MTP 53: Jonathan Pettigrew, Part 2, Going Deep with Worldviews & Professors’ Evangelism

In this episode of Meet The Prof, Shane Hartley continues with part 2 of his interview with Dr. Jonathan Pettigrew, a professor in the School of Human Communication at Arizona State University. They go deep discussing how Dr. Pettigrew integrates his Christian faith into his academic career, mentors students in their spiritual journeys, and addresses worldview presuppositions within the academic environment.

Read more about Jonathan Pettigrew online: https://meettheprof.com/view/professors/entry/jonathan-pettigrew/

Contact: jpet@asu.edu

Books mentioned: 

Professing Christ, Christian Tradition and Faith-learning Integration in Public Universities  https://a.co/d/dgIU8k6

Family Communication and the Christian Faith: An Introduction and Exploration  https://a.co/d/6t2kvQa

Imagine Heaven   https://a.co/d/jbQKHeE

Main Takeaways:

• Presuppositions shape our theories and interpretations (only 33% of professors believe in God with no doubts)
• 23% of professors are atheist while only 7% of general population are atheist
• His two-fold approach to campus ministry
  • Personal: mentoring students, home dinners, spiritual conversations
  • Theoretical: building biblical frameworks into theories
• “Double working” to honor Christ—academic job and gospel ministry
• Winsomely weaving Scripture into conversations
• Trusting the Holy Spirit for long-term impact

Keywords: Christian professors, integrating faith and academia, mentoring students spiritually, worldview presuppositions, faculty evangelism, academic service in church, faith-based community involvement, theoretical frameworks, spiritual guidance in education, Christian worldview in teaching.

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Transcript

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Hey there, my name is Elijah. I go to Patrick Henry College, west of DC. And my question is, how do you as a professor integrate your faith and your church specifically with the teaching that you do in classrooms? How do you bring students into the church? Can you share a story of that? Hey everybody, welcome to Meet the Prof. My name is Shane and my friend, Spence and I take questions from college students, and we ask them to Christian professors. And our goal is to encourage Christ-centered conversations on the college campus. So we're so glad you're here. Thanks for joining us. And I am especially excited now to tell you about a couple of things. For one, you're about to hear my interview with Jonathan Pettigrew. Jonathan is a professor in the School of Human Communication at Arizona State University. But a second thing I'm really excited about is that Spence and I are trying some new things. So what's gonna happen is in the next week here, we are going to invite a small group of Christian professors around the country to join us during a live interview And we're gonna record the whole thing. and the time that it should be released, if everything goes well, is April the 8th. well, let's jump in now. Here is my interview with Jonathan Pettigrew. Let's talk about presuppositions. Will you explain from your perspective why are presuppositions so important? Yes, so I teach often an intro to theorizing class for our doctoral students. And that class will, the discipline that I'm in will often start with ontology, epistemology, and axiology. they're starting with these assumptions about reality and they're starting with assumptions that in some ways skirt around some of the even more fundamental assumptions that we might make about all of reality. So as Christians and indeed most people groups around the world start with the assumption that there's a spirit realm. That's a common assumption around the world. In the US academy specifically, only about 30 % of professors start with the assumption that there is a spiritual realm. Right? I think it was around 2004, this book came out and it was the kind of the religion of the professorate and they, Neil Gross and Simmons are the authors and they said that, About 33 % of the professorate at all the different types of institutions say, I believe God exists and I have no doubts. And then there's about 7 % of the general population in the US that are atheist and about 21%, 23 % of the professorate that are atheist. So already we have three times the amount of atheists as professors than in the general population. Some people. Yeah. So some people say that argument shows that that more educated you are, the less you believe in God, because you believe that that's like you've learned better. Right. And that's a, an argument that's made, but it also could just be an argument that's made that if we start with the presuppositions and we're in a system that reinforces those same presuppositions and that's trying to replicate itself, that are naturalistic presuppositions that say there is no such thing as a, as a spirit realm. then the people that are going to succeed in that environment are those that agree with those presuppositions. So those would be two explanations of the same data points, right? But the point that I'm trying to make is the fundamental beliefs that we bring into our understanding of theory. And my field is as a social scientist, understanding human behavior and action, like those suppositions about how humans are and about how we can come to know anything and about what are the values and guess guiding frameworks, ethical frameworks that we use to relate as humans or to behave. Those presuppositions then have a trickle effect or a cascading effect into all of the other aspects of theorizing that we do. So at a... At the base level, at the most fundamental assumption that we could make about reality as Christians is that God exists. If we start there, right, if that's the most basic assumption that we can make, like a presuppositional level, then we can build from that assumption, explanations of why there's evil in the world, right? We can build from that assumption, explanations of people bear the imago Dei like the image of God is is imprinted on all humans because God was Creator, right? God exists, therefore there was a first cause, that initiated all of existence, all of creation. And whether you believe that's creationism or whether you believe that's like an evolutionary process, we started with the same basic assumption: God is. Alternatively, if we start with the basic assumption God is not, then all of those potential explanations have to disappear. Hmm. to explain all of life with everything that's inside the natural realm, because there's nothing transcendent outside of the natural realm, like God exists, right? And so it shifts our ability, presuppositions shift our ability to interpret anything that we can understand from any of the fields of science or fields of philosophy or fields of literature, et cetera, et cetera. So that shapes everything. Yeah, sort of like whatever glasses we have on, we're seeing things through that. And it's like our worldview or... Can you share any examples of where you've seen God maybe open a conversation for you, talking with a student about their own worldview, their presuppositions, and maybe saw them, make some steps more towards faith? Yeah. So there was a cool story recently that I'll just share some of. Maybe about a year ago, I was teaching a qualitative methods class to some doctoral students. So I met with this one student. And we started having a conversation that really, really, ramped into like the, person's life, like her, her experiences recently and things like that. And so I said, you know, this is fascinating and I'd love to be able to talk to you more about this. It's well outside the scope of this class. Would you be interested in coming over and meeting my wife and having a dinner and we could, we could chat about this some more. And she was open to it. she came over and had dinner with our family. And then the kids went upstairs, went to bed. And then we spent maybe two hours talking about life and about, in some ways for her, recent conversion to Christianity that had happened through that series of events. And so it was just such a thrilling opportunity to be able to talk through and really provide a perspective on some of the things that she had experienced. in her life that was a spiritual perspective. You know, it's Paul writing and he says, you know, the spiritual things are spiritually appraised and carnal things are carnally appraised. And he says, but we have the mind of Christ. And so I think that's one of the things we get to do as Christian professors is we like that worldview assumption thing, right? We have an assumption set that allows us to explain things in a totally different way or a totally different light. And so with that student specifically, I... I won't share all the details, but it was just such a lovely experience to be able to do just what you're saying, like coach her and talk about worldview issues, talk about presuppositions and interpret life experiences that really, I think, encouraged her faith and brought her closer to knowing God and living that out in her daily experience. So I, I, um, I'm the director of our doctoral program and have been for the past two and a half years or three years. Um, and so when I was interviewing for that position with my director in the school, um, the director, said, well, I wasn't sure I was going to say this, but you're a person of faith. and you're open about your faith, because I published these two books, right? And she said, I think in our ethos as a school, if we want to be inclusive of people, if we want to include multiple viewpoints, it even includes people like you and your viewpoint. And so I just really appreciated that. But I think that it's created opportunities just to be explicit that This is my viewpoint. am a Christian and I do operate from this worldview perspective. And so a lot of times in conversations with colleagues or students outside, but as a Christian, here's my view. And I appreciate the generosity of some of my colleagues that gives that a space at the table. Well, you know we take questions from college students. And so I'd like you to take a listen to this question from Eli. Hey there, my name is Elijah. I go to Patrick Henry College, west of DC. And my question is, how do you as a professor integrate your faith and your church specifically with the teaching that you do in classrooms? How do you bring students into the church? Can you share a story of that? Thanks Elijah, that's an amazing question. So I'll share a story. Maybe several years ago, I met with our college pastor at our church and I asked, well, how could I serve you? And he said, he told me two things, one that was really surprising and one that was a little easier. But the first thing he told me is, I'm trying to write a book, can you help me? I said, okay. I've published a book so I could, I've got some experience with that. I could help with that. And that's been an amazing journey. I think he's going to finish it this year, which will be super cool. His name's Adam Reed and he has a lot of good things to say. So, so that's one, one way that church and university kind of overlapped. And I didn't expect that, but the way he asked the second thing my college pastor asked is he said, could you, could you teach, we're going to do a college retreat. in a few months, could you teach at it and teach about the authority or like how we can trust the Bible? I said, okay. can I invite a student to do it with me? And he said, yes. And so I ended up, was amazing to work with this person, but I ended up inviting a student and we got together and we, we met maybe three or four times and we created a Google doc and created this kind of group project where we were developing a, hour- ish long seminar on. why we could trust the Bible. And for this particular student, it was amazing to work with him because he was an honor student at Arizona State and really thoughtful. And had really gone through a period where he was asking some of those questions himself. And so had looked up some apologetics and started to dive into that personally to come to that conclusion. And for me, it was the most fun in terms of working with a student and integrating that church experience with the student experience. I'll share one more, maybe a couple of years after that, there's another honors student who went to the church who reached out and said, I have to do an honors thesis. I have to do my honors project. And I'm wondering if you could supervise it. And so as a faculty member, I can do that. And so he and I ended up meeting and we... had lots of conversations as he started to develop a research project around, really around family and around how parents are socializing their kids and how Christianity plays in to their understanding of marriage. And so he developed a research project for his honors thesis. And I got to be the supervisor for that, but it happened through that church connection. So I don't know, there might be, you you talk to a dozen faculty, you might find a dozen ways to integrate church involvement with the roles at the university, but those have been some meaningful ones for me. That's great. Can you think of other subjects that faculty might consider teaching within their church as well? Maybe they can combine it with student input, seminars or things. Yeah, so this is slightly different than in the church, but there's an organization called St. Vincent de Paul in Phoenix, and it's a Catholic affiliate. It's not affiliated officially with the Catholic Church, but it's a Catholic organization. they taught, I developed an intervention called Hablemos Familia, which means let's talk family. And so they implemented that intervention this last year. I worked with them as a community partner to implement Hablemos Familia in Spanish and in English. And so it's It's church related in the sense that the intervention teaches families how to parent adolescents. And for the population that they're working with, it was meaningful and the populations I've worked with on my research side of things. It's been an effective intervention to improve the kind of things we want to improve with parents and lessen the things that we don't want to see with parents. So that's been positive. So maybe faculty could look for opportunities in their community for nonprofits that are faith-based even, and there may be some things that overlap with their own discipline that could help. think so. I think, you know, one of the things that, at least in the R1 University, our job is research, teaching, and service. And so like finding ways to make service, service to the church or service to these faith-based nonprofits, I think that's within our prerogative as faculty to do things like that. I know all departments are different, all universities are different with this, but can you see any potentials for faculty getting credit for service by serving local churches in some way? Yeah. Yeah. mean, I, well, who knows if, if I, don't get promoted or anything because I have this on my CV, but I list all those, like a guest lecture at the retreat. list that on my CV. I list these partnerships with the community organizations. And so some universities value that and some don't and some fields value that and some don't. And so it's going to be, you know, department to department, but, in terms of what counts as credit. And I will say on the flip side of that, some senior faculty, some administrators that I've known have advised me not to list things like the book, Professing Christ on my vita because they say that you can do those kinds of things, but they don't count. And so I think that there's a real trade-off and there may be some wisdom in saying, well, I can do these things, but I'm not going to seek credit for it. It's going to be always a side project. Yeah. What did you decide? Have you included the book, Professing Christ, on your CV? Yeah, I do. But you know, I have colleagues that have their books and the cover of their books on emails that they send out, like on every email, it's like part of their signature. And I haven't done that. But I've thought about it. Well, will you go 30,000 feet up in the air with me for a minute think about the church as a whole what are thoughts you have about how the Christian faculty could really serve God's church, could make a difference, could be a part of building God's kingdom in their community and in the world even? I think that's a question that people aren't really talking about much. At least I'm not seeing a lot of people talk about that, but I think that's really an important one. There's some, I will say there's some like Christian university presidents, I think that I've heard that are considering some of those types of questions. Like how do we serve the state? How do we serve the church? Here's the way I view it is that there's really two tracks. One is the interpersonal, relational, like I'm gonna help mentor students. I'm going to make a difference in like some of the ways that we've talked about. Like I'm gonna integrate my faith into my teaching. I'm gonna include readings that incorporate a Christian worldview into my set of readings that I require all my students to go through. I'm going to do some of those things at the individual level. And so I think that's one track where faculty really can serve the church and serve the body of Christ, the kingdom really, really specifically through advancing the kingdom forcefully, advancing the kingdom through relationships. And that's one student at a time. I think that's the philosophy that drives almost all campus ministries. That's what I see. The second level is really at that theoretical level. So I'm not talking about the presuppositional level. That's a debate for philosophers. But one step down from that then becomes at this theorizing level. When I'm specifically developing theories about family communication, am I incorporating what we know from scripture? Am I incorporating what we know from from a biblical worldview into those theories or into those ways of understanding and explaining and predicting how people are going to behave. So this is an aside, but I this conversation with a colleague recently and this colleague was saying, you know, I don't think our theories incorporate intentional malevolence into them. Like they have a positivity bias, but we don't actually believe that people lie or people do bad behavior on purpose, like that they manipulate things. And like, well, of course you don't believe that, you know, I'm thinking in my head, of course that's not a belief because you're operating from a philosophy of like Rogerian humanism that says people are basically good. But the Christian worldview actually says, sin is a thing. It's real. Yeah, we're fallen. And so, so all of our communication is tainted by that. And so I, I think some theories do a great job of kind of accounting for the turbulence or the inevitable disrupture of relationships that are going to happen, right? And then some theorizing doesn't because it's operating from a philosophy that people are basically good or that the world is progressively becoming better and smarter, et cetera, et cetera. And so those, at that theoretical level, I think is a second tier. So we've got advance the kingdom on lines of relationship individually and what I can do. And then I think at this ideological level we have, or this theoretical level, we have another opportunity where the works of theology and the works of theory in fields can really merge and integrate in a way that... that leaves a set of theories that the next generation of scholars can then pursue, expound, develop. And in as much as we articulate the presuppositions of those theories, we do a service to Christendom, right? To the kingdom where we operate from these explicit presuppositional beliefs that God is or that humans are basically fallen or that you know, all relationships are going to experience turbulence or that selfishness is a driving factor in most behavior, you know, or that, you know, selfishness exists and grace, right? There's common grace. So it's not all a negative story, but there's this mixed bag. so in as much as we articulate those and make explicit those kind of theoretical presuppositions, then we leave behind this intellectual capital that can pass on to the next generation of scholars within our field. How would you advise believing faculty to decide how explicitly to present their biblical worldview? as they're trying to be winsome and yet faithful to a Christian worldview? Yeah, I think there's a couple things. There's this story when Paul was being arrested and beaten and he's taken and like, imagine, you know, I imagine him being drug up by these Romans and he starts speaking to the, the Romans that are receiving him in Latin. And they're like, wait, wait, you speak Latin? And he's like, yes. And then the next verse says, and then Paul addressed the crowd in Hebrew. Right. And so like this multilingual, this ability to transition based on who you're talking to. think it's really important. And so for faculty, we have to understand what's considered credible, what's considered evidence, what's considered kind of hegemonic or dominant within our fields. And we have to be able to speak to that. And so I think there's a both and kind of process where we can speak Latin or Greek or Hebrew. Like we were able to transition around the languages depending on the audiences that we're talking to. So I think that's a model for us. And I would say, you know, to faculty in their different fields, there's exigencies that you're going to have to address. There's kind of dominant paradigms that you're going to have to speak to. And you don't have to self-censor. So as a Christian, I can say this and as much as there is academic freedom, which isn't always true, or in as much as there is a heterodox academy, then we can present those viewpoints that are not orthodox or orthodoxy within our fields to advance a field, to advance thinking, and then to offer something to the next generation of theorists and researchers. you. And are there any other thoughts that you have on any of this subject or especially any words of encouragement for other faculty? And we took a pretty heady turn, huh? We're talking about all these deep thoughts. I don't know, I think at the end of the day, there's so much, like we were talking about earlier, that's like, the Holy Spirit be your guide and follow what he's leading in each, you know, to translate to us what's important or what we can follow or what models we can integrate. So I think the, mean, I've got a lot of thoughts on on the importance of faculty, on the importance of training Christian faculty, on the rigors of doing double work. I think some people have called it. My wife always said, just have to do double, right? So if my books don't count for my tenure, or they didn't, right? What I was working on then didn't count for tenure. I'm already tenured now, but I just had to do double. It was a side project. And then I had to do my main work that was going to get me tenure. You know what I mean? Like so. So but I think that's I think that's an approach that Christ is worthy of, right? That we can really be we could be theologically trained and we can be trained within our discipline. We can we can do both. And as Christian scholars, like fundamentally who we are as Christians, then we we deserve like Christ deserves our continual sanctification. Christ deserves our continual growth in him and we can progress in our discipline to become, you know, whatever, like move up the ladder within the career or have more influence in the academy or something like that. Could that double work even include for a faculty member working on their PhD still to go to seminary? So a future faculty member would. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for us, what we ended up doing is as a professor, I took a, we're part of our church's discipleship training school. And so was, it was like once a week night classes for four hours. And we had, we read through the Bible in nine months and we read about a book every three weeks or something on the sides. I was like, we're just taking this theological training class at the same time. And then, you know, we got to go to the middle East. for a whole summer and live with our family, with the church, advising interns for the summer, which is incredible. There's all kinds of opportunities, I think, that supporting the church, that would have been a way to talk about supporting the church, huh? Elijah, there's other ways. but getting to really, really support that. that missions training side of things through the church was incredible. And we loved getting to do that and really support and encourage and train like and pray with and train how to pray with these interns through a, it was like a summer internship that we got to do in a different country. Yeah. But here's the way. When I was a campus minister, I'd say it is we obey God and we impact eternity. obey God, and impact eternity. So if faculty are really doing the double work in the sense that they're learning to hear the voice of God and then acting on what they're hearing from the Lord, we just trust the results to the Lord that what we do is going to continue. It's going to echo into eternity in as much as it impacts people's lives. So I have one more question for you, It has to do with a faculty member's opportunities for evangelism. And Bill Bright has been known for saying, successful witnessing is simply taking the initiative to share Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and leaving the results to God. Well, is that even possible for a professor? Yeah, so I had a conversation yesterday with a colleague and in the midst of the conversation, I was able to say, well, as a Christian, I have hope that those who've died will live on into eternity, especially those who've died in Christ, that they go to heaven. And then I was able to share that I read a book called Imagine Heaven, which is like a have you read that book? Yeah. Yeah. And so I shared that I found a lot of comfort when my father died by reading Imagine Heaven, which offers this qualitative analysis of people who've died and then come back to life. It's a really incredible book. And so for this person who is a social worker, is like a, like a thoughtful social scientist, a clinician in some ways, being able to share that perspective is, is evangelism, right? I mean, we could define it at least as sharing good news and Offering, you know, I'm not I'm not walking through the four spiritual laws or something like that I'm not going on the Roman road, but I am definitely weaving quotes of scripture into my everyday conversations of people and that I think that that has an opportunity to impact other people and then for some I can invite them into a conversation that's deeper and say this has nothing to do with class but maybe would you be interested in meeting for coffee and talking about this idea or talking about life or talking about your experiences or something like that? And I've been able to do some things like that in the past. That's so visionary, so motivating. thanks for sharing that Yeah, no, I think I wish I could do more. I wish I, I wish it happened more often because as I look back over like five years and say, yeah, maybe like once a year, twice a year, there's people that I feel like I get to make that sincere connection with. And some of those relationships are ongoing, right? But, but I feel like maybe I wish I could do it more. So you're encouraging Shane, I appreciate it. Wow, I appreciate you too. yeah, Jonathan, this is so rich. Thank you so much for the time together. Thanks for getting heady with us and really thinking about things for other faculty members too. I really appreciate this. No, I appreciate what you do and I hope it serves whoever gets to hear it. Well, before we go, please click on subscribe or follow or like. and that helps us get the word out to others. And share this with a professor that you think it would encourage. We hope that we can get more professors to come on like this. So if you're a Christian professor, please consider going on meettheprof.com and sharing with us there some of your personal journey, how Jesus has rescued you. so until next week, we hope this encourages you to have a Christ-centered conversation on your college campus.