The Global Faculty Initiative infuses Christian thought into the world’s research universities by equipping faculty to integrate their faith with their scholarship and academic practices.
Needs
The Global Faculty Initiative responds to widely expressed Needs
- For universities to hear a Christian voice as they shape their missions and practices
- For scholars and students to “think Christianly” or to “develop a Christian mind” or “to integrate faith and learning”
- For Christian scholars to develop theological capacities for engagement in their fields
- For theologians to engage more directly with the leading edges of scholarship in research universities
- For a heightened presence of Christian faculty in research institutions worldwide
- For new, high-quality, readily-accessible theological content to stimulate Christian engagement with scholarly frontiers of research, practice and writing
- For students to learn that Christian thought can bring fresh perspective on their studies
- For the church and society to know that Christian thought speaks to the issues they confront
Goals
To meet these needs the Global Faculty Initiative pursues mutually supportive goals:
- Inspire Christian academics to ‘think Christianly’ about the leading edges of their scholarship
- Stimulate the development of new theological content and fresh rethinking of disciplinary work
- Create scholarly circles of Christian faculty at the heart of the university
- Build global communities of Christian scholars in disciplinary and cross-disciplinary fields
- Call senior faculty to new chapters of Christian service in research universities
- Create effective channels of influence on the church and society
Impacts
Through the development of theological understanding and disciplinary encounters, the Global Faculty Initiative seeks to yield impacts where enriched Christian thought will:
- Cultivate the inner integrity of the individual academic - bringing into an integral relationship the scholarly and faith dimensions of the person
- Influence an academic's scholarly agenda, research, writings and teaching
- Shift a scholar's field through agenda-setting, or new concepts, theories and research methods, whether explicitly or implicitly in the name of our faith
- Shape how scholarship is done - through teaching, mentorship, collaboration
- Expand the presence of faith-infused dialogue and orientations within a scholar’s academic institution and fields
- Re-imagine the mission of the university to transform what it is for
- Bring the leading edges of Christian thought to shape the church and wider society