in backpacks for a green pen. Rachel is a nursing major who told her professor during an office visit that she wants to work in a developing country with a missionary organization. She is one of two very dissimilar homeschooled students in that section of ancient world lit. Although well-prepared for university work in terms of knowledge, Dr. Shaw suspects her imagination is semi-dormant and her critical sense unexercised. The professor thinks her family must be of the “Christ-against culture” mindset in which holiness means to retreat from the world and to circle the wagons in self-defense, rather than to go forth as salt and light into the world. Her demeanor is confident and her countenance open, but a yawning chasm exists between her and even her Christian women classmates. Her modest, comfortable jean skirt, long simple hairstyle, and cotton-print blouse advertise an utter indifference to fashion from which the more fashionable Christian girls seek to distance themselves. The professor approves her desire to live in a developing culture, for she is relationally handicapped in her own. In the mountains of Ecuador or the highlands of Kenya, nobody will notice she is clueless of her own culture, and her concern for them will prompt her to learn about their culture. Dr. Shaw especially likes Rachel and sees the potential that this course has to enrich her intellectual life.
If only Crystal had some of Rachel’s indifference to pop culture and some of her self-confidence. Crystal is poured into jeans two sizes too small. Some of her extra pounds billow out in the broad gap between her hip-huggers and the bottom of her tight tank top. To her teacher, Crystal seems desperate to conform to worldly expectations that are, according to Jean Kilbourne, “killing her softly.” Her immodesty advertises her need to be attractive to men. Her identity seems dominated by her sexual appeal. Dr. Shaw hopes the literature will draw Crystal, who is a worker, into new interests. Servat Kalpar, who sits next to Crystal, sympathizes with her classmate from inside her hijab; “These poor, loose American women have lost their self-respect.”
Servat is a pre-med student from Pakistan. Her first language is Urdu, and her exposure to literature very limited, so this course will be a major challenge for her. Servat is worried, but not her professor. Dr. Shaw recognizes a diligent and serious student when she sees one, and she knows that Servat will be in her office when she needs the help she’s been sincerely offered. The A expected in her science classes isn’t likely, but this active worker will no doubt buzz past a C.
Servat acquired her student visa with her uncle’s help. Rasheed Uncle is a professor in the medical school at Chapel Hill, and he advised her father that her application at his medical school would be strong with good grades from Blue Ridge. She knows her father in Multan considers a Pakistani medical doctor trained in America the best hope for her future, and that her father will accept her uncle’s advice on a suitable husband. So, even though Servat has never met her father’s brother, she sees Rasheed Uncle as controlling her future. She plans to stay with her uncle’s family in Chapel Hill over Thanksgiving break, and she’s nervous about the visit. Servat wisely traded quizzes with Theodore Mullins, whose editing comments will be concise and helpful.
Nora Shaw knew she had one of the best students of her career when Theodore Mullins came into her office on the second day of the semester. He was the other homeschooled student, but of the “Christ transformer of culture” variety. It wasn’t just that he had already read some of the works on the syllabus, but that he had heard of most of them and felt left out of conversations he wanted to be a part of because he had not read them all. From the few questions she had asked him about his background, she determined that Dorothy Sayers’ lost tools of learning had been not only recovered, but sharpened and used extensively. Even his first reading quiz reflected deep understanding of classical logic and rhetoric. His vastly superior academic background had produced no recognizable hubris. He was curious and qualified, humble and eager. She sensed in him a commitment to the truth that would make him one of the few students courageous enough to exemplify the definition of a good student that she and Donald Drew had hammered out over tea so many years ago. She went over that definition in her mind applying it to Theodore, or Ted as he asked to be called.
He had sound reasons for being in school and a worthy motive for study coupled with a capacity for self-discipline and accuracy in thought and methods. He did not confuse excellence with elitism. He was not necessarily possessed of a high IQ (although she suspected Ted’s was sky high), but he did have the inclination and the will to sit down in a library and apply himself to difficult studies. He studied the influential people of history, in their original writings or as close to that as possible, and did not parrot slogans he thought that person might have said. He examined reality with integrity. He followed an argument where it led, accepted evidence for what it was worth, and took imaginative leaps, but not beyond the strict barrier of truth. This was a young man who would productively use what others have written as a springboard to dive into the sea of his own ideas. He did not dissent without understanding what he was challenging. He was utterly indifferent to intellectual popularity or fashion, and he inflexibly denied that truth was decided by counting votes. Deep down he knew that his education did not stop off campus, but continued all day and throughout his lifetime. He was aware that he would gradually develop growth in understanding. Dr. Shaw sensed he would never lose his sense of wonder, and that he was aware of his own humble but significant place in God’s purposes.
Ted was one of her few local students. He grew up in a large extended family on a mountain in nearby Cross Valley. The professor and her husband, Luke, had visited a church called Poplar Bible Fellowship where she had heard of the extended family. After his home-high school, Ted wasn’t sure what he should study or where he should study it. So he and his old grandmother decided that he would live at home, study a year at Blue Ridge for minimal expense and major in philosophy for broad background. Ted rode to campus from Mullins Mountain with his Uncle Hank, who taught in the computer science department.
Dana Blevin traded quizzes with Andrea on his right. Dana’s particularly tight low-riding jeans, unbuttoned yellow polo, stylish, slip-on Italian shoes, up-combed hair, and earring certainly had a gay look. Dana was an intelligent worker bee; Nora would have no trouble making him feel accepted. Some texts were friendly with homoeroticism; some were not. Gilgamesh and Enkidu came in early in the course and offered an opportunity for frank and respectful conversation on that subject. Dana was especially receptive to poetic language and artistic in temperament. He would be an outstanding student.
Matthew Okonkwo traded quizzes with Travis Williams, both of whom, Dr. Shaw knew, would bring a strong perspective to class conversation. Matthew was a towering basketball player from Edo State in Nigeria. He was in no danger of taking his opportunity at Blue Ridge for granted, for his athletic scholarship had most likely been his ticket out of extreme poverty. English was his fourth language, and his genius was on the court. Ancient literature would take work, but his profound thankfulness for just being where he was produced a respect, for the class, the professor, his classmates, and the subject, that made him extremely teachable.
Travis Williams would definitely add an important perspective to the class. He was a confident and outspoken atheist and an active member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Dr. Shaw had already noted the strong influence of Bertrand Russell and George Bernard Shaw upon Travis’ thought. He was an evolutionary biology major with a reverence for Richard Dawkins. Ancient and medieval world literature looked continually at religions and worldviews. Travis would remind the class of the logical possibility that they may all be wrong.
Chapter 3
For the Lord your God is God of gods . . .
—Deuteronomy 10:17
“. . . The temple of the great goddess Artemis may be despised and her magnificence destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worship.” Now when they heard this, they were full of wrath and cried out, saying, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” So the whole city was filled with confusion . . .
—Acts 19:27–29
“I’ll remind you, editors,”
