers threw a gloomy glance in the direction of
the pointer, who lay at our feet in the bottom of the trap, looking as
if he had been on the rampage for the previous month, or had just
emerged from the asylum for the destitute of his species.
"He won't do us much credit as regards his appearance," I said; "but
if he is all that you say as a sporting dog—of which I have my
doubts—it will make amends for anything."
Podgers muttered something unintelligible, and I saw dismal
forebodings written in every line of his countenance.
Mr O'Rooney received us at the hall-door. Beside him crouched two
magnificent setters, with coats as glossy as mirrors, and a bearing
as aristocratic as that of Bethgellart.
"Where's the dog?" asked our host, after a warm greeting. "I hope
that you have brought him."
I must confess that I would have paid a considerable sum of money
to have been enabled to reply in the negative. I muttered that we
had indeed fetched him, but that owing to his having met with some
accidents en voyage, his personal appearance was considerably
diminished; but that we were not to judge books by their covers.

As if to worry, vex, and mortify us, Albatross declined to stir from the
bottom of the trap, from whence he was subsequently rooted out in
a most undignified and anti-sporting way.
The expression upon Mr O'Rooney's face, when at length the animal,
badger-like, was drawn, was that of an intense astonishment,
combined with a mirth convulsively compressed. The servants
commenced to titter, and the smart little gentleman who tooled us
over actually laughed outright.
Albatross was partly covered with mud and offal. His eyes were
watery, and the lids were of a dull pink, imparting a sort of maudlin
idiotcy to their expression. His right ear stood up defiantly, whilst his
left lay flat upon his jowl, and his tail seemed to have disappeared
altogether, so tightly had he, under the combined influence of fear
and dejection, secured it between his legs.
"He's not very handsome," observed our host laughingly, "but I dare
say he will take the shine out of York and Lancaster, by-and-by,"
pointing to the two setters as he spoke.
This hint was enough for Albatross, as no sooner had the words
escaped the lips of O'Rooney than, with a yowl which sent the rooks
whirling from their nests, he darted from the trap, and, making a
charge at York, sent that aristocratic animal flying up the avenue in a
paroxysm of terror and despair; whilst Lancaster, paralysed by the
suddenness of the onslaught, allowed himself to be seized by the
neck, and worried, as a cat worries a mouse, without as much as
moving a muscle in self-defence.
This was too much. I had borne with this hideous animal too long.
My patience was utterly exhausted, and all the bad temper in my
composition began to boil up. I had placed myself under an
obligation to a comparative stranger for the purpose of beholding his
magnificent and valuable dogs scared and worried by a worthless
cur. Seizing upon a garden-rake that lay against the wall, I dealt at

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Christianity And Moral Identity In Higher Education Perry L Glanzer

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