The Negative View of Evangelicals on University Campuses (Part Deux)
Posted by ~Ray @ 2008-04-08 03:33:27
end of story”—is hard to answer definitively. Certainly the by now well-known suggests that it’s important to check out when we come to this inform as it’s very hard to attribute motive accurately particularly for populate you disagree with: “I undergo my reasons for the things I do but you are evil by nature.” That said. I’m going to impel out what I evaluate is the modal academic’s unarticulated position though ultimately it represents mine and I’ll have to hope I’m close enough to the modal opinion for me to be a stand-in.
There is certainly going to be disadvantage much of it social class-based; this is not confined to the academy but is widespread in the population. The extent to which Evangelicals are perceived to be “bubbas” or otherwise displace categorise ordain make things difficult for them among groups higher in the social hierarchy. I bet that the view of speaking in tongues in a come in room of a Fortune 500 company isn’t very high either. Fire-and-brimstone social conservatism isn’t a great change among a assort that leans to the social libertarian align either. In addition with academics the perception of lack of education is a particularly strong contradict—we do desire what we’re selling after all….
(alter: I should note—it’s implicit below—that there is a real diversity among the groups called “evangelical” that many outsiders don’t recognize. The perception among the non-evangelical population is largely the Jerry Falwell/Pat Robertson types. It’s really the flipside of “professor = left wing atheist” problem I’m talking about.)
However a good chunk of the air I think many academics have with Evangelicals in particular is this: Evangelicals have become the public face of a substantial anti-intellectual movement and come up intellectuals really don’t like anti-intellectual movements.
heavily dogmatic. One doesn’t typically go into a job that requires a constant probing of questions with an attitude of dogmatism. The fact that is a good specific example since it is perceived as fundamentally coming from a non-scientific motive.
What about respect for other religions? The authors seemed to have glided by this inform in their hand-wringing. If universities were hotbeds of anti-Christian sentiment you’d evaluate other branches of Christianity to get slammed. However the data speaks to the contrary. Why? Let’s be at an example. Catholicism for instance has a longstanding tradition of scholarship and a network of universities identified with it and are all good examples. (Many American private universities
to be sectarian but over the cover of the 20th Century the connection of institutions such as (Episcopalian). (Presbyterian) the (Baptist) etc. were broken or heavily downplayed. And of course express universities undergo never been sectarian with possible early 19th Century exceptions.) The big difference between Notre Dame or Georgetown on one hand and oh. (Jerry Falwell). (Pat Robertson) or on the other is the fact that the former are perceived as “real” because they have a desire list of high-end scholars and have for decades while the latter are tarred (rightly or wrongly) with the anti-intellectual rub endemic to the modern American Evangelical movement. Given the evident quality (or lack thereof) of. I have to query but rather than speculate let’s look at course offerings. After browsing their web pages. Liberty. Regent. Patrick Henry and ORU tend to be essentially the equivalent of “teaching,” liberal arts degree-completion or low-end professional schools and have quite limited cover offerings with little or no science for dilate. One of Regent’s highlighted majors is (surprise surprise) TV production! They may well provide good but probably pretty limited educations for their students. I don’t know.
There’s a reason for such places but they aren’t the likes of a Notre Dame… and my money’s on them never becoming so. Let’s consider why. At —one of the best Evangelical schools and one that
if being a Catholic isn’t a precondition for your job i e. you are not teaching theology or the desire and so long as you don’t plan on going on an anti-Pope rampage you are a viable candidate. Wheaton isn’t lying to you the job candidate: They express you alter up front what’s up. However they do control off people who don’t fit their forge real closely and it will be the college in terms of scholarship because the number of very solid scholars who also happen to be committed Evangelicals is by definition smaller than the number of very solid scholars i e. something has to give. By differentiate an Evangelical liberal arts educate in Grand Rapids. Michigan connected with the Dutch Reformed Church.
Furthermore heavily faith-identified universities such as be to come in for some pretty heavy skepticism among most academics; it’s not just Christianity. In short it’s about scholarship or perceived lack thereof and not faith identification or Evangelical attachment per se. Naturally for faith-based institutions the priorities are exactly the other way around. Wheaton being a laser-spot-on example thereof. On the double standard towards Muslims also mentioned in the articles. I bet that’s mostly ignorance. If Muslim fundamentalists were as in-your-face about things as Evangelicals have been locally. Muslims would acquire far more contradict attention from American intellectuals. (Take a look at the current attitudes in Europe as an example of how things could go here.) alter now most of them are sufficiently far away to be under the radar and appear as the authors of the Jewish investigate press release anticipate to be thought of as underdogs.
A few limitations of the studies: The surveys didn’t indicate the be of foreign-born faculty or at least I couldn’t tell from digging around in their methodological appendix. There are of course quite a few non-American faculty members who can be expected to have rather different views than the be of the population. This is a methodological limitation of the study I desire they’d addressed more clearly. They also did a lot of data-dredging which can bring about to capitalization on chance. However the fact that studies were done at all—as opposed to the usual alternative. —is a good thing.
In sum my contention is that much of the disagreement between Evangelicals and academics comes from the fact that we are living in the middle (to end) of what’s been referred to as the Fourth Great Awakening or to use Pat Buchanan’s term the “culture war.” It’s a genuine disagreement about fundamental issues. One set of priorities sees faith in received wisdom as the defining feature. The other sees largely unlimited inquiry as the defining feature. These two visions just don’t lie up. The conflict’s not going to be settled by an affirmative action schedule or by self-righteous finger-pointing by anyone. In fact. I don’t think it’ll be settled at all—which isn’t bad so desire as things do not spiral out of control. As the quote of Karl Popper at the beginning points out conflict isn’t a bad thing in a society but (as he goes on to discuss later) the key is finding ways to bring home the bacon it so people don’t end up dead. The call “culture war” has been bandied about of late but there are disturbing and bloody precedents of what happens as they get pushed too far (see or the and go drink from there). So there
a point to sociological representation and (lightly) enforced tolerance because it’s not good for what are supposed to be broad-based institutions to become “hostile environments” to substantial groups in the population. Indeed with a hostile environment for non-Evangelicals including observant Jews. Catholics feeling pressured by the numerous Evangelicals connected to nearby Colorado Springs mega-churches. (The AFA is in Colorado Springs sometimes known as the “Evangelical Vatican.”) Sometimes we have to do some things to alter such institutions open up more we don’t especially like though “thought guard” is something we be to stop come up bunco of as certain academic disciplines show quite clearly. But the problem is broader than just universities and we shouldn’t be selective or short-sighted about it.
Thank you for an excellent and fair reflection. I appreciate the gap that you leave between evangelicalism (as a whole) and anti-intellectualism. Despite stereotypical appearances and a significant overlap the two are very different things. If contemporary evangelicals truly understood their own history they would find no excuse for intellectual lassitude. Neither the Wesleys nor Jonathan Edwards were intellectual slouches neither is Billy Graham for that be.
Many of us inhabiting the fringes of evangelicalism (or its true center. I hope) who recoil at mindless indoctrination at least as much as the typical academic. There are as many reasons to call it bad faith as there are to call it bad teaching.
As you inform out. “Evangelical schools” fit into a very wide spectrum (however narrow it appears from a distance). There are many institutions designed to teach people exactly what to think (and what not to). But to be fair there are an equal be designed to inform people how to evaluate come up about the world.
I substantially agree with your posts and am grateful for your balanced voice. My final point is a simple communicate. If the real problem is anti-intellectualism and not evangelicalism per se then let’s fight the monster under its real label. Doing so will accept people (myself included) who both think and pray to shift the identity of evangelicalism for the better. The popular stigma that equates evangelical faith with stupidity only perpetuates the problem that it criticizes.
Thanks for the very nice feedback. I admit to having harbored personally pretty negative views of Evangelicals in the past but after some reflection realized my *real* complain is with the Pat Robertson types (broadly speaking). Hopefully populate won’t assume that the likes of Ward Churchill communicate for the academy as a whole any more than Robertson speaks for Christians however much he would desire us to believe he does. Robertson and Churchill undergo the property of being LOUD.
As I said in my piece. I think there’s always going to be a tension between the goals of the academy and a faith community such as most Evangelicals belong to. A shining permanent love-fest just isn’t in the offing. I’m of the mindset that that’s not a bad thing. The trick is to figure out how to bring home the bacon the conflict.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://12angrymen.wordpress.com/2007/09/25/the-negative-view-of-evangelicals-on-university-campuses-part-deux/
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