Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Academic Freedom

  • In (Partial) Defense of Confessional Schools

    Brandon Withrow tells the story of How Westminster Theological Seminary Came to Define Fundamentalism for [Him]. It is a story that is repeated over and over again, and in this case a professor was removed from Westminster for saying much the same thing as I would about the study of the Old Testament:

    Green says that the Bible — and books in it like Genesis, for example — should be read in two ways: Firstly, read “Genesis on its own terms,” as an “unfolding story,” meaning, “as an Israelite book, and not (yet) a Christian book!” The second way means letting “the Jesus-ending of Israel’s story reshape the way you interpret” Genesis, which “is the way you read Genesis as a Christian book.”

    I’ll usually tell classes to listen for my terminology. If I say “Hebrew scriptures” I’m referring to that literature in its purely historical sense. What did it mean to those who first read it? If I say “Old Testament” I’m referring to the same literature as the first part of the Christian Bible. I refer to this as reading through Jesus-colored glasses. I consider both readings perfectly valid and related, but they are not the same thing.

    I must confess, of course, that I am neither Reformed nor a fundamentalist. I did, however, attend a confessional school. I got my MA degree (Religion, concentrating in Biblical and Cognate Languages) at Andrews University, and the degree was offered in cooperation with the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary. For those who think I was brainwashed into accepting evolutionary theory while being educated by liberals, I should note that as an SDA school, the official position was that the world was created in six literal days, followed by a seventh day of rest (Seventh-day, you see), and that this happened around 6,000 years ago.

    My problem with all these stories is simply this: Why should someone remain a professor at a seminary if he or she does not support the confession that seminary is established to support? When I discovered that my beliefs were no longer in accord with those of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, I left. I didn’t have any position, much less a tenured one. I understand the investment. I understand the hardship. I also believe I understand the attachment to an organization that one thought would be supportive but happens not to be. But I’m not sure that in the nature of what a seminary is, it’s possible not to have boundaries on what a professor may believe. I’m certain, for example, that I would not belong in a Reformed seminary. I don’t want to minimize the pain of such a separation, but I think it might be necessary nonetheless.

    It’s a bit touchier for schools that are not seminaries, for example, liberal arts colleges. Those schools, however, are established by religious organizations to educate members of their faith, and often others whom they hope to attract to their faith. It seems to me that the supporters of a school should have some say in what is taught there. The alternative would be for there to be no religiously connected schools at all.

    I happen to deplore the narrow testing of doctrinal beliefs amongst professors. There needs to be an exchange of ideas on a faculty. There is, in addition, a matter of integrity. Recent stories about Bryan College claim a change in the doctrinal statement along the way. That adds another layer to the issue. But not every school can or should represent everything.

    Does someone get a good education at a confessional school? I think that’s an excellent question. I suspect that the answer will be generally ‘yes.’ There may be elements lacking. Debates have occurred around Seventh-day Adventist schools regarding whether the theory of evolution is adequately taught on the one hand, and whether it should be taught at all on the other. Accreditation organizations think it should be. Denominational leaders would prefer not.

    Accreditation organizations are generally a good thing. I certainly want to thank the team that visited Andrews University a short time before I arrived there as a student and told them that they couldn’t offer a concentration in Church History at the graduate level without offering patristic Latin. That resulted in the addition of a readings course in the Latin church fathers, which I was able to take. I don’t believe, however, that accreditation should be based on a school giving up on its confession. The assumption is that academic freedom is impaired by the confession. Doubtless it is. But how much?

    Academic freedom is impaired by many things. Sometimes it is impaired when it should be, such as when a school denies tenure to a crackpot. Sometimes it is impaired when it should not be, as when tenure is denied to someone unorthodox but visionary. The problem is to tell the difference between the crackpot and the visionary.

    It is in discerning that difference that I think it is more important to have a variety of educational institutions, not all run according to the same vision and standards. You will, of course, have students who are not informed about certain views, or who do not hear them from a real advocate. But no matter what you do, students are going to miss some things. Students at Westminster will not hear from Peter Enns, someone I consider well worth hearing. But students at Eastern University will. I think Westminster is the poorer for not having Peter Enns on their faculty. But I’m not Reformed.

    My question is this: How many secular universities or mainline seminaries are looking for very conservative or fundamentalist scholars to balance their departments?

    I was educated in rather conservative schools. I grew up hating the way in which new and more liberal ideas were suppressed. (I would note that quite a number of my professors were not narrow at all and made sure I was introduced to other ideas, even ones they disapproved. But the denominational atmosphere was not friendly.) Thus I am very aware of the way conservatives can suppress liberal ideas. I’m writing this article contrary to my personal feelings but in accordance, I think, with logic.

    I don’t think true academic freedom is possible in a single system. Variety is necessary, and variety must include ideas of which I disapprove. I think some people are living in the old days (for them) when they were being blocked from new ideas that were more liberal, and so they keep watching just for the suppression of more liberal or progressive ideas. But it’s possible for conservative ideas, or just unorthodox ideas, to be suppressed as well. That’s why I like a variety of schools organized in a variety of ways. Thanks to places like Westminster, conservative Reformed scholars have a place to work, research, and write. Others can reject their ideas, but those ideas are available.

    I’d still go to one of the more liberal schools if I was going back to school. But I’m glad the others exist.

  • Confessional School vs. Freedom to Explore

    Peter Enns’ post, “If They Only Knew What I Thought” struck a chord with me and at the same time called up one of my concerns, or perhaps I should say areas of conflict.

    I lived through this growing up as a Seventh-day Adventist and being educated in Seventh-day Adventist schools. In fact, I made a significant transition twice, once when I moved from schools in the self-supporting movement to those in mainstream adventism, and then out of the Seventh-day Adventist. Most evangelicals I’ve discussed this with have been quite supportive of my move. To many of them I moved from at least marginal heresy to a more orthodox form of Christianity.

    But the same type of issues came up as I tried to decide what to do with my life after graduate school (at Andrews University, an SDA school), as I hear from evangelicals who go to secular schools. There were certain elements of my belief system that had changed, and others that I was still exploring. Could I be a Seventh-day Adventist? Could I be a Seventh-day Adventist teacher? I remember one professor saying to me during this period, “You don’t have to teach everything you know.” He was someone I respected, and still do. Yet I didn’t like his answer.

    But what do you do when you not only see the boundaries of the permissible playing field looming, but think that perhaps you have crossed them? Is it right to continue to be a member of an organization you do not fully support? Is it right to teach for such an organization? Can you conceal what you actually believe in order to stay within the boundaries permitted?

    We hear two sides of this conflict. The first is from people like me who have experienced changes in their understanding of scripture and doctrine, and feel the need of freedom to explore and to follow truth as they see it. We also feel the need to be honest with others. On the other side we have those institutional guardians who want to keep the faith pure. The former see the latter as barriers to truth, real spirituality, and scholarship. The latter view the former as persons who don’t fully care for the safety of the souls who gather in the pews.

    I have a certain empathy with both sides. I recall a conversation with my uncle, Don F. Neufeld, associate editor at the time of the Review and Herald, of the SDA Bible Commentary, and editor of the SDA Bible Dictionary. Several of the issues I had (and still have) with SDA theology, and even with much evangelical theology, came up. In some cases he agreed with me against the common SDA position. In others, he didn’t. But he suggested to me a certain pastoral concern, a sensitivity to the people he served, and I was to serve. He told me how carefully he wrote at times, leaving the door open to exploration while not cutting the people off at the knees. Theology didn’t occur in a vacuum, according to him, it was something we did in service of God’s people.

    While I couldn’t follow his advice at the time, and imagine I still would fail, I do understand what he’s talking about. A church community has to have some form of definition, and that definition will involve beliefs that are acceptable and ones that are not. If there are to be such institutions as confessional seminaries, schools operated by a religious community to support their needs and their people, there are going to be boundaries to the playing field.

    If this were a matter of social clubs or of businesses, it would be easier. If you find yourself outside the boundaries of one, move to another. Such a solution can still work for someone who is raised as an Arminian, for example, and becomes Calvinist. I’ve known a few of those (and the reverse) and they usually just end up moving from one denomination to another to solve their problem. I think we would have little difficulty suggesting that someone who can no longer consider themselves Christian would do best to teach in a secular institution. Yes, this is not complete academic freedom. But it is also not deception. If the institution is operated by the Roman Catholic church, it is likely to have certain positions. If it’s Seventh-day Adventist it will have a different core perspective. (If it’s Methodist, of course, it will be whatever it turns out to be!)

    My prayer would be that we set those boundaries as far out as we possibly can, to allow those who study and teach in church-related academic institutions to explore and challenge as much as possible. I think truth thrives in an atmosphere where it is challenged. Stupidity does not. For both those reasons challenge is good. But at the same time I would hope that all of us in our various churches would be prepared to gently help and encourage those who might need to find somewhere else to go.

    I’ve managed to handle the “apostate” label before from those SDAs who see nothing but a rebellion against God that could get me out of the SDA church. I think most of them should be delighted that I left. I wouldn’t be making their lives easy from the inside. Perhaps a better approach would be to encourage someone to try their walk with God in another community. Don’t do this with the “left foot of fellowship.” Be welcoming, but at the same time don’t condemn the move to find someplace else. Encourage the exploration of other traditions.

    There’s always going to be a tension between the need of the community to have cohesion and the need of scholars to explore. I believe that tension can be constructive rather than destructive.

    (And as a final commercial, let me recommend a book I publish, Crossing the Street by Bob LaRochelle. Bob grew up Roman Catholic, was ordained a deacon, and is now a minister in the United Church of Christ. No, he’s not telling all Catholics to follow him. Rather, he’s encouraging us to look across to other faith traditions, learn, and feel the freedom to explore.)

  • Scot McKnight on Academic Freedom

    Scot McKnight wrote an interesting post today on the need for academic freedom in religious schools. First let me note that I agree with the need for academic freedom, and that I am sympathetic with all three cases McKnight mentions, and have had personal correspondence with one of them. In addition, I like to promote discussion that is as broad as possible.

    I do want to put a note of my own, however. I think that religious schools should be able to set the boundaries on what they are going to permit. Will some of them set boundaries I would disapprove? Of course. Many already do set boundaries that would exclude me. In a free market of ideas, I would only object if an institution advertised itself falsely, i.e. claimed to have standards of academic freedom which were not true.

    In addition, someone who intends to be a researcher at such a school should be aware of such limitations. If you are doing research at an institution that requires your results to fit in with a 6000 year old earth, for example, you must be prepared for a certain amount of disdain from mainstream science.

    Academic freedom is important, and if certain results are excluded a priori, one needs to be aware of the fact.

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  • On Academic Freedom and Denominational Colleges

    No, I’m not talking about my former denomination, the Seventh-Day Adventists. In this case, it’s Erskine College and the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.

    Let me make clear that I believe a denomination has the right to do what it wants to do with its institutions, always assuming that they uphold existing contracts. For example, if they contract to do one thing and then change their mind, I don’t think they are less liable for their contractual obligations than any other person or business. But apart from that if they want a doctrinally narrow faculty and even student body, that is their prerogative.

    It is also, however, the prerogative of accreditation boards to take all of this into consideration, and outsiders can comment on the resulting educational quality. I would like to add one note, however, which I have gleaned over time. It is possible for informal structures to be as restrictive as formal ones. An academic department or institution can become very narrow without enshrining that narrowness in regulations.

    I make this side-comments to introduce an excellent article on academic freedom, titled The Nature of Academic Freedom, from Tony Mitchell. It’s well worth reading and discussion. So go read it and discuss already!

  • La Sierra Board Makes a Statement

    I would say it’s a statement on creation and evolution, but I’m not quite sure what it is.

    Earlier (Seventh-day Adventist Education and Evolution) I wrote about the concerns about the teaching of evolution in biology classes at La Sierra University, a Seventh-Day Adventist school in California. (I was raised in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and educated in its schools, though I am no longer SDA.)

    The Spectrum blog has a link to the Board of Trustees statement (PDF), which does not seem to me to answer any questions. After declaring “whole-hearted support” for the SDA statement of beliefs, which includes an article affirming a literal seven day creation week, it includes the following two paragraphs:

    The Board of Trustees is committed to a spirit of open inquiry and discussion in the university’s classrooms and laboratories. The Board intends that when varying viewpoints are raised they will be heard with due respect.

    In its commitment to the integrity of the university’s mission, the Board of Trustees is dedicated to inspire, challenge, encourage and support the faculty in their sacred academic work. Further, the Board embraces its responsibility for ongoing evaluation and assessment.

    These paragraphs, including phrases like “spirit of open inquiry and discussion” and “support the faculty in their sacred academic work” sound to me like a certain amount of support for the science faculty. In the end, one still has to wonder just what the faculty will be expected to teach and how this will be evaluated. “ongoing evaluation and assessment” seems to indicate the board will be watching (as they should) but doesn’t really tell anyone just what they’re supposed to do.

    It will be interesting to see how this works out in practice. It appears to me that the board has given the ball a vigorous kick down the field without any obvious destination in sight. This may be more comfortable for them, but it is very uncomfortable for students and faculty.

    (Note: My interest in this case may appear odd. There are two reasons for it. First, I follow issues in creation and evolution closely. Second, besides my own education in SDA institutions, family members have taught at La Sierra University and currently do teach in other SDA institutions.)

  • Why both Bock and Borg are on my Ready-Reading Shelf

    I have been wanting to respond further to the excellent discussion over at Reclaiming the Mind, to which I linked a couple of days ago, but I’m not really an academic, and Karl Barth notwithstanding, I’m not really a theologian either. (I now am close to 100 comments behind on keeping up with the thread a Reclaiming the Mind. It’s a great discussion.)

    Nonetheless, I’ve been involved in Christian education at the congregational level for many years, most of my life, in fact, and I’m an avid consumer of Biblical scholarship. I think that the attitudes that folks are discussing there are evident in places other than academia. They show up in the books I read and often in Sunday School classes that I teach. So here goes with some comments from outside the academic environment.

    Some points:

    1. Much of the discussion has centered on Dr. Wallace’s definition of a Christian. We have gotten so sensitive to definitions, that it seems that to define is to discriminate. If you think about it, defining is discriminating. Any definition includes some and excludes others.

      If Dr. Wallace had defined “scholar” so that it only included Christians who hold something like his own views, then I think that would have significant. He would be trying to exclude on a basis similar to the one about which he was complaining. But he didn’t do that.

      I might have a slightly broader definition of Christian, but any definition includes some and excludes others. If we didn’t do that, we couldn’t communicate. By letting us know his definition, Dr. Wallace let’s us understand what he has to say, which hardly seems inappropriate.

    2. In just about any group of people based on ideas there will be some who narrowly define an “in” and an “out” group. I experienced this in my own graduate education when a professor refused even to talk to me after he read a paper I had written (not for one of his classes, fortunately!) because I was using comparative material and critical methodologies to excess. As the story was related to me, he managed to prevent publication of the paper as well. But the key point is this: I learned a great deal from that professor as well.
    3. Presuppositions abound on all sides, and sometimes we just suppose things that others have studied because we have to start from somewhere. But there is great value in examining such presuppositions and making sure we are supposing things that really need to be supposed rather than examined and established. Interaction between people with different presuppositions sometimes forces such examination.

    I think there is a distressing lack of building basic foundations in much of the literature, particularly literature written for a popular audience. Thus folks in Sunday Schools in both liberal and conservative churches believe that they are simply following the best scholarship, but they are often reading material that comes from a completely different set of scholars in each case, and those sets don’t agree.

    In one Sunday School class in which I discussed historical Jesus research, the members generally had read something by one of the Jesus Seminar scholars, or someone with a similar approach, and they were very surprised to learn about scholars who disagreed not only with the details of any particular reconstruction, but also with the method by which the reconstruction was done.

    In another class, members expected that I would dismiss Jesus Seminar material out of hand. They just wanted to hear that they didn’t have to concern themselves with any of that stuff. When I tried to explain the idea of criteria for historicity to them, I might as well have begun speaking Greek. They didn’t want to ask why one would take such an approach.

    Both of these classes were in United Methodist churches within the same general area. There was an obvious difference in what these various people were reading. But they had something in common. Neither group could explain how the other one had come to their conclusions. Both groups thought that they had the backing of good scholars.

    You may be wondering about my title at this point. I keep about six shelves of books within arm’s reach of the desk where I do my personal devotions and book study. There I keep those books that I look at regularly when I’m studying. Amongst the lexicons and grammars, I include some other works, one of which is Darrell Bock’s Jesus According to Scripture.

    Now Dr. Bock is somewhat more conservative than I am. I’m much more willing to question the historicity of portions of the stories told in the gospels. But one thing I want to do is understand how these passages have been harmonized by others. In other words, I don’t want to say that two stories are irreconcilable in their current form without both trying myself and seeing how others may have done it.

    That’s where Jesus According to Scripture comes in. Dr. Bock outlines the relationships between the various gospels for each pericope in the gospels. Once I have read that material I may not agree with any of the reconstructions, but at least I have considered the possibility.

    Now I doubt that there are many historical Jesus scholars who have never given consideration to any of these options. But I’m certain that there are other areas where scholars have not fully considered alternative ways of looking at a text. I find this in some conservative commentaries in which historical-critical research is dismissed out of hand. Fortunately, there is a substantial crop of excellent recent commentaries where this is not the case. Those commentaries are matched by critical commentaries that do not take the time to cover the possibility of some conservative options, for example for dating or authorship.

    But amongst the readers of this material, there are indeed many people who simply read one commentary or one book on a topic and believe they have a good view of what Biblical scholars believe on the topic.

    I had this emphasized to me in a study group I once led. They had asked me to lead a study on the book of Revelation, so I proceeded to used multiple commentaries in my own preparation, and also to look at some of the background texts, such as portions of Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah, and so forth. After a couple of weeks I was told I was making it much too complex. The majority of the group asked me to teach from David Jeremiah’s book Escape the Coming Night, if I remember correctly. They pointed out to me how simple he made it, and wanted me to follow that so that they could understand clearly.

    I had to tell them that I really couldn’t teach that book because I very simply didn’t agree with it. It was a great shock to them. To them, this was what Revelation meant. It was the only way. There might be minor variations, but not a completely different approach. (I take a completely different approach in my study guide, Revelation: a Participatory Study Guide, for what it’s worth.) They pointed out where Dr. Jeremiah said that Revelation was really quite easy to understand once you knew how to interpret it.

    In turn, I pointed out that I have a complete shelf of books on Revelation (and I still feel I need many more), and that many of them claimed it was quite simple, and no two of those agreed. Of course, quite a number quite correctly say it’s not simple at all.

    This is why I think that there is a great need in our Christian education departments for teaching about the nuts and bolts of Biblical studies. It seems to me that much of what goes on in Sunday School classes is a sort of “vain repetition” reinforcing the stuff that we already know and have studied year after year.

    So whatever needs to happen in academia–and I’d generally favor a great deal of openness–we need more dialog between various viewpoints in our churches.

    Now here’s the hard question: Will we allow discussion of serious issues, complete with the possibility that people might come to “unapproved” conclusions in our churches? That’s perhaps a little tougher of a question than one about an academic environment. I have found that many quite liberal individuals in churches can get very wary of materials from any other denomination used in their churches. I even heard one liberal education director complain that a book had “too much Jesus” in it. (I must point out that I vigorously disagreed.)

    On the other hand, I know of many conservative churches where similar materials would be rejected. I have worked with folks who would accept invitations to speak at my church in my education program but would never consider inviting me or anyone from my church to speak at theirs.

    Which brings me to what I think is the most important point: This isn’t about quid pro quo or tit for tat. It’s not about whether liberals or conservatives are more closed minded. I kept right on inviting those folks who weren’t inviting me back. In fact, I had never imagined that they would invite me back. I and my students benefited from their expertise and from being exposed to their point of view. Not having a speaker come to their church that might reflect my perspective was entirely their loss.

    High quality diversity is an advantage, and it needs to be pursued irrespective of how others behave. Those who pursue it will reap the benefits.

  • The Freedom to be Dumb

    Well, actually you should have the freedom to be dumb, but not on the public school budget. For all those who wonder why I strongly oppose so-called academic freedom bills applying to the High School science curriculum, see this site.

    Cool, no?

  • Teaching Evolution in Florida

    Brandon Haught of Florida Citizens for Science has started a series of posts on the history of the creation-evolution controversy here in Florida.

    In the new year I intend to spend a bit more time on Florida issues and even on county issues (Escambia County in northwest Florida), so you can watch for (and possibly ignore if you’re not from these parts) posts with those tags.

    I expect there to be bills on this, probably falsely called academic freedom bills, introduced into the next legislative sessions, and I will comment on them and track them here on this blog.

    It’s interesting to note how advocates of creationism in the schools have gone from bills forbidding that evolution be taught to “academic freedom” bills. Evolving strategy, eh?

  • New Creationist Prize

    . . . and it’s sillier than the old ones.

    Adnan Oktar, who writes as Harun Yahya, is offering the prize, according to the Telegraph.co.uk (HT: Breaking Christian News, surely an interesting place to find this):

    Mr Oktar, 52, who successfully campaigned for Mr Dawkins’ official website to be banned in Turkey, has said he will give 10 trillion Turkish lira, roughly equal to £4.4trn “to anyone who produces a single intermediate-form fossil demonstrating evolution.”

    The problem with all these prizes is that the folks offering them demonstrate no comprehension of even the most basic elements of how an historical science is carried out, and simply cannot recognize the abundant evidence when they see it.

    Of course, the effort to ban the Dawkins web site amply demonstrates Mr. Oktar’s particular methodology. He doesn’t have the facts, so he prefers to ban the opposition.

    As an interesting side note, and a case of “with friends like these, who needs enemies,” Mr. Oktar defended Dr. Michael Reiss:

    Mr Oktar has also defended Professor Michael Reiss, the British biologist who resigned as the director of education for the Royal Society earlier this month after suggesting science teachers should tackle creationism if the matter is raised by pupils.

    I also believe Dr. Reiss was treated wrongly, and even more the cause of sound science education was dealt a blow. But Mr. Oktar should consider that he wants to ban a web site entirely for disagreeing with him, while complaining that a scientist lost one position. He should be too embarrassed by his own actions censoring dialog to complain about those of others.

  • Louisiana Coalition for Science

    I’m a bit behind on this, but a group of citizens in Louisiana have formed the Louisiana Coalition for Science, which is responding to similar legislative efforts to the one that died at the end of the legislative session here in Florida this year. Both personally and as a board member of Florida Citizens for Science, I would like to express my support for their efforts.

    I will also be adding their site to my blogroll and continuing to watch.