{"id":992,"date":"2017-11-08T00:24:38","date_gmt":"2017-11-08T00:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=992"},"modified":"2021-03-18T07:33:03","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T07:33:03","slug":"the-world-through-the-lens-of-christ-a-conversation-with-dr-ken-myers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2017\/11\/08\/the-world-through-the-lens-of-christ-a-conversation-with-dr-ken-myers\/","title":{"rendered":"The World through the Lens of Christ\u2014A Conversation With Dr. Ken Myers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michaela Swedberg<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Dr. Ken Myers is a studied individual, having taught at numerous institutions over the course of his career. He is currently head of the History Department and Chair for the Division of Humanities at Southern Wesleyan University. Dr. Myers plans yearly trips abroad for SWU students (the picture above comes from a previous excursion), and his 2018 trip will take SWU students to France.<\/em><\/p>\n

ME: Firstly, what sparked your interest in history?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MYERS:<\/strong> Well\u2026 [looks away in thought] I was interested in it when I was younger and didn\u2019t know I was.\u00a0 As a child growing up and on through high school I read a lot.\u00a0 I read every book in the library in my small school.\u00a0 And I was interested in two areas.\u00a0 Science, and I didn\u2019t realize it, but I was interested in history as well.\u00a0 So that was sort of the undetected current that was there. Then when I was in college I became a Christian in my freshman year and it really changed my life, changed my thinking, changed – well, I say changed my interests, but probably just brought forth interests that I didn\u2019t realize were there. So as an undergraduate I majored in English because I couldn\u2019t think of what else I wanted to do and I liked writing and reading and so on.<\/p>\n

And then I felt the Lord calling me to Seminary so I went to Seminary after college. [I] wasn\u2019t sure if I was going to be called into the pastoral ministry or anything of that sort, but I just knew I wanted to study theology and learn more about the faith and all that.\u00a0 So I did.\u00a0 And while I was at Seminary it was kind of interesting.\u00a0 Some of the courses I was the most interested in were my church history classes.<\/p>\n

Then I graduated from Seminary, got married, we moved half way across the country, and started jobs and all that.\u00a0 And I found myself on my lunch breaks reading a lot of newspapers, magazines, articles, and so forth.\u00a0 I was very interested in politics and very interested in the roots of how things got the way they were.\u00a0 And so eventually I realized that my real passion was the intersection of politics, religion, and history, and how one\u2019s worldview affects the political position one takes. Of course, all of that starts with one\u2019s faith and how you answer the question: Who is God? Everything flows downstream from that. And I eventually realized that what I was really called to do was to teach history at the college level. I had taught high school English for a time and loved teaching but I didn\u2019t care as much about teaching at the high school or middle school level. So I went back to graduate school, studied history, and the rest is<\/em> history!<\/p>\n

ME: How did you become a professor of history?\u00a0 What prerequisites did you acquire?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MYERS:<\/strong> The minimum requirement teach history at the college level is a Master\u2019s Degree.\u00a0 But, because it is competitive, you would do better to earn a doctorate. There are some schools that state right out that they want someone with a PhD. So I said: If I\u2019m going to do this, then I\u2019m going to go all the way; and by that time I had a wife and child, and my wife was a real trooper for packing up and moving back into an apartment and supporting me while I went through Grad school. So that was a wonderful thing. I went all the way through and did the doctorate and started teaching.<\/p>\n

ME: When did your faith first start to impact your teaching?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MYERS:<\/strong> As far as teaching history? Right from the start. As I was going through graduate school (I went to two big, secular state universities), and as I was learning and absorbing what was being offered there, I was also evaluating, analyzing, and seeing how it fit with the Christian faith and looking where the Christian worldview either accommodates this or is in opposition to it. So the whole time I was in graduate school I was evaluating and kind of putting the pieces together to see how these different ideas or schools of thought fit or didn\u2019t fit within a Christian worldview.<\/p>\n

ME: Describe your teaching style; specifically, how you incorporate Christianity into your lessons.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MYERS:<\/strong> Well, my teaching style: I used rutted methods, but my natural method is sort of a modified lecture, sort of a lecture dialogue where I\u2019ll present to the class for a while and then present questions and invite the students to react to those questions and to dialogue about different ideas and different events and causes and effects over time. So that\u2019s my preferred style, but I also use group discussions, debate format, have student presentations. So I use a variety of different things.<\/p>\n

You also asked how I incorporate my faith into my teaching? Well, I try to say to myself and to the students in every class is: How would God think about this? How should we, as Christians, think about this?<\/p>\n

So how does God see what we\u2019re talking about here? And if He is truly sovereign, if he is truly overall and interested in all then you really can\u2019t say that God\u2019s not interested in World War I or that God\u2019s not interested in the Great Depression or whatever. There is<\/em> God\u2019s view of that. So what we want to try to see is to see those things as He would see them and interact with them as He would. That\u2019s my approach.<\/p>\n

ME: Have you ever felt that it was necessary to modify your methods in the classroom in regards to a student\u2019s beliefs that conflicted with yours?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MYERS:<\/strong> Well I have always tried to be accommodating to a variety of different perspectives, opinions, and so forth. I had been, particularly in graduate school, in situations where to be a Christian or to come from a traditional viewpoint or traditional perspective was different from my professor and a lot of the students, as a matter of fact. I\u2019ve been in those classes where traditional ideas were not tolerated, were silenced, and it was made clear that they weren\u2019t welcome. I resolved then that I was never going to create that kind of situation in my classroom. But also, stepping back into the broader view of things, its not really education if you\u2019re not inviting questions and different points of view.\u00a0 [Education] is entertaining ideas, evaluating them, and seeing which one is true. If all you\u2019re getting is one perspective then that\u2019s not a real education. That\u2019s programming and propaganda. So from the start, I\u2019ve tried to make it clear that I do have [my] perspective on things, but I always present the different schools of thought about different issues and topics. That\u2019s the true essence of an education, and I hope that\u2019s what the students are getting in my classroom.<\/p>\n

ME: You said you\u2019d been a student in an environment where religion could not be discussed in the classroom. Have you ever been a teacher in that environment? How did it affect your teaching and your faith?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MYERS:<\/strong> The first school I taught at was a secular school.\u00a0 Now, it was a secular school in the south so the surrounding community was more accepting of the Judeo-Christian perspective, but it was still a state secular school. I didn\u2019t start class with prayer like I do here, I didn\u2019t overtly seek to tie whatever we were talking about into a Christian perspective, but also I didn\u2019t run away from those ideas when they were a natural part of what we were studying. That gave me an opportunity to explore those aspects as much as I explored anything else and I think that\u2019s the difference. We might not start class with prayer at a secular school, and I\u2019m not going to openly witness to my faith in a secular class, but neither am I going to shy from it. The approach is to consider and approach religion and faith with as much attention and emphasis as you do economics, as you do politics, as you sociological factors, or whatever else because it is a legitimate part of history. Too many secular historians downplay it, leave it out, and ignore it. You are not being fair and honest with history when you do that.<\/p>\n

ME:<\/strong> Do you think religion should be discussed more often in public schools? Should religious language between students and teachers be more or less censored?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MYERS: <\/strong>Oh, I don\u2019t think it should be censored at all. Neither do we want to indoctrinate. Public schools should not be a place for indoctrination or propaganda or anything of that sort of thing for any cause. But going back to what I consider to be the very essence of education, it should be the free offering and examination of all kinds of different ideas. If we can\u2019t do that, then we\u2019re not really seeking truth. What we\u2019re doing then is promoting one particular perspective, and that perspective may have flaws, may not be true, and, in fact, if it\u2019s leaving things out then it isn\u2019t true.<\/p>\n

So, I don\u2019t think there should be censoring of religious speech between teachers and students, between students and students, or any of that. I think teachers should be taught to allow students to present any legitimate idea or any idea within reason and to consider it. That includes religious ideas. Not that they\u2019re propagating anyone or promoting religious propagation but if you\u2019re truly a seeker of truth then you\u2019re going to consider all ideas and evaluate them.<\/p>\n

ME: Were there any specific professors, authors, or other significant figures in your life that encouraged you to pursue your career?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MYERS:<\/strong> When I first became a Christian in the spring of my freshman year I ran into and became friends with an older man who was in college. He was married and had a family, but they were living in the married housing while was getting his college degree. He was an older Christian, probably eight to ten years older than me. I came to know him and his wife and he really became the Paul to my Timothy. One of the things I learned from him was to see all of life through the lens of your Christian faith, in other words your Christian worldview. Now, that was something that had not been openly taught to me before. My mother was a Christian and she had a big influence on me, but she had not taught me that, precisely. I think he focused on that a lot more, and as I moved forward I kept that with me. Later, when I realized that history was what I was really called to, I took that same approach. How is it that God would see this? How do we put on that lens and see the world through those eyes? I feel that we should see history the same way.<\/p>\n

ME: Excluding instances involving Christianity, what do you think was your greatest accomplishment as a history professor?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MYERS:<\/strong> I can think of two things I am proud of in my career. One was at the previous school I was at, Southeastern University in Florida. When I got there they had just a bare whisper of a history program. I would say it was a joke but it was too sad to be a joke. They had cobbled it together with courses from other programs. They had the history of math in there and the history of psychology\u2014it really wasn\u2019t a history degree. I went there as the only history professor in a school that was rapidly growing. I had to wrestle with, not my department chair, but the provost of the university to get him to agree to let me restructure this program and set it up for growth. So we did that and we brought in some additional faculty, and when I left that university the history program was much better, much bigger, was growing by leaps and bounds, and it was something you could be proud of. So I was pleased with that.<\/p>\n

The second thing was when I came here. This history program was in better shape, but there were some things that needed to be changed to update it and to really bring it to where it needed to be.<\/p>\n

So, I guess in my career, those are the two things that I\u2019ve been proudest of. Some historians are great book writers, some are very active in professional organizations, some are called to do different things, but the Lord has called me to build, apparently.\u00a0 I\u2019m a builder. I\u2019ve built two programs and that\u2019s what I\u2019m proud of.<\/p>\n

ME: What about any disappointments you have encountered as a history professor?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MYERS:<\/strong> Disappointments\u2026 I\u2019ve not experienced any big disappointments. Maybe there are things that I\u2019ve not been able to do yet that I would like to do. There has been some good growth in our program here and I would like to see more. Not just in terms of numbers of students but also in terms of course offerings, and I would like to see more of our history majors go on to grad school. So those are some of the \u2018not yet accomplished\u2019 things that I\u2019d like to see done. As far as disappointments, there aren\u2019t many. Part of it\u2019s being pleased with what we\u2019ve been able to do, but part of it, too, is seeing it not as disappointments but just as things we haven\u2019t been able to do yet.\u00a0 I think we will do them, though.<\/p>\n

ME: As a Christian professor, what was your greatest accomplishment?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MYERS:<\/strong> Well, I think I would name two things just right off the top of my head. One is developing an approach that genuinely helps students\u2014and I\u2019ve seen evidence of this\u2014that genuinely helps students to see history from a Christian perspective and not to just see it as something divorced from any kind of perspective. It\u2019s not just a pile of data that doesn\u2019t mean anything. So that\u2019s one accomplishment, truly getting students to see things from a Christian perspective.<\/p>\n

Another\u2014I\u2019ll name three even though I only said there were two\u2014another is having students who say, \u201cYou know, I never really liked history before but after taking your class I\u2019ve changed my mind.\u201d You can close the door and go home after that; you\u2019ve done something!<\/p>\n

Then the third thing is that I\u2019ve had a few students along the way, even at my secular school where I taught, who, because of what we talked about in class and the witness that I had who had come to faith in Christ and they would come and tell me, \u201cWe talked about this in class and I just had this sense that God was calling me.\u201d It was a tremendous thing!<\/p>\n

ME: As a Christian professor, what were your biggest disappointments?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MYERS:<\/strong> I think\u2014and again the last chapter hasn\u2019t been written on this and its an ongoing situation\u2014but that in recent years, the last ten years or so, I have seen in Christian schools, in general, an acceptance of worldly ideas and secular ideas that Christians formerly would not have accepted and would not have embraced. It\u2019s also worrisome to me because it seems to me that we are watering down our faith when we do that. We are letting the world shape us rather than having the opposite impact, which is what we\u2019re supposed to do and that is to transform our culture through Christ. So that has been something that has worried me and disappointed me, but like I said, I don\u2019t think the end of that story has been written yet. It\u2019s not something that is over and done but it does worry me and I\u2019d like to see us reverse that trend.<\/p>\n

ME: How do you plan to continue incorporating your faith into your teaching?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MYERS:<\/strong> I\u2019m a big ideas kind of guy. I\u2019m a big picture kind of person, and I like to step back and say, \u201cAlright, what are the big organizing principles here? What are the big approaches?\u201d and then let those principles guide what I do. That\u2019s where I came up with my particular idea about incorporating my faith, and that is to ask the question: how would God think about this? How would God see this situation?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve used that this point and I think it works pretty well. I\u2019m going to continue using it in the future. I have not seen yet where that approach doesn\u2019t work, and I\u2019ve not seen a situation that tells me it has to be changed. To one degree or another, it\u2019s been effective, so I guess the answer is that I\u2019m going with that and continue doing it that way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michaela Swedberg Dr. Ken Myers is a studied individual, having taught at numerous institutions over the course of his career. He is currently head of the History Department and Chair […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344,343],"tags":[82,373],"class_list":["post-992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-events","category-religious-studies","tag-conversations","tag-swu-stories","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=992"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1043,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992\/revisions\/1043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}