“To understand why the negative prejudice [with regard to the claim that God is Creator and Sustainer of all] is so strong now, just reflect on how the entire system of human expertise, as represented by our many-tiered structure of certification and accreditation, has a tremendous vested interest in ruling God out of consideration.  For, if it cannot do that, it is simply wrong about what it presents as knowledge and reality–of which God is no part….God currently forms no part of recognized human competence in any field of knowledge or practice.  But if this actually is God’s universe, the current lords of knowledge have made what is surely the greatest mistake in human history.  Believing the world is flat or the moon is cheese would be nothing in comparison to their mistake.”

Back to the point, namely why money won (unearned) isn’t sweeter than money earned and why the project of educating towards a virtuous citizenry matters now more than ever: Lottery studies have shown that money won is negatively correlated with long-term happiness about life in general (see Brooks, pp 75-81).   If this is true, then the current generation of college students is being sold a bill of goods about how this economic mess will get fixed once and for all.  Brooks argues that “If money without earned success does not bring happiness, then redistributing money won’t make for a happier America” (81).  I agree with him.  But redistribution has been the underlying (although often an unspoken term by its advocates) strategy to counteract the recent evils of Wall Street.  So what?  What bearing does all this have on educating the millennial generation? Brooks points out that a majority of late teens to early thirty-somethings tend to be quite comfortable with socialist policies.  A 2010 Gallup poll proves it.

I’m simultaneously concerned and not concerned about these stats.  Not concerned because it won’t take long for millennials to understand the hollow promises of an increasingly socialist-leaning government.  Concerned, because once we start down this road as a country, it’s really hard to right the ship.  Earned success increases overall happiness about one’s life, unearned success doesn’t, and those of us who have been in the working world for longer than a few years know it.  If higher education has anything to do with helping young bearers of the imago dei to flourish in the deepest sense, then can we really afford to continue educating on this issue in the smorgasbord-kind-of-way that has become the norm?

Here is the real-life case study I brought to Thursday’s roundtable. A social work student I met several years ago at a large state university said this to me in a follow-up email to a conversation she and I had about the merits of the Federal Marriage Ammendment (2004), which would have outlawed (by way of Constitutional amendment) same-sex marriages:

“I think I was most troubled by the concept of an objective moral reality. How can you prove that it exists? If everyone were to follow certain steps, would they each come to the same conclusion about this moral reality? Morality is certainly not inherent in each of us ? we are taught the morals of our culture. Similarities between cultures regarding taboos and mores indicate that certain activities or practices contribute to survival or well?being. I allowed your argument that nobody would agree with torturing babies as a premise in our discussion on Tuesday night, but I’d even like to retract that. Maybe some people think it’s okay. Female genital mutilation is still practiced. How do we know it’s okay to eat animals? How do we “know” it’s not okay to eat people? Or is it? Our knowledge is not innate. From research, I can say that we are social creatures, and without society we do not develop.”

Responses, anyone?

This objection is not a trivial one. The concerns it presupposes are underscored, for example, in the 1990 papal document Ex Corde Ecclesia, which calls upon Catholic theologians at Catholic universities to procure an ecclesiastical license from the local bishop as a precondition for teaching. It further asserts that presidents of Catholic universities “should take an oath of fidelity to the Catholic Church and that teachers should be faithful to and respect Catholic doctrine and morals in their research and teaching.”[2] Not surprising, then, is the fact that this call to action has been perceived by many as heavy-handed. If religion is indeed a conversation-stopper as Richard Rorty has forcefully argued,[3] then perhaps this criticism is justified, based on the potential Ex Corde has to discourage inquiry into various academic disciplines as a result of blunting the effects of academic freedom as that concept has been understood by American higher educators for most of the twentieth century.[4] It is this understanding of how academic freedom is to be construed, however, that is precisely the point at issue.

Academic freedom was first proclaimed as an ideal essential to the definition of a university by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which was organized in 1915,[5] and whose 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure entitles scholars to “full freedom in research and in the publication of the results,” as well as to “freedom in the classroom in discussing [the] subject….”[6] George Marsden briefly chronicles the development and the nationwide acceptance of the AAUP’s understanding of the concept:

At first some academic administrators resisted aspects of the due process in hiring and firing that the AAUP insisted their ideal implied; but within the next two decades academic freedom, more or less as the AAUP had defined it, was widely accepted. By 1940 when an important restatement of the AAUP principles was widely adopted, the ideal had become a standard assumption in American academic thought. Certainly by the end of the era of McCarthyite repression of the early 1950s academic freedom had attained sacred status among the professoriate and was spoken of as though it were an ancient absolute, associated with universities since time immemorial.[7]

The AAUP has regularly conducted investigations into alleged violations of its principles, and, in cases where there is sufficient evidence, censures the guilty institutions. In some cases, despite its provision in the 1940 Statement that it is permissible to limit academic freedom based on religious considerations, the organization has censured religious institutions that have terminated tenured faculty or denied tenure to faculty who have not held to clearly articulated institutional religious requirements.[8] Given this understanding of academic freedom and the practice that flows from it, what grounds does any Christian liberal arts college or university have for encouraging, and in some cases, requiring faith/learning integration of the sort discussed above to define the kind of education it delivers?

In response, academic freedom, like most freedoms, is qualified. As Nicholas Wolterstorff points out, “In practice, the right to academic freedom is no more absolute than the civil liberty of free speech.”[9] If he is correct, then the most interesting (and certainly the most pressing) question is not whether it is acceptable for religious colleges to place limits on academic freedom. As he says, “All educational institutions attach qualifications to academic freedom; none allows professors to teach whatever they wish.” Rather, the most interesting question (with respect to religious colleges) is “Are religious qualifications to academic freedom inherently inappropriate?”[10] My answer to this question is “absolutely not.” In support of this reply is Wolterstorff’s contention that, legally speaking, there is nothing a professor is free to teach in a public university that she is not free to teach at a private university. The converse, however, is not true: there is much that an academic can teach in a private university that she is not free to teach in a public university, such as religiously-grounded arguments.[11] In other words, if the state’s version of academic freedom which is qualified by government-imposed constraints on religious expression in state university classrooms does not apply to religious colleges and universities, then it is hard to see any meaningful sense in which it is inherently inappropriate for the latter to attach religious qualifications to academic freedom.

——————————————————————————–

[1] Note that I am anticipating what I take to be the objection that has the best chance of undermining the argument for a rigorous faith-learning academic environment at a Christian liberal arts institution where faculty responsibilities (as stated by the institution for purposes of hiring as well as evaluating faculty for tenure and promotion) include assisting students in making the intellectual connections between historic orthodox Christianity and any given academic discipline.

[2] F. King Alexander and Klinton W. Alexander (2000). “The Reassertion of Church Doctrine in American Higher Education: The Legal and Fiscal Implications of the Ex Corde Ecclesiae for Catholic Colleges and Universities in the United States.” Journal of Law & Education 29(2): 150.

[3] Richard Rorty, “Religion as Conversation-Stopper.” Common Knowledge 3 (1): 1-6. Rorty’s thesis is that religion ought to be construed as a private affair since, “in political discussion with those outside the relevant community, it is a conversation-stopper” (3).

[4] “Steps for Obtaining Ex Corde Mandate Are Under Consideration.” Academe (January/February 2001): 5.

[5] George Marsden, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994): 296.

[6] “1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure,” in William W. Van Alstyne, ed. Freedom and Tenure in the Academy (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 1993): 407.

[7] Marsden, Soul; 296.

[8] The “1940 Statement” reads “Limitations of academic freedom because of religious or other aims of the institution should be clearly stated in writing at the time of the appointment” (407). For an excellent example of how the AAUP seems to disregard this provision, see a recent report entitled “Academic Freedom and Tenure: Brigham Young University.” Academe (September-October, 1997): 52-68. Also see the response from the Brigham Young administration in the same issue, pp. 69-71.

[9] Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Ivory Tower Or Holy Mountain? Faith and Academic Freedom.” Academe (January-February 2001): 18.

[10] Ibid., 21.

[11] Ibid., 20.

In the chapter entitled “Shakespeare and the Elements of Genius,” the authors point out that “many of today’s leading Shakespeare scholars reject theism.”  They go on with their argument as follows:

“The awkward thing for them is that William Shakespeare’s work–the work they have dedicated their professional lives to–does not.  The playwright’s themes pose a profound challenge for materialism, assuming as they do the ontological categories of flesh and spirit, good and evil, heaven and hell.  But more fundamental still is the challenge Shakespeare’s genius poses to any worldview that would reduce everything, including the human mind, to the mindless flux of matter and energy.  Not only does his genius seem irreducible to anything so mean, the fruits of that genius find a striking correspondence in the ingenious forms of nature….Are we really to believe that natural selection moved from a single cell in a dirty pond to this?  Vague just-so stories about nature selecting for verbal skill are one thing, but standing in steady contemplation before one of Shakespeare’s mature literary works and then entertaining such an explanation without feeling a deep sense of skepticism–that’s a different matter….if we presuppose that Charles Darwin was correct, then everything in Shakespeare must be reduced further still to the desire to survive and propagate, caused proximately by Shakespeare’s own desire to use his lucky genetic variations to attract the ladies with his flair for poetry (a more elaborate rendition of a male bird’s seductive mating call) and caused more distantly by some remote genetic ancestor, a primitive troubadour whose musical ululations, gibbered around a dying fire, skillfully wooed his audience of spellbound females.  The most ruthlessly consistent and unsparing materialist will dissolve Shakespeare and his fellow geniuses to the pointless concatenations, writhings and bursts of matter and energy….This is a rabbit hole without whimsy or light.”*

*Benjamin Wiker & Jonathan Witt, A Meaningful World:  How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature (Downers Grove, IL:  IVP Academic Press, 2006):  58-61.

Since the beginning of the history of ideas, we have been asking ourselves “why are we here?”  How did we come into existence?” and “What is life’s purpose?”  “Is there inherent meaning in our existence by virtue of being put here by design, or are we here as a result of some cosmic blind watchmaker called ‘chance?’”  “If we were placed here for a purpose, then how do we know what it is, and how are we to live while we are here?”  College leaders long gone understood that asking such questions, thinking critically about them, and seeking to bring definitive answers to such questions was fundamental to a flourishing democratic republic.  What’s my point?  Educational leaders–presidents and professors alike–knew that one of the main purposes of higher education was the formation of a virtuous citizenry.  They knew that a thriving and virtuous citizenry required plausible answers to life’s ultimate questions which came from good thinking drawing from both special and general revelation, and that the disciplines that flowed out of the latter (arts and sciences) assumed the truth of the former (holy, authoritative Scripture).  They sought to show students how the two were inseparable in the learning process. 

Many Ph.D.-types of today’s academy reply to this historical argument with this kind of response:  “There is a place for faith in the academy, and it has to do with the formation of student’s moral sensibilities.  That project is best tackled by the campus minister, various student ministries, and maybe at times the student life staff.  However, if real education is anything, it is progress.  Science is our best roadmap to progress and as such we need to recognize that the knowledge we glead from reason and knowledge from revelation are two largely unrelated projects.  We will always disagree on matters of faith–which is unprovable–but science is the universal language of truth which leads to progress that most benefits humanity.”  I have heard Christian academicians from various institutions give this kind of two-spheres view of how faith and reason interact (or don’t).  Scholar Julie Reuben explains it this way:  “Some approached this problem by distinguishing between knowledge about the natural world and knowledge about the supernatural realm.  They simply assigned each to different categories:  theology explored the supernatural, while science examined the natural.  Since the two did not coincide, they could not disagree.”*

My rejoinder?  Yes, science INDEED provides a roadmap for progress, and we ought to pursue it.  In fact the cultural mandate in Genesis demands it.  However, progress for the sake of what?  Humanity.  Great.  But why do we place such a high value on benefiting humanity through science?  I have yet to hear anyone articulate a cogent and convincing scientific argument that answers such a question.  And how could it?  Science is a way of knowing–an epistemological method for better understanding the universe.  So?  Well, here it is:  we get things confused in our investigations when we assume that this kind (or any kind) of epistemology is untethered from a cogent ontology (reality, or being itself).  Furthermore, what is the result when we assume that epistemology precedes ontology?  Well, Descartes has already answered that question for us–cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore, I am.”   In this formulation human reason is supposedly severed from any ontological preconceptions that would influence or bias what is known.  So what’s the problem here?  Simply this:  putting epistemology before ontology makes life’s ultimate questions trivial.  That is, if knowing comes before being, then why should I assume that there is any meaning to our existence?  Knowing before Being means that my autonomous human reason will establish its own standards for what is real to me, and to me only.  If I happen to agree with others, that is fine.  But knowing before being means that there can be no overarching (dare I say it, postmodern lit. fans?) metanarrative–no Grand Truth–by which all other truths are determined.  Sure, we can all agree with the truth that 2+2 = 4, regardless of where you are on the epistemology/ontology thing.  But that’s not the point.  The point is to try to account for why life’s ultimate questions are important and why they keep coming up, despite the new knowledge that science churns out every year. 

How can we even make sense of why life’s ultimate questions concern us if ontology (what is) doesn’t precede epistemology (how we know what is)?  I don’t wonder why there is meaning to universe because I’ve been taught to wonder about it.  The very question is bound up in my nature–the “whatness” of being human.  Those of us who have children know this to be the case from the questions they ask about ultimate reality.  This includes moral questions, which are still very much a part of university discourse, although most often in a way that ends up lapsing into a pernicious relativism and even subjectivism.  If knowing precedes being, then is there really any objective basis for differentiating between the wonderful (like the birth of a child) and the horrible (such as the gruesome murdering of a child)?  If my knowing is untethered from any prior assumptions about being and what is inherently good about it, then why should we celebrate when scientific/medical breakthroughs are made in the race to cure cancer and other maladies?  The Darwinian answer “survival” is woefully inadequate, because it does not explain the idea of human dignity and why even the most socially liberal scholars (with the exception, perhaps, of ethicist Peter Singer at Princeton) agree that someone with incurable cancer still has as much diginity and worth as a human being as someone who is cancer-free.  Or, if the cancer example isn’t convincing enough, then try mental retardation.  Does someone with Downs Syndrome have less dignity than someone who doesn’t have that extra chromosome? 

This is why I am such a flag-waver for an academically rigorous Christian liberal arts education.  Only a Christian liberal arts education has the resources to explore life’s ultimate questions with purpose and to equip students to answer those questions with sufficient clarity.  Only a Christian liberal arts education has the ability to repair the deep fractures between faith and learning that have occurred in the history of American higher education.  And it is why I am so thrilled with Erskine College’s (my alma mater) new mission statement:  “The mission of Erskine College is to equip students to flourish by providing an excellent liberal arts education in a Christ-centered environment where learning and biblical truth are integrated to develop the whole person.”  For an excellent clarification of each key phrase of the statement, click here: 

http://www.erskine.edu/about-erskine/missionstatement.shtml

*Julie A. Reuben, The Making of the Modern University:  Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1996):  51. 

~C. John Sommerville, The Decline of the Secular University (New York:  Oxford University Press, 2006):  22.

“To serve God wittily, in the tangle of one’s mind!  These are powerful and wonderful words.  They draw us away from an excess of solemnity, which is death to witty scholarship.  And they draw us into the tangle that is the human mind–that great and glorious instrument we either squander; use badly, or use well–ad Dei gloriam.  To use well means, I believe, to recognize that our minds have not and cannot escape the noetic consequences of sin.  Our minds cannot be perfect.  Our knowledge is never complete.  Humility is in order.  Yet even allowing for all this, there really is, or can be, light shining in the darkness.  Our epistemic urgency, our quest for knowledge, flows directly from creation itself.  God would not have created us with intelligence to develop and use if this were not central to his pronouncement that creation is good.  After all, we are asked to throw ourselves on God’s love and mercy rather than into an abyss of ignorance.  Critics of Christianity historically could point to such pronouncements as Tertullian’s unfortunate “I believe because it is absurd” as proof positive that faith demands the resignation of intellect.  Even Augustine’s quite different and justly famous credo ut intelligam, “I believe in order to understand,” came in for derision in many quarters, sometimes from those who failed to distinguish Augustine’s position from Tertullian’s, and sometimes from those confusing Augustine’s position with a too-simple fideism or pietism that views the intellect with deep suspicion or even hostility.  The relationship between faith, reason, and learning that finally made sense to me was and is unafraid of intellectual engagement and is deeply committed to the life of the mind.  It is embodied in a tradition that historically gave rise to such monumental tributes to the human mind’s understanding through faith as St. Augustine’s City of God, St. Thomas’s Summa theologiae, Martin Luther’s great works–this despite Luther’s deep suspicions of overreliance on such pre-Christian philosophers as Aristotle–and Calvin’s Institutes.  Even the great mystics stressed certain attributes of the mind–receptivity, a profound emptying of self in order that the mind and heart might be set afire by God’s fierce love.”

Source:  Jean Bethke Elshtain, “To Serve God Wittily, In the Tangle of One’s Mind.” In Douglas V. Henry and Michael D. Beaty (eds.), Christianity and the Soul of the University: Faith as a Foundation for Intellectual Community (Grand Rapids, MI:  Baker Academic Press, 2006):  39-40. 

“It promotes virtue and happiness, as well as arts and industry.  On this, as on the former, it is unnecessary to enlarge; only suffer me to make a remark, not quite so common, that, if there is any just comparison on the subject, the children of persons in the higher ranks of life, and, especially, of those who by their own activity and diligence, rise to opulence, have of all others the greatest need of an early, prudent and well conducted education.  The wealth to which they are born becomes often a dangerous temptation, and the station in which they enter upon life, requires such duties, as those of the finest talents can scarcely be supposed capable of, unless they have been improved and cultivated with the utmost care.  Experience shews the use of a liberal Education in both these views.  It is generally a preservative from vices of a certain class, by giving easy access to more refined pleasures, and inspiring the mind with an abhorrence of low riot and contempt for brutal conversation.  It is also of acknowledged necessity to those who do not wish to live for themselves alone, but would apply their talents to the service of the public and the good of mankind.  Education is therefore of equal importance in order either to enjoy life with dignity and elegance, or imploy it to the benefit of society, in offices of power or trust.”

Source:  Address to the Inhabitants of Jamaica, and Other West-India Islands in Behalf of the College of New Jersey (Philadelphia, 1772).  In Richard Hofstadter and Wilson Smith (eds), American Higher Education:  A Documentary History vol. I (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press):  137-138.