I should start by saying that I am not just giving a random opinion; rather, I am responding to a particular question. The question is, “Does Covenant's core curriculum elevate Western culture and thought to a problematic degree?”
Before the question is even asked, it is important that we understand the purpose of our core curriculum. Covenant College is a liberal arts college; as such, the college offers a broad range of perspectives to equip its students so that they can engage with a world that is filled with diverse opinions, beliefs, and genuine insights. This is what our core is supposed to facilitate.
Moving on from that to the actual question. I assume this question is aimed mostly at the two CHOW classes that are required. The college requires these courses because we live in a Western country, and after graduation, the majority of us will continue to live in America. America did not occur without a historical connection to certain ideas and practices. CHOW is designed to learn about, and engage with, the history of ideas that have shaped our nation. CHOW functions as a course that reveals to us the opinions and beliefs that underpin the culture that we move and have our being in.
Due to this, I do not believe our core elevates Western culture to a problematic degree. The class does not exist to convince us that Western heritage is correct. We read Marx, Freud, Kant, Plato, and some Catholic stuff. The college does not subscribe to Marxist policies, Freudian anthropology, Kantian ethics, Platonic metaphysics, or Catholic doctrine. The authors are taught because these are philosophies that have shaped Western culture.
Now here’s the real issue: these philosophies, for good or ill, have had a major influence on most of us. Christianity has been shaped by Plato in problematic ways; many of us believe that our economic position has the greatest influence over our happiness and even our morality; we have suffered the fallout of Kant’s idea that objects, and consequently reality itself, can never be fully known, etc.
How are we ever to cast off the erroneous ideas of the West if we are never told about them? How are we to engage with neighbors who hold these assumptions if we are left ignorant of the assumptions? How are we to help the American church when it buys into godless doctrines by passive assimilation to Western culture if we are ignorant of the ideas?
We are like the proverbial fish—it doesn’t know it is wet because its entire life was lived out in water. Most of us in the West have been raised in a society that has embedded our thinking with Western assumptions: radical individualism, a strict divide between the spiritual and material, an elevation of mathematics and scientific knowledge over religious and spiritual claims, a derivation of morality from individual rights and personal happiness, etc.
CHOW is an opportunity, not a guarantee, for a student to engage with and step outside of Western ideas and see them for what they are: the inventions of men and women. There may be common grace insights, but these are ideas articulated and propagated by fallible, finite, and fallen individuals. Until we carefully examine the origins our society’s ideas, we are unable to step outside of them and are doomed to believe they are the only reasonable description of reality.
That brings us to the real issue, the responsibility of the student. I have been in CHOW study groups enough to know that students usually only care to think about the ideas enough to answer exam questions. We as students must accept the responsibility to think, pray, and discuss ideas in an honest pursuit of truth if we are to escape from the pitfalls of any cultural ideas. Trust me, every culture has its errors.