Tolkien on Ave Maria School of Law

(Well, not exactly Tolkien on Ave Maria School of Law, but close . . .)

With a Wall Street Journal opinion piece (and a response from the Dean) as a catalyst, Ave Maria School of Law and the looming move to Florida has become a hot topic on several blogs. You can read some of the discussions here, here, here, here, here, and here (I'm sure you can find plenty of other sites if you still thirst for more).

I won't share my opinion of the move, which is surely irrelevant to you compared to the prospect of Tolkien's thoughts. For that, we turn to an interesting article on Christian Colleges from Touchstone Magazine:

In The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien gives us a picture of a place dramatically out of step with the “real world.” His Rivendell is an elvish haven, a place of safety where the constantly harried heroes of the story can recover from their wounds and prepare themselves for the tests and trials ahead of them. It is not a place for them to live indefinitely. After leaving Rivendell they will face horrible evil and endure constant peril. But they will be able to draw from their experience and be nourished by the conviction that there is an ideal worth defending and attaining to, because they have seen it.

And so it is with college. The argument that Christian colleges are not enough like the real world is like suggesting that Rivendell fails the heroes by not being enough like Mordor. A Christian college is properly an elevated thing, a city on a hill, a marked departure from the world around it. The strength of Rivendell keeps the evil things at a distance for a time, allowing the heroes to sojourn, to grow strong, and to make sound plans. To listen to the critics of Christian colleges, you would think that the very strength of Rivendell is itself sinister, enfeebling the heroes and needlessly delaying the inevitable.

Take it for what you will. There are many other issues involved in this controversy--some known, some probably forever unknown. I suppose a Lord of the Rings comparison doesn't provide much solace for the students and alumni who are witnessing their beloved school plagued with such uncertainty and turmoil. But, if the students are expected to remain in a state of (blissful?) ignorance, at least Rivendell is a more promising destination than Jonestown.