The Liberating Arts

A new generation of teachers envisions a liberal arts education that is good for everyone.

Why would anyone study the liberal arts? It’s no secret that the liberal arts have fallen out of favor and are struggling to prove their relevance. The cost of college pushes students to majors and degrees with more obvious career outcomes.

A new cohort of educators isn’t taking this lying down. They realize they need to reimagine and rearticulate what a liberal arts education is for, and what it might look like in today’s world. In this book, they make an honest reckoning with the history and current state of the liberal arts.

You may have heard – or asked – some of these questions yourself:

• Aren’t the liberal arts a waste of time? How will reading old books and discussing abstract ideas help us feed the hungry, liberate the oppressed and reverse climate change? Actually, we first need to understand what we mean by truth, the good life, and justice.
• Aren’t the liberal arts racist? The “great books” are mostly by privileged dead white males. Despite these objections, for centuries the liberal arts have been a resource for those working for a better world. Here’s how we can benefit from ancient voices while expanding the conversation.
• Aren’t the liberal arts liberal? Aren’t humanities professors mostly progressive ideologues who indoctrinate students? In fact, the liberal arts are an age-old tradition of moral formation, teaching people to think for themselves and learn from other perspectives.
• Aren’t the liberal arts elitist? Hasn’t humanities education too often excluded poor people and minorities? While that has sometime been the case, these educators map out well-proven ways to include people of all social and educational backgrounds.
• Aren’t the liberal arts a bad career investment? I really just want to get a well-paying job and not end up as an overeducated barista. The numbers – and the people hiring – tell a different story.

In this book, educators mount a vigorous defense of the humanist tradition, but also chart a path forward, building on their tradition’s strengths and addressing its failures. In each chapter, dispatches from innovators describe concrete ways this is being put into practice, showing that the liberal arts are not only viable today, but vital to our future.

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Contributors include Emily Auerbach, Nathan Beacom, Jeffrey Bilbro, Joseph Clair, Margarita Mooney Clayton, Lydia Dugdale, Brad East, Don Eben, Becky L. Eggimann, Rachel Griffis, David Henreckson, Zena Hitz, David Hsu, L. Gregory Jones, Brandon McCoy, Peter Mommsen, Angel Adams Parham, Steve Prince, John Mark Reynolds, Erin Shaw, Anne Snyder, Sean Sword, Noah Toly, Jonathan Tran, and Jessica Hooten Wilson 

In this series of lively, absorbing, and accessible essays, the contributors invoke and dismantle all the chief objections to the study of the liberal arts. The result is a clarion call for an education that enables human and societal flourishing. Everyone concerned about the fate of learning today must read this book. —Eric Adler, author, The Battle of the Classics 
In our era of massive social and technological upheaval, this book offers a robust examination of and an expansive vision for the liberal arts. As a scientist who believes that education should shape us for lives of reflection and action, I found the essays riveting, challenging, and inspiring. I picked it up and could not put it down. —Francis Su, author, Mathematics for Human Flourishing 
At their best, the humanities are about discerning what kinds of lives we should be living. But humanities education is in crisis today, leaving many without resources to answer this most important question of our lives. The authors of this volume are able contenders for the noble cause of saving and improving the humanities. Read and be inspired! —Miroslav Volf, co-author, Life Worth Living 

The Liberating Arts is a transformative work. Opening with an acknowledgment of the sundry forces arrayed against liberal arts education today, this diverse collection of voices cultivates an expansive imagination for how the liberal arts can mend what is broken and orient us individually and collectively to what is good, true, and beautiful. —Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author, Jesus and John Wayne

A welcome addition to the long tradition of advocacy for the liberal arts. It brings together argument and delight, uniting the format of apologetics with the spirit of celebration. …An appropriate gift not only for those who are already “in the fold” of the liberal arts community but also for friendly skeptics and potential converts. —Current Magazine
This collection suggests that the liberal arts provide an education that meets the highest aspirations of the human person, an education aimed at human flourishing. It is difficult to put a price on that. What we need are administrators who are willing to offer the opportunity to aim higher. —The Wall Street Journal
These writers offer an expanisve vision for the arts, rooted in companionship and gratitude for good gifts that are still — despite all of the evident losses — with us and continuing to impart life. The book manages to be both a no-nonsense manifesto and a convivial exchange of great ideas. —ClassicalEd Review
An excellent book for parents, alum, and donors as a resource in their support of the humanities in higher education. …As long as there are humans who seek knowledge and wisdom as the underlying flow that energizes their lives, we will continue to rely on the stories of those who lived a life well observed: the goal of a liberal arts education. —Englewood Review of Books

The clarity and unity of purpose of the essays in The Liberating Arts is evident and powerful, while the variety of essays makes it accessible to a range of audiences. The personal reflections draw in readers who are engaged less by academic argument and more by a person’s story. ...This book will be very useful for educators in several contexts (K- 12 programs, alternative education like prison education, higher education, etc.) seeking to persuade students and their parents of the value of the liberal arts. —International Journal of Christianity and Education

The clarity and unity of purpose of the essays in The Liberating Arts is evident and powerful, while the variety of essays makes it accessible to a range of audiences. The research-based essays provide cogent, persuasive, well-supported arguments; the personal reflections draw in readers who are engaged less by academic argument and more by a person’s story. —International Journal of Christianity and Education

Jeffrey Bilbro is an editor at Front Porch Republic and an associate professor of English at Grove City College. He is the author of several books, most recently Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News. He lives in Grove City, Pennsylvania. Jessica Hooten Wilson is the inaugural Seaver College Scholar of Liberal Arts at Pepperdine University and a senior fellow at Trinity Forum. She is the author of several books, most recently The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints. David Henreckson is an assistant professor and Director of the Weyerhaeuser Center for Christian Faith and Learning at Whitworth University. He is author of The Immortal Commonwealth, a recipient of the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award. He lives in Spokane, Washington.

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