Left2Right

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Posted by: Tony Vila

I think this highly overestimated the role of analytical discussion in public life, let alone of analytical discussion about religion. Pundits are routinely turned from one side of economic or foreign policy debates to the other side. They do have aome role in society, if not much.

Most leaders who claim religious backgrounds are entirely unwilling to engage the other side about possible interpretations of god's will and writings. Perhaps this is connected to religion being based on an unarguable premise, but not necessarily so. Suffice it to say, a secular leftist, interpretting Christ's message about helping the poor and his kindness towards prostitutes, never gets very far talking to a right leaning fundamental about how that is more consistent with Christ's traditions than fear of cultural issues and laissez faire economics.

Posted by: Tony Vila | Mar 4, 2005 3:56:54 PM

Posted by: Jesse Zink

Some really interesting issues being raised. Thanks for doing so in a thoughtful manner.

But I want to add a question: what is the effect of not having a religious presence on campus (specifically, in the classroom)? If professors don't talk about religion is that a bad thing.

The answer is, I think, yes because people (and lots of people of college student age, in my experience) have this desire to ask the "big" questions about spirituality and faith and find that they are insufficiently addressed in class. So they turn to campus organizations. I'm not confident in this assertion but I'd guess that the most active campus Christian organizations are the proselytizing, evangelical groups like Inter-Varsity, Campus Crusade for Christ, etc. (This is based on my experience - I'd be interested to hear other's view.) These groups - also in my experience - promote personal relationships with Jesus at the expense of all else, including (and especially!) academics. The result is, first, not only less of a focus on academics, which is no good, but, second, and more importantly, an increased emphasis on the view that faith has nothing to offer academia and vice versa.

Maybe I'm coming off as incoherent but I think there needs to be a way for students to seek and question about faith within the context of academia and use that process to deepen their own understanding of the world around them

Posted by: Jesse Zink | Mar 4, 2005 4:08:17 PM

Posted by: Bill Farrell

I am not sure that religious people know the difference between Fundamentalists and Evangelicals. I have read many descriptions of that difference that do not agree with each other. (I am Irish Catholic, so my background does not help.) I would appreciate your take on the difference.

Posted by: Bill Farrell | Mar 4, 2005 4:16:10 PM

Posted by: oliver

I don't see being a theologian as a disqualifier per se. I imagine theologians mostly are doctors of divinity who are trained by doctors of divinity and don't have PhDs. But universities are PhD factories with PhD workers, which creates a barrier to entry from the other credentialing world. Anyway, with or without bona fide theologians, I would have thought that universities already have the people or at least the positions to teach the politics and beliefs of religious Americans. I'm thinking of the faculty in religious studies, sociology, history and political science. You don't need a Klansman to teach racism or a New Guinea tribe member to teach anthropology. We could as well call for our religious studies people to spend more time "in the field" as call for theologian professors. To insist on the latter seems odd to me.

Posted by: oliver | Mar 4, 2005 4:22:51 PM

Posted by: Bret

I think that as long as a given University is up-front about its position on religion, then it doesn't matter what stance it takes - students (and donors) can choose to go elsewhere if they don't like it. I don't think it's the job of secular programs within secular universities to teach their undergraduates religion.

It makes more sense for it to be discussed on blogs like this. I agree that the secular left generally seems to be less than optimally informed regarding religion and how it affects society and culture, but self-described secular schools doesn't seem like the right place to try to overcome that lack of understanding.

Posted by: Bret | Mar 4, 2005 4:37:51 PM

Posted by: J.S.

Good questions and issues but you miss a few key points. First, (as someone else mentioned above) most religious people don't know about the religious differences you mentioned nor do they even know much about their own religion! How many religious people in this country can tell you the 10 commnadments or have even read the entire Bible or Koran? Very few. Many people use religion as a way to interject an absolutist morality into their lives and to provide a sense of relief from having to ask the hard questions, not to answer them. It is much easier to assume that as long as you do A and B you go to heaven than to comtemplate the fact that the universe is a great mystery and there may very well be no heaven. The key issue is this: We cannot have laws in society based solely on faith- faith is by definition lacking in evidence or proof and is essentially arbitary. People can believe in whatever god and his or her rules they choose, but they don't have the right to force the rest of society to believe it. I have written a number of pieces on religion on my website and if anyone's interested please check them out.

http://voicesofreason.info

J.S.

Posted by: J.S. | Mar 4, 2005 5:19:41 PM

Posted by: oliver

"A secular university should not take positions about what God has to say about a subject or whether there is a God that has something to say."

What about the matter of why organisms look and behave as they do? Should a secular university grant credits for a course on "intellegent design" toward a degree in biology? No.

Posted by: oliver | Mar 4, 2005 5:19:43 PM

Posted by: Dwight

Steve,

I quite agree with you about the implausibility of excluding religion from public reason. However, I am not sure that hiring theologians at public universities advances the mission of the university. Presumably, universities are engaged in the pursuit of the truth, regardless of how modestly we construe the truth in light of postmodern demurrals. It is not obvious to me that the truth or falsity of religious claims can be demonstrated since they depend on revelation. Of course, one might say the same thing about moral and political claims, depending on where one stands on the question of moral realism and objectivity. But without getting into those issues, it seems to me that at least with regard to moral and political claims, we are discussing experiences that everyone can potentially share. We may disagree about how to interpret the data, but at least we can agree on what the data is. To the extent a theologian is focussed on a particular tradition of revelation she is discussing something that is not in principle publically available. You make a good case for more philosophy of religion, comparative religions, sociology of religion, etc. but I have reservations about theology. I gather from your post that you agree that public institutions should not be in the business of deciding which revelation is true. How does a university hire a theologian without at least gesturing in the direction of that decision?

Posted by: Dwight | Mar 4, 2005 5:37:59 PM

Posted by: Peter Wizenberg

What sorts of theologians ought a University hire?

Only Christians? Satanists? Wahabbist Muslims? Satmar Hasidim? Scientologists?

What principled criteria would be employed to select 'qualified' theologians?

Perhaps the analogy with astrology is apt.

Posted by: Peter Wizenberg | Mar 4, 2005 6:08:26 PM

Posted by: sGreer

I'm not sure I agree with your statement that theologians aren't welcome on a campus; when I majored in Philosophy & Religion (which in larger universities is more often called Comparative Religions), I had a Xtian theologian as an advisor who taught Kierkegaard and 20th Cen. Theology, I took a class in Judaism from a Rabbi, and an Imam joined the teaching staff just after I left the school (of course). While I was there, a guest Imam taught one course, and it took moving heaven and earth (so to speak) to weasel into the rolls. They were all three also PhDs, although I believe the guest Imam's PhD was in Islamic Philosophy or some such.

I think the problem here is that most people equate 'theologian' with 'commentator' or 'person of religious bent seeking to preach'. My advisor's definition is that 'theology is philosophy with god in the center'; meaning, it's philosophy that begins with the assumption that God Exists, and proceeds from there (for the most part).

In other words, by that definition, many--if not the vast majority--of those teaching various religions in public universities are theologians, although they may not be ordained ministers in a specific faith. The professors I had were all ordained in one faith or another, but taught the text of the course and never once spoke of their own beliefs (except in the case of the Rabbi when explaining how Reformed Jews differ from Orthodox, but he was hardly seeking to convert his listeners). An evangelical bent is discouraged on most campuses but this extends to all areas, including my ultra-conservative economics professor with an ax to grind on trickle-down theory, or my Chinese professor who subtly but consistently emphasized that China was, is, and always shall be the origin of true civilization.

As for who campuses hire, my experience has been that they hire theologians like they do engineers and accountants. Who has the required degrees, the track record, and the speciality that would bring something new to our campus? Personal beliefs don't always stop at the door, but who's to say that this is always a bad thing?

Posted by: sGreer | Mar 4, 2005 6:46:56 PM

Posted by: Colin Danby

Might the implied contrast in this:

" ... a religious studies program (primarily a social science program). But, so far as I am aware, there is not a single theologian on the tenure or tenure track faculty."

be unpacked a little more? Might the author be clearer about what exactly the religious studies program is not providing students? I have the sense that "religion" is being used in more than one way in this essay, or at least with some range of meaning. There is also a logical slippage from the absence of credentialed theologians, to "excluding theologians" to, by paragraph 6, "excluding religion," which would seem to suggest that whatever the religious studies program is studying the author does not think it is religion. I also presume Cornell has a philosophy department.

Given that the "exclusion" is not really established, there is a slight tendentiousness in the vigor with which various (and, I agree, spurious) arguments for such an exclusion are attacked.

Posted by: Colin Danby | Mar 4, 2005 7:49:21 PM

Posted by: Daniel

The lack of a religion department is not particularly troubling. Having at least some courses in philosophy would do as well if, as pointed out above, they started with the premise that God exists. But what is truly concerning is that the liberal arts colleges seem to have turned away from the deep questions that religion addresses (and that philosophy used to address before it became an irrelevant, hyper-technical field only for the initiates). When college students state that 'truth is relative'--do they have any idea what that means? Do they understand that when Nietzsche announced that 'God is dead' that he thought that as world-shattering? Do they tackle the implications of Goedel's theorem? What about chaos theory and its effect on a deterministic world view? Despite being a Catholic myself, I wouldn't care whether Cornell had a religion department. I would care if its graduates think that "God" spelt backward is "dog" says something really deep, you know, profound.

Posted by: Daniel | Mar 4, 2005 8:48:28 PM

Posted by: Stephen Scholz

Disclaimer: I am a left leaning atheist philosophy professor.
I am concerned by the very premise of the argument that Thelogians provide something that a Religious Studies professor does not. I assume, and this is consistent with my experiences in several Philosophy and Religion departments, that Religious Studies Ph.D.s are reasonably well versed in the contraversies within the religions they study. What they may lack is the sort of appreciation on insight that can only be gained from faith. If there is some insight or appreciation that the faithless cannot achieve through 'objective' study, this would presumably add to the store of knowledge the university provides.
But, and here is the big BUT, if the insight or appreciation cannot be transmitted through study, but only by the acceptance of certain beliefs on faith, then whatever a Thelogian could add beyond that of Religious Studies would be inherently unavailable to those students who do not share the faith of the Thelogian. Even in a religious affiliated school, this seems inappropriate. No program should exclude people arbitrarily like that, with the possible exception of seminaries. The various programs derided by the likes of Horwitz and others: Woman's Studies, Black Studies, Gay/Lesbian Studies are, at least in theory, accessable to straight white men.
That said, I don't think Thelogians should be precluded from teaching; if they have knowledge, talent, experience, etc... applicable to all of their likely students, they should be welcome.

Posted by: Stephen Scholz | Mar 4, 2005 8:58:31 PM

Posted by: Achillea

I agree with Stephen and sGreer. Understanding and faith are not synonymous. While faith might be required for 'initiation into the mysteries' (ie, in-depth understanding) of a particular religion, it should be quite possible to grasp its core tenets and get a sense of where its practitioners are generally 'coming from' on a purely intellectual level. Since universities are essentially in the business of expanding students' intellectual horizons, this seems to me perfectly in keeping with their function. It also seems to me that Prof(?) Shiffrin's point is that excluding study of the subject from the curriculum -- to whatever extent that occurs -- is a failure in that function.

Posted by: Achillea | Mar 5, 2005 12:17:14 AM

Posted by: Achillea

I agree with Stephen and sGreer. Understanding and faith are not synonymous. While faith might be required for 'initiation into the mysteries' (ie, in-depth understanding) of a particular religion, it should be quite possible to grasp its core tenets and get a sense of where its practitioners are generally 'coming from' on a purely intellectual level. Since universities are essentially in the business of expanding students' intellectual horizons, this seems to me perfectly in keeping with their function. It also seems to me that Prof(?) Shiffrin's point is that excluding study of the subject from the curriculum -- to whatever extent that occurs -- is a failure in that function.

Posted by: Achillea | Mar 5, 2005 12:17:15 AM

Posted by: Achillea

Sorry for the double post, my net's being a little funky tonight.

I'd like to add that not all religions or faiths start by postulating 'the existence of god.' Existence of a higher power might be a better way of putting it.

Posted by: Achillea | Mar 5, 2005 12:22:19 AM

Posted by: David

Disclaimer: I was born and live in Europe.

I think that this idea of having theologians in universities is a very bad one since theologians are philosophers carrying more assumptions. I think it is good to have courses on such things as philosophy of religion, comparative religion, and so on, but theology (at least Catholic theology (I'm an atheist but was brought up a Catholic)) is a very technical and specific discipline, with its own terms of art, a great deal of philosophical sophistication and no application whatsoever to the real world or to other religions. Every religion has its own theology, in many cases several branches of it: moral, dogmatic etc. What's the point of learning such things that even most religious people have no clue about? Some generalities on philosophy of religion and the basis in which different religions are based is useful knowledge, but anything above that seems excessive to me.

PS I do think that religious discourse should be a private matter, and not have any effect on the public sphere. Europe is moving in this direction, but not yet all the way there. In the meantime though, I admit that religious ideas have force in the world, what a pity.

Posted by: David | Mar 5, 2005 1:56:24 AM

Posted by: Mitch

In important ways, the left does not understand the right and the left does not understand the right

Freudian slip?

...to what extent are secular universities responsible for the lack of knowledge of the secular left?

I have two difficulties with this question, first "responsibility" and second "knowledge" of what?

Are universities responsible for the teaching of classics? It'd be nice but that subject is just out of fashion. No "responsibility" involved.

As to knowledge, is it history or theology or ethics? I expect you mean actual ethical practice, because all three of those are available for study in some form at most any university (as mentioned elsewhere in philosophy or sociology or history or comparative religious studies or geographical area studies programs). You may not find the particular subject you want very easily (your program may be heavy on Southeast Asia Buddhism and Latin American Catholicism but nothing about Greek Orthodox), but the subject of religion is a bit more fractious and controversial and less self correcting than, say, chemistry.

So maybe you are really thinking of just ethical -practice-. There I don't think there is any hope, either on secular campuses or parochial ones.

Posted by: Mitch | Mar 5, 2005 7:10:49 AM

Posted by: Kyron

You write that "To be sure, universities can exclude astrology on the ground that it is insufficiently scientific."

Why, then, shouldn't religion be excluded on the ground that it is insufficiently scientific? Certainly religious claims are not falsifiable in principle, and can't be presented as such even when framed as objects of study. Of course, we needn't and shouldn't refuse to study non-falsifiable claims on the ground that they are. But then why exclude astrology?

No, of course astrology isn't worthy of serious study. So what is the relevant difference between astrology and religion?

Certainly the world's religions have greater philosophical depth, a more significant history, a greater economic and political impact than astrology. But how are these features of religion not adequately handled by philosophers, historians, political scientists, and economists? Who needs a theologian?

Is the added value a thelogian brings her faith? But the dimension of actual faith is the unscientific (and how) dimension of religious studies. That's the part that is appropriately excluded from a university, along with astrology.

Is the added value some byproduct of faith, such as a greater devotion to serious study or a greater sympathy to the subject of study? This doesn't seem to be the kind of devotion or sympathy necessary for good scholarship. If so, we should prefer African-Americans as historians of slavery and women as researchers into sexual harassment as employment discrimination.

You write: "Excluding religion, however, exhibits blindness not only to the religious character of the culture, but also to the religious demographics of a university faculty."

How is it that our historians, political scientists, economists, and philosophers are blind to the religious character of the culture? Do you mean "blind" or "insufficiently sensitive to?" The former is clearly false. The latter seems to rest on the dubious notion that faith is a prerequisite to the required level of sensitivity.

Ahh, I think I get it now. It comes down to "the religious demographics of a university faculty." Apparently, religious believers on campus feel embattled, isolated, defeated.

Yes, well, too bad all that Enlightenment business got its legs under it all those years ago, isn't it? Better to have smothered it in its infancy.

Posted by: Kyron | Mar 5, 2005 8:03:37 AM

Posted by: Stephen M (Ethesis)

A couple of thoughts.

First, this is what Belgium's hiring of theologians to teach in its colleges and participate in its ministries has led to:

http://www.timesandseasons.org/index.php?p=2019

Second, if you want to understand the interactions of religion and public life, and the insights religion offers, I really do think that history of religion programs (such as Eliade founded, more or less, at Chicago) or what are really sociology of religion programs (e.g. Jan Shipps, professor emeritus of history and religious studies at IUPUI, she is really a sociological historian).

For the most part, such programs offer more in the way of insight and understanding interactions and perspectives.

Not that theology classes for undergraduates do not offer something. And I believe them to be appropriate for religiously affiliated schools, but if your goal if for people to understand each other, including letting people understand more of the secular left than they get from e-mail chains stating "secular humanism is a variant of marxist pseudo-religion" ... it wouldn't hurt to approach teaching such things in public schools from the perspective of sociological history.

The biggest problem that discipline has had is that it was dominated by secular and atheist types who for the longest time, took as an article of faith that all religious activity was cultural and that people really didn't believe. A form of patent nonsense that pretty much destroyed anything useful they could have said.

But that is changing (and how I picked the examples I picked, neither Eliade or Shipps would ever tell you that the people they study don't really believe, they just participate, build temples and sacrifice as a joint social endeavor ... it boggles the mind that such a perspective ever came to dominate a complete discipline).

Things like the story of Alessia are all too common in Europe. They may have stopped taking Jewish kids away from their congregations and forcing them to eat pork, but that doesn't mean that the practice has stopped. It has just moved on to easier targets.

And theologians in the universities give it strength. Seriously, read http://www.timesandseasons.org/index.php?p=2019

Posted by: Stephen M (Ethesis) | Mar 5, 2005 8:54:31 AM

Posted by: No Labels Please

I'm sorry if this post comes off as a little disingenuous, in a "know thy enemy that ye may defeat him" kind of way.

A little like studying migratory bird patterns before the big shoot?

Posted by: No Labels Please | Mar 5, 2005 10:20:24 AM

Posted by: john t

As Stephen M [Ethesis] points out the problem is larger then the world of the universities,re his comments on the public schools. But to address the university; Professor Shiffrin mentions hiring theologians in Ethics,Government or Theology programs. But a broader program could be gradually put in place without harm to the secular stance of the university. How many students after four years are familiar with Jacques Maritain,John Henry Cardinal Newman,or for that matter Pascal. I was drawn to Newman as much for his reputation as an English stylist as for his religious beliefs. Is his The Idea of a University read anymore,much less Apologia Pro Vita Sua? Concerning law schools could a more balanced view be offered on the establishment clause? Given the dreck that graduates from Journalism schools there would appear to be room for miles of improvement,the antagonism of the media towards religion is ugly. Not having been in a classroom for a long long time I may be off on some of my assumptions/questions but I think the general idea is valid. Still the question is culture wide. We have come to the point where schoolchildren can't sing Christmas carols,where politicians are hounded by questions of being in thrall to the religious right,and other manifistations of secular predjudice,I don't know what else to call it. There is room for a slow,gradual,and tolerant change.

Posted by: john t | Mar 5, 2005 10:28:07 AM

Posted by: D.A. Ridgely

Mr. Shiffrin:

Thank you for a most thoughtful post. I think the predominantly secular left in universities suffers from its lack of contact with thoughtful men and women with a theistic (or even, more generally, a transcendental) perspective, and that students suffer as a result, though I also appreciate at least some of the objections and problems several comments have raised.

It strikes me as facially implausible, for reasons similar to the hue and cry over the dirth of conservatives among university faculties, to claim it is important to have, say, African American scholars for, among other reasons, the purpose of promoting diversity, but not to have faculty who overtly bring their faith into their pedagogy. In that regard, I suggest there is a significant difference between a person “witnessing” her faith in a way similar to the manner scholars can properly bring the fact of their ethnicity or gender into their work and, on the other hand, proselytizing to students. I hasten to add that I don’t see that as a covert brief for Creationism or for scholars in any subject area to insinuate their religious believes (any more than their political beliefs) into the classroom inappropriately.

However, that’s one of those “easier said than done” situations. Moreover, the several comments about where to draw the line regarding just which sort of faithful theologians to include are legitimate. Even so, if rough proportionality is a not entirely illegitimate yardstick when it comes to race, gender, etc., perhaps it would not be illegitimate here, either, if the goal is to provide a university community that better reflects and is thus better able to understand the larger society in which it functions. (Mark me as deeply skeptical about how heartfelt a belief in diversity, per se, university faculties really have, however.)

Thus, it seems to me that Mr. Scholz, for one, somewhat misses the point. Taking philosophy departments in particular (since that is his field), I would argue that while it is entirely possible for someone who, not to mince words, believes that the analytic approach in philosophy is intellectually preferable to the Continental tradition to nonetheless study or teach phenomenology, etc., it is highly unlikely that such a scholar would bring the same sympathetic force to his teaching and research as those who are genuinely committed to that tradition. (One might make the same argument about Marxists and Scholastics, by the way, though I confess personally to having a harder time taking them seriously.) In that sense, what is “unavailable to ... students” is difficult to articulate with precision, but that difficulty does not negate its import.

Posted by: D.A. Ridgely | Mar 5, 2005 11:12:22 AM

Posted by: Daniel

For those who think religion is grounded on faith only and thus illogical and not worthy of study in university: the non-science humanities are based on ... what? As one moves away from truly controlled experiments (say, from lab physics to economics), people will differ more and more on what the facts are and what they 'mean'. Witness the opposite reasons the left and right offer for the end of the cold war.

When one moves into the arts, then science (or the scientific method) becomes even less important. Can you 'prove' that Shakespeare is worth studying? What is the point of literature, anyway? Why study blobs of oil on canvas? Is 'science' an overriding concern in the quest for beauty?

The comments by others above touch on but do not go to the heart of the matter: what is the function of a university? A trade school for scientists? Teaching critical thinking? I believe it is exploration, using the great minds of the past and present, of the fundamental questions: why do I exist? how should I live? what really matters? In short, a university's function, I believe, is helping students start exploring those questions. Because religion played and continues to play a giant role in that exploration, it should be offered in some manner.

Posted by: Daniel | Mar 5, 2005 11:34:14 AM

Posted by: Colin Danby

1. I want to strongly second Daniel's points, and add that I'm troubled by the arguments for exclusion of theologians posted above (though at least we have, since my first post on this topic, discovered the exclusionist position!) Theologians are scholars, and there seems no a priori reason to think that they might not contribute in highly useful ways to a university's educational and scholarly mission.

2. It would very much like to know, if there are any theologians out there, how the academic job market looks to a newly-credentialed theologian -- what kinds of jobs do you normally apply for? Which are open to you? What sorts of exclusions do you perceive and how do they work?

3. Just as a postscript on David Ridgely's comments, this website has already hosted discussions of the problems around "diversity" as a principle, but I want to be clear that it's a canard here: I don't see anyone arguing for academic hiring in order to build a human zoo, a microcosm of the world immediately outside the university's gates. Universities are specialized and unusual institutions, and have a responsibility beyond the state of opinion in the particular time and place in which they are located. Traditionalists like to invoke Plato, so let's do that: if one learns one thing from Plato it's that the academy ought not to be a mere microcosm of opinion in the society around it. (The galling thing re African American scholars is that they still have to be twice as good as the typical scholar to be taken seriously, are often expected to do extra service to their institutions, and even then are dogged by uninformed assumptions that they are mere diversity hires.)

Posted by: Colin Danby | Mar 5, 2005 1:54:51 PM

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