Bock and Wallace on Religious Intolerance in the Academy
I have been rereading Darrell L. Bock and Daniel B. Wallace’s Dethroning Jesus: Exposing Popular Culture’s Quest to Unseat the Biblical Christ (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007) for a paper I am writing. I was struck by one statement in particular:
“Certain narrow perspectives reign on many campuses almost without any expression of alternate viewpoints. What makes this a scandal is that educational universities, especially state universities, are supposed to be places where intellectual perspectives held by the full array of the populace represented by the schools are weighed. These public schools should not be think tanks of a singular point of view. The give-and-take of diverse viewpoints is what makes the educational experience. Yet in many universities, when it comes to religion, representation by believers within the various religious perspectives is lacking, as evidenced by the numerous students who say their faith has come under attack in courses on religion” (p. 21).
The statement shows a surprisingly misguided view of the goals and methodology of Religious Studies in the Academy. In our courses we do not seek to provide instruction, or even a forum, for all viewpoints on religion (though here by “religion,” I think the authors mean Christianity). What we do seek to do is examine religious texts and related historical events with the same scientific methodology as other university/college disciplines (e.g., literary criticism, social-scientific criticism, etc.). Religious or faith-based perspectives have no role to play in the Academy, i.e., unless it is to study these perspectives in others. Yes, sometimes my students comment that their faith is “under attack” in my classes, but that is never the intent. They are told from the start that they do not need to agree with the methodology of the discipline, just learn it; indeed, they could even learn it expressly in order to refute it if they wish (but such refutation should take place outside the classroom).
One of my strongest students of recent years was a conservative Christian. Every class he challenged what I was teaching, but never using faith-based arguments. Instead he questioned the evidence behind my statements and occasionally corrected my readings of texts with his handy electronic-KJV. He is a good example of how one can object to some of the conclusions reached by some scholars yet still work within the methodology of the discipline. To allow “various religious perspectives” into the classroom invites disaster.
In my view the problem is not so much that ones faith comes under attack at the university, this happens in your normal life, too.
The problem is that in the university your faith is not *strengthened*. If you have no strong Christian environment outside of the university, you will really have a problem.
Perhaps it is a general misconception.
But if the only people you deal with are liberal theologians who have given up faith long ago, and if the only things you hear are, that everything can be explained rationally etc. this will form you.
You need a strong backing from outside of the university to stand all this.
I think the education of pastors is not optimal.
Presumably conservative seminaries are allowed to be ‘think tanks of a singular point of view’. I can’t quite get my head around this type of critique coming from Dallas Seminary professors.
Tony;
I think what we’re seeing here in Bock and Wallace on one hand and your position is the classic misunderstanding between religious studies and a seminary approach to the same subject area. At the end of the day, Bock and Wallace represent an approach committed to understanding the history of Christianity within the Christian tradition, while you represent a religious studies approach which professes no tradition, but a disinterested search for knowledge. The irony, of course, is that claim itself places religious studies within a tradition within Western culture in its own right. This, I think, explains both the clash that the Bock and Wallace quotation highlights and your response.
Please understand what I’m saying. I do not say that there is a conspiracy to deny or drive out Christians from academic or intellectual fields. Nor am I saying that you personally do it (from all indications, you seem tolerant of disagreement in your class). What I am saying is that there is a clash of traditions here and I sometimes wish that both religious studies departments and seminaries would admit the divide and stop expecting the other to act their way. Can we value the contributions of both traditions without abandoning our own? That might be a key question here.
I do applaud your efforts to encourage learning methodologies which may or may not congenial to one’s positions. That is always a good practice.
I also agree that Bock has, in the past, tended to write apologetic, rather than scholarly treatises. Mind you, please remember that, as far as I’ve seen (and I’ve only seen this book in the bookstore), he isn’t exactly aiming this book at a scholarly audience, but rather a popular Christian one of a particular variety. Yes, critisize the book, but let’s not expect it to be something its not.
Peace,
Phil
Tony seems to be missing the point of Bock and Wallace’s comment. The issue is not whether secular universities should approach religious texts from a faith-based point of view. Rather, the issue is that most secular institutions assume that those who profess a non-trivial belief in a religion are incapable of objectively discussing their religion’s texts. The problem with this institutionalized skepticism is that it ignores the fact that the skeptic is no more objective than the believer. Those skeptics who assume that religious texts are inherently less reliable than secular texts from the same time period have no more right to be involved in the discussion than do believers who assume their texts are inherently more reliable. That, unfortunately, means that a great number of religious studies departments are populated by sub-standard “scholars.”
Furthermore, religious studies departments do not really study their texts using the scientific method. Rather, they use the historical method. The two methods are similar, but distinct. I trust that Tony was oversimplifying his position for the sake of this popular forum. I’m sure he understands the difference between the scientific and historical methods.
I’m not sure that you have identified B&W’s point any better than I (i.e., I don’t see what you see in the quotation I provided). But let me at least respond to the points that you have made. Do I think that “that those who profess a non-trivial belief in a religion are incapable of objectively discussing their religion’s texts� No, I just don’t want them to. And when they do, I correct them. And when they don’t, I encourage them.
As for your second point (“Those skeptics who assume that religious texts are inherently less reliable than secular texts from the same time period have no more right to be involved in the discussion than do believers who assume their texts are inherently more reliableâ€) I have not encountered this. I am just as skeptical of Tacitus or Josephus, etc. as any biblical writer. But I can see the temptation to favour a writer who is writing something that comes across as dispassionately historical (though there really is no such thing) over a writer who infuses his accounts with supernatural phenomena. A related issue in the NT field occurs with Paul’s “conversion experience†in Acts and Galatians. Galatians is usually assumed to be more accurate because it contains less legendary and supernatural elements, but it needs to be remembered that Paul himself is no model of objectivity (i.e., even simply as the participant in an event, he is not likely to recall it accurately). But that doesn’t mean I believe he was blinded and fell off a horse, etc.
The principle issue in this argument as I see it is that the investigation of a text or the historical event that it reports should not be hampered by a perspective that could be summed up by “Well, that’s what the Bible says.†To disallow that in the classroom is not being restrictive of discussion; it simply is not appropriate to the university setting. Nor is it appropriate when discussing the origins of the universe in science courses, or normal human reproduction in biology, etc.
As for my use of the “scientific method,†I used too general a term. Historical criticism is grounded in the aims of the scientific method (i.e., to form hypotheses from evidence and to test them) but it has its own particularities.
Thanks for the comment (and to the others also).
The tendency of religious studies departments to push a particular religious agenda is one that we really can’t pretend doesn’t exist. It’s been a standing joke for the last 30 years to my certain knowledge, and probably longer.
Now it is one thing to do this openly. Whether a state-funded secular university should do this might be questioned, but is not the point.
But it is quite a different matter to do this to students who are under the impression that they are learning a scholarly discipline, when in reality they are being silently pressured to adopt a theology. I suggest that this happens quite routinely.
Nor will it do to pretend that this is somehow merely promoting ‘scientific’ and ‘objective’ approaches. It isn’t. We can all decorate our own views in such a manner.
Is there any practical difference between running a department in such a manner that only persons of one theological outlook will be comfortable, and anyone holding a different view will be continuously uncomfortable, and proselytising for that outlook? Isn’t what the Chinese did during the Korean war to US servicemen?